What Happened to the Maya?

This is an essay I had to do for my Native American History class. I thought it was pretty interesting and thought this would be a good place to show it.

The Maya are probably the most well known native people of the Americas. It is most likely because of the many advancements that the Mayan people made centuries ago when they were the top power of the region. The other major thing that is a major factor in popularity of the Maya is their fall as a civilization. It has stumped a lot of people as to the cause of their decline. The difference between the Maya and some other native people of the Americas is how big and powerful the Mayan civilization was. This is what baffles a lot of people. How can a civilization as big, powerful, and sophisticated as the Mayan go into a great decline and loss all of its previous dominance? There have been many opinions as to the cause of the decline of the Mayan civilization. Some of the common explanations are disease, overpopulation, or self-destruction.
Disease is possibly one of the many factors involved in the decline of the great Mayan civilization. While it is a factor it is a smaller one. There was disease that affected the civilization but not to the degree where it would wipe out the entire civilization. Diseases were common of the time but because of such the massive size of the civilization it would take a major disease to wipe the whole civilization out. So while it was a small factor it was not the only cause of the decline of the civilization.
Overpopulation was another factor in the decline of the great Mayan civilization, but just like diseases it was not the main cause. It was an important factor in the decline though. Because of overpopulation a bigger food source was needed in order to support the many people of the civilization. Unfortunately the area they were located in was incapable of providing the amount of food that was needed for the massive civilization. Also because of the amount of food that was needed forests were burnt down to make more room for crops, but because of the natural cycle of extreme rainfall and extreme drought that the area had it made it difficult to maintain the crops needed and therefore unable to feed the huge population.
Self-destruction I would say is the main cause of the decline of the great Mayan civilization. The self-destruction was caused by the culmination of the many factors that lead to the decline of the Mayan civilization. Because the Mayan was doing something not done before in the area, having cities and large populations, all the problems they faced were the first time they were ever faced. Because of this they had to figure out everything themselves through trial and error. This then lead to possibly more errors then successes and because of that put the civilization into a decline.
Like they say every great civilization has their fall. The Mayan civilization is just another example of this. Because of the many new challenges that the civilization had to face, which they never faced before, they could not keep their great civilization together. Because of their and other great civilizations fall we better know now how to keep of society together because they did the trial and error for us, just like we are doing it for future civilizations.