From The Mayans To Easter Island's Inhabitants — 10 Ancient Civilizations That Disappeared Under BIZARRE Circumstances
One of history's biggest questions is: "How does an entire civilization disappear?" One can comprehend how an object or even a city is lost, buried, or destroyed, but an entire group or nation of people is nearly unfathomable. And if archaeology hadn't emerged in the 18th century, many of these civilizations would have become permanently lost to time...
Even though archaeological and scientific tools have discovered much about these ancient civilizations, including facts about their daily lives, religions, and habits, many "disappearances" remain unsolved. From the Mayans to the Mississippians — here are 10 ancient societies that seemingly vanished from the face of the earth:
1. The Mayans:
The Mayans, a technologically advanced society renowned for their revolutionary calendar system, emerged around 2000 BCE, and at one point reached an estimated population of over 13 million people. Which begs the question, how did this massive civilization ultimately collapse or "vanish"?
Around 250 CE, the Mayans entered what is now called the "Classic Period." During this period, the population peaked, and the people built flourishing cities, complete with palaces and temples. However, 650 years later, the "Classic Period" ended, and all major Mayan cities were abandoned for reasons that are still unknown.
Through the years, scientists and historians have come up with many plausible (and implausible) theories, ranging from climate change and war to, yes, alien abduction. However, they are still unable to pinpoint the exact cause of the civilization's collapse, but note that it didn't happen all at once, but rather occurred over an estimated 100-year period.
Even after the fall of their society, the Mayan people didn't disappear entirely. Instead, other cities such as Chichen Itza and later Mayapan in the northern lowlands rose to prominence (towns were also established in the highlands).
However, things dramatically shifted after Spanish conquistadores landed in the early 1500s. By 1697, Nojpeten, the last independent Mayan city, fell, and the civilization was largely forgotten until the 1830s, when archaeologists began excavating the areas in which the Mayans lived.
2. Easter Island's Inhabitants (aka the Rapa Nui):
One of the world's most mysterious and yet easily identifiable landmarks is the Moai statues on Easter Island. Over 100,000 people visit these ancient, multi-ton structures each year, yet we're still left to wonder: What happened to the people who put them there?
For years, the inhabitants of Easter Island, known as the Rapa Nui, have been a cautionary tale of what happens when a civilization overpopulates and thus overtaxes its environment, dooming itself to "ecocide," an idea popularized in geographer Jared Diamond's 2005 book Collapse. However, recent observations of the Rapa Nui's downfall tell a different story.
In most tellings, the Rapa Nui were a small group of Polynesian settlers who migrated to Easter Island between 800 and 900 CE, and by the twelfth century, had become obsessed with building Moai, thereby decimating their crops and draining their natural resources to make room for them. By the 17th century, they had supposedly deforested the entire island, triggering war, famine, and ultimately cannibalism.
However, in 2024, Columbia archaeologist Dylan Davis released a study challenging the long-held narrative, showing that the Rapa Nui didn't overpopulate the island but maintained a stable environment until the arrival of European settlers in the early 18th century. Davis and his team's comprehensive study of the island's farmland revealed that the residents only grew enough crops to feed four thousand individuals at any given time. He explained, "This shows that the population could never have been as big as some of the earlier estimates suggested."
The Rapa Nui had a particular method of farming called " rock gardening," where farmers would scatter broken rocks in fields to protect the budding plants from the elements. For many years, scientists simply mapped these "gardens" to calculate the yield of the ancient islanders' crops. However, Davis and his team conducted different research using satellite imagery; their findings revealed that "There are natural rock outcrops all over the place that had been misidentified as rock gardens in the past."
This study, in essence, disproves the theory that the Rapa Nui were frivolous people, as Davis's study pointed out that the Rapa Nui's "rock gardening" was an extremely efficient way to draw necessary minerals and nutrients out from Easter Island's nutrient-deficient volcanic soil.
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