{"id":495,"date":"2014-10-23T12:01:50","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T12:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=495"},"modified":"2014-10-23T12:01:50","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T12:01:50","slug":"achieving-sustainable-societies-lessons-from-modelling-the-ancient-maya-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=495","title":{"rendered":"Achieving Sustainable Societies: Lessons from Modelling the Ancient Maya | Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesolutionsjournal.com\/node\/237204\">Achieving Sustainable Societies: Lessons from Modelling the Ancient Maya | Solutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"abstract\" style=\"background-image: none; background-attachment: scroll; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #dddddd; float: right; width: 246px; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; color: #000000; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; padding: 8px 12px 8px 12px; margin: 3px 0px 1em 12px; border: 1px solid #999999;\"><label style=\"display: inline; font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px; margin-right: 1em;\"><br \/>\nIn Brief<\/label>The ancient Maya provide an example of a complex social-ecological system which developed impressively before facing catastrophic reorganization. In order for our contemporary globally-connected society to avoid a similar fate, we aim to learn how the ancient Maya system functioned, and whether it might have been possible to maintain resilience and avoid collapse. The MayaSim computer model was constructed to test hypotheses on whether system-level interventions might have resulted in a different outcome for the simulated society. We find that neither collapse nor sustainability are inevitable, and the fate of social-ecological systems relates to feedbacks between the human and biophysical world, which interact as fast and slow variables and across spatial and temporal scales. In the case of the ancient Maya, what is considered the \u2018peak\u2019 of their social development might have also been the \u2018nadir\u2019 of overall social-ecological resilience. Nevertheless, modelling results suggest that resilience can be achieved and long-term sustainability possible, but changes in sub-systems need to be maintained within safe operating boundaries.<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Achieving Sustainable Societies: Lessons from Modelling the Ancient Maya | Solutions. In BriefThe ancient Maya provide an example of a complex social-ecological system which developed impressively before facing catastrophic reorganization. In order for our contemporary globally-connected society to avoid a similar fate, we aim to learn how the ancient Maya system functioned, and whether it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[138,150,511,680,736,766],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-civilisation","tag-collapse","tag-maya","tag-resilience","tag-society","tag-survival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}