| | Last week, I traveled to Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula with my family. The trip turned out excellent.
 Yucatan
used to be home to millions of people called the Maya. About 1000
years ago, the Maya were one of the greatest civilizations. They
built lots of cities including huge buildings and pyramids.
Amazingly, they didn't use animals or wheels! The largest
pyramids were over 100 feet tall.
While in Yucatan, we visited three ancient Maya cities: 1. Tulum, 2. Coba, and 3. Chichen Itza.
The tall pyramid here is from Chichen Itza (sounds like
Chee-Chen-E-Tsah). President Bush climbed a few steps during his
trip to Mexico in March. When we were there, no one was allowed
to climb this pyramid. Back in January, an old lady was climbing
up, she got tired, sat down, fainted, fell down, and she died... so all
the stairs are roped off.
 This
second pyramid was in Coba. When the ancient Maya built it, it
looked fantastic. The Maya abandoned Coba hundreds of years
ago. Since then, trees and bushes grew in all of the cracks of
this pyramid. This pyramid was cleared of plants only on this one
side so people could see it.
We climbed to the top of this one. It was quite high, but it was
exciting. From the top we could see above the forest in all
directions. By the way, the pyramid in Chichen Itza used to look
just like this, but the people who found it around 1930 decided to try
to make it look like new, so that's why it looks so fantastic.
 Tulum
used to be a city right on the coast of the Yucatan along the Carribean
Sea. It was the center of business with boats going up and down
the coast carry people and things to sell like food and cloth.
Some of the people who lived in Coba probably moved to Tulum after Coba
was deserted.
The reason that Coba and Chichen Itza were deserted is
interesting. The people there basically used up everything they
needed to live. In Chichen Itza, they used up all the trees as
far as the eye could see, they ended up polluting their water supply by
not taking care of their body wastes, and then when they didn't get
enough rain, many died because there was not enough food or nutrition.
The same thing happened in Coba except hundreds of years earlier.
They used up all their wood, and probably polluted their lakes, and
after a few dry years with too many people, many died, and the rest
moved away.
The ancient Maya are very interesting because knowing what happened to
them will help us understand what is going to happen to us when we use
too much of the earth.
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| | Posted 4/10/2006 4:52 AM - 813 Views - 16 eProps - 10 comments
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