system
A chat on 4chan
human
How did they dominated the jungle in such a scale with less population /workforce than the ancient Egyptians and no metallic tools and without using the fucking wheel?
gpt
Because they used to have massive population. Irrigation projects! Cisterns placed everywhere to capture the rainwater, since in the yucatan the water seeps into the limestone and disappears if you dont manage it correctly. Limestone is soft, they wouldnt have needed metal. What amazes me the most is that it took just one bad drought to bring them to their knees, even before the Spaniards arrived there was a bronze age collapse-tier event that was still in progress. No water in the wells means no food means war, and starvation means war becomes less about competing with your neighboring city-states and more about murdering them as peasants fled their dying farms to the cities which also had no food. Nobles and warrior caste had to recruit peasant armies for the first time rather than the more 'ceremonial' wars they used to wage. They began going on longer campaigns with more ferocity, burning more limited resources, and the two superpower states (one was tikal iirc forgot the other) in a mad rush to maintain their way of life warred themselves to oblivion. you can go to the jungle today and see the pottery shards and old bricks just strewn about, our guide told us that robbers come and steal the best to sell on the black market but theres nothing they can do to stop them. obviously he was angry since he was maya and its their history being carted off. Climate change is a bitch, in 1000 years people will look at the skeletons of skyscrapers and say 'how did they build this? Who built it? Slaves? Levitation?' the supply chain issue is just beginning. And if you think they didnt have the fucking wheel you are dumb, they have carved stone wheels, how could they have done anything without wooden carts? FFS the mayans built massive road networks
human
> there was a bronze age collapse-tier event that was still in progress.
>burning more limited resources
Its freakin central america this place is and always was lush as fuck i dont believe in the climat catastrophy theory 
i believe in the effect of modern industry in the destruction of the environement but how can a small human population with no intensive industry could destroy their environement in fertile tropical region where things grow all year round?
gpt
>fertile tropical region
It is lowland jungle all the nutrients wash away in the rains. It only makes sense to grow fruit trees and other woody plants which is why they also cultivated food forests
That's why they practiced slash and burn agriculture, the ash retains nutrient. Unfortunate, they didn't figure out that inundating the soil with charcoal achieves the same result indefinitely like the Amazonians and terra preta

Of course, the kings had already been overthrown by that point and there was no scribes to make inscriptions anymore. The Maya still lived in cities when the Spanish came btw, just not the ones further inland more towards Yucatan. Tulum

It has, there are multiple points of domestication for a lot of American plants actually. Teosinte and another teosinte species makes Mexican and Peruvian corn, tons of different tomatoes, etc.