The Lost Civilization: The Story of the Classic Maya

xiii, 123 pages, illustrations; 23 cm. Firm binding, clean text. Droplet stain/foreedge. A good reading copy for the thrifty scholar. *** "Perhaps no prehistoric development in the New World has attracted as much interest or has been surrounded with more mystery in the popular press as the emergence and disappearnce of the Maya civilization in Mesoamerica. This book skillfully provides us with an up-to-date synthesis of that civilization. As such, it represents one of the end-products of archaeological research, a descriptive historical narrative of a viable culture that existed in the past. It also uses the Maya civilization as a case study for the exploration of processes of cultural stability and change in cross-cultural perspective. Using the Maya as one example of that type of complex society anthropologists call civilization permits important perspective for the understanding and solution of problems that confront our own version of civilization today. The reader will discover, for example, that the problems of 'over-population' or an "energy crisis" are not novel or restricted to our own era. Indeed, an understanding of these general pressures in the rise and fall of the Maya civilization might well help us to achieve a more rational solution for these pressing problems in today's world." - Foreword. Size: 8vo. …