[PEN-L:7371] Re: J. Donald Hughes on Mayan collapse

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>[Just as I suspected, J. Donald Hughes's CNS article "The Classic Maya
>Collapse" was based on dated scholarship. Actually, Hughes's article turns
>out to be impressions of his vacation in Mexico, not much more substantial
>than my "London Calling" post. More recent scholarship has refuted this
>notion of wasteful use of soil and other resources, especially that
>presented by Robert J. Sharer in the 892 page "The Ancient Maya", which I
>recommend to anybody interested in the topic. Sharer is Professor of
>Anthropology, and Curator of the American Section of the University Museum
>and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He reads Mayan
>hieroglyphics and began work on the 5th edition of "The Ancient Maya" in
>1980, which was finally released in 1994 after 15 years of research.]

Wow, 892 pages, and all those impressive academic titles!

I'm the first to admit I don't know the literature, and you probably don't
either. But in looking through Hughes's footnotes - terrible academic
affectation, footnotes, I know - I see 1984, 1990, 1996, 1987, 1997, 1973,
1998, 1996, 1989, 1985, 1990, and 1998.

Dated scholarship in that all these years are dates, perhaps, but in what
other sense except that it disagrees with your romantic visions?

Yours in coyly splitting the difference between LM and Plekhanov,

Doug