Charles Mann

“They build their monuments as if their intent was never to finish them,” the Spanish academic Polo de Ondegardo marveled in 1571. Exactly right, Isbell and Vranich said. Completion was not the object. The goal was a constant buzz of purposeful activity.

In our day the Soviet Union disintegrated after drought caused a series of bad harvests in the 1970s and 1980s, but nobody argues that climate ended Communist rule. Similarly, one should grant the Maya the dignity of assigning them responsibility for their failures as well as their successes.

Over time, the Meggers-Roosevelt dispute grew bitter and personal; inevitable in a contemporary academic context, it featured charges of colonialism, elitism, and membership in the CIA.