The Mayan civilization suffered multiple severe droughts in the final centuries of their society, including one that lasted a devastating 13 years, according to a new high-resolution climate record revealed in the chemical fingerprints of a cave formation.
The study, led by the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Science Advances, provides the most detailed timeline yet of the climatic pressures that contributed to the collapse of the agrarian society in the Yucatán Peninsula.
By analyzing a stalagmite from Grutas Tzabnah, a cave located near major Maya centers like Chichén Itzá, researchers reconstructed rainfall patterns for individual wet and dry seasons between 871 and 1021 AD. This is the first time it has been possible to isolate the failure of the crucial rainy season during the period historically known as the Maya Collapse.
Stalagmites provide more detailed records than natural sediments
While past research on lake sediments suggested drought was a factor, stalagmites provide a far more precise record. “Lake sediment is great when you want to look at the big picture, but stalagmites allow us to access the fine-grained detail that we’ve been missing,” said lead author Dr. Daniel H. James, who conducted the research at Cambridge and is now at University College London.
The stalagmite grew, drop by drop, as mineral-rich water filtered from the surface, trapping chemical isotopes that act as a proxy for rainfall. Thanks to relatively thick annual layers of about one millimeter, the team could distinguish between wet and dry seasons. This allowed them to pinpoint the specific wet-season droughts that would have led to crop failure in the maize-dependent society.
Our researchers have helped uncover evidence that a series of devastating droughts contributed to the collapse of the Maya civilisation over 1,000 years ago.
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— Durham University (@durham_uni) August 14, 2025
The analysis identified eight distinct wet-season droughts, each lasting for at least three years. The most prolonged drought event began in 929 AD, and continued for 13 consecutive years, a duration that would have put severe strains on even the Maya’s sophisticated water management techniques.
The Mayas stopped inscribing dates when they suffered the droughts
This detailed climate data aligns remarkably with the archaeological record. The Maya stopped inscribing dates on their monuments at major northern sites during the periods of most severe and prolonged drought identified in the stalagmite, including the famous city of Chichén Itzá.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Maya abandoned Chichén Itzá during these periods of severe drought, but it’s likely that they had more immediate things to worry about than constructing monuments, such as whether the crops they relied on would succeed or not,” James said. The accurately dated droughts provide a new framework for understanding the timing of human-climate interactions in the region.
While the data paints a devastating picture, some experts believe the Maya were more resilient than a focus on maize suggests. Scott Fedick, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the study, has previously argued that the Maya had access to numerous perennial, drought-resistant food plants.
However, even resilient cities eventually succumbed to the droughts. Rafael Cobos, a historian and Maya expert at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, noted that both Uxmal and Chichén Itzá witnessed their development conclude by the end of the 11th century.
Ultimately, the sustained lack of rain proved too much. “The Maya civilization, with its society dependent on the production of maize fields for food, could not sustain its large population,” Cobos said, “and the social-political-economic debacle, the collapse, occurred.”
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