Question

According to the passage, the drought at the time of Maya collapse had a different impact compared to the droughts earlier because:

• A. the Maya kings continue to be extravagant when common people were suffering.
• B. it happened when the Maya population had occupied all available land suited for agriculture.
• C. it was followed by internecine warfare among Mayans.
• D. irreversible environmental degradation led to this drought.

Answer 1

The correct option is B

it happened when the Maya population had occupied all available land suited for agriculture.

Option (a) is the fifth strand according to the passage, but there is nothing to indicate that had a different impact compared to earlier droughts. Option (c) contradicts the third paragraph, “Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse”. Option (d) is incorrect because “the third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources.” This implies that environmental degradation had nothing to do with this particular drought.
The third paragraph mentions “at the time of previous droughts, there were still uninhabited parts of the Maya landscape, and people at a site affected by drought could save themselves by moving to another site. However, by the time of the Classic collapse the landscape was now full, there was no useful unoccupied land in the vicinity on which to begin anew, and the whole population could not be accommodated in the few areas that continued to have reliable water supplies.” Hence option (b) is the correct answer.