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As I currently read so much about pessimistic ecological forecast of today's society, I'm wondering if the Maya or eastern islands society became aware of their heading into or state of an ecological crisis and if this triggered a change of their individual and common behavior? Both are very well studied, the Maya language was deciphered, did archeologists ask themselves my question and try to answer it?

The question to me is rather if they tried to save their civilization by drastically changing their behavior instead of proceedings as used to till the end. Maybe archeologists have identified in Maya scripts at least such notions or changing procedures, e.g. ceremonies at the beginning/end of their crisis.

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No.

The environment as a scientific concept is relatively new. You can argue when it became first known, but before 1900 is - in my opinion - pushing it. The Mayas and Pacific islanders were many centuries before that level. They thought the gods did it.

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    Good point. Though you need not really a concept of environment to recognize you are running out of forest like the Pacific islanders. The Maya were able to make complex mathematical calculations. The question is more into the direction, did they try to change their economic/ecological behavior to save their society/civilization rather than the environment – user48953094 Mar 15 at 8:08

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