Decline of the Olmec? Statues were broken and buried, monuments defaced, and the capitals burned? WHY?
445169
Nobody knows for certain since it was so long ago.  Some historians believe that environmental changes may have been responsible for this move, with certain important rivers changing course. However, there is also some evidence suggestive of an invasion and destruction of Olmec artifacts around this time.  So, take from that what you will.
148157
George Washington, wasn't it? cuz when he went to war and came back the white house had burnt down so they had to rebuild it, right? not sure...google it. lol.
804420
Great Pyramid of Giza 2550 BC Egyptians still standing still standing \nHanging Gardens of Babylon 600 BC Babylonians   destroied after  1st century BC earthquake \nTemple of Artemis at Ephesus 550 BC Lydians, Greeks 356 BC fire \nStatue of Zeus at Olympia 435 BC Greeks  destroied 5th-6th centuries AD fire \nMausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus 351 BC Persians, Greeks by 1494 AD earthquake \nColossus of Rhodes 292-280 BC Hellenistic Greece 224 BC earthquake \nLighthouse of Alexandria 3rd century BC Hellenistic Egypt 1303-1480 AD earthquake
384679
this is the explanation of the downfall of Rome. they kept expanding the amount the land they occupied, much like how Hitler took over Europe one country at a time.\nwhen they took over each country, they had to use their forces to keep the peace. but if that country wasn't earning them a profit (through taxes, produce, etc), they spent more on controlling it than it was worth, so the areas started going bankrupt. the rich countries had to support the poor countries, which meant hard times for everyone.\nas the areas started going belly-up one by one, the savages around swooped in. the closer they got to Rome, the easier it was to attack the capitol. eventually, the city of Rome was set on fire by a band called the Visigoths. that marked the official end of the empire.
399526
One can imagine there was some mortality among the males at the time of the Conquest. Perhaps this has led to some resentment.
14829
It all started with the colonization, where an imaginary mexico created by Europeans tried to replace the Real mexico, the mexico that comes from mesoamerican cultures. This conflict between those two forces created an alternative way to deal with reality: Corruption. \n\nThis conflict has persisted until today, where the real mexico presents itself as informal economy, and subsistence economies in the indian towns... where corruption has became a way of life.
1126225
Why did Rome fall ?\nWell, the old-fashioned, traditional explanation for the fall of Rome points out the mass migration as the biggest reason for the collapse of Rome. \n\nIn ancient European history it happened two or three times that huge migrations took place, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people set out to find new homelands. \nThe fact that such a mass migration took place whilst the Romans were still in power, must be seen as at least a major contributor to their fall. For as we see in modern days too, armies can fight other armies, but they cannot fight entire peoples. The Romans were overwhelmed in a human deluge.\n\n\nBut today one tends not to rely so much on the idea of mass migration and rather understands Rome as having suffered from an entire list of problems. \n\nRome had always had its fair share of bad emperors. Caligula, Nero, Commodus are such examples. But there always followed good emperors to correct their errors. At Rome's end however, there was really no good rulers. For example great generals like Stilicho were killed because the emperor feared losing his throne to them. If you kill your best generals, your army will never be as good as it could be.\nAlso important to the weakening of the Romans was that they began to get more and more civilized. Civilized people were not as good warriors on the battlefields as barbarians. For a long time the Romans had their own barbarians. Gauls, Illyrians, Belgians, Helvetians, Germans, etc.; they all joined the Roman legions. But soon they too were living like Romans. They enjoyed the fruits of Roman civilization and hence became less barbarous, - and less able to fight the barbarian Goths, Vandals, Sueves, etc..\nAnother important reason is perhaps that of Roman unity. The early Romans who built the empire stood united. By the end of course Rome had two capitals, Rome and Constantinople, each with its own emperor. But to the earlier Romans, Rome had been something special, something they served. But the later Romans only sought power for themselves. Almost every military commanders secretely had his eye on the throne and was ready to overthrow the emperor and take power himself. The armies spent a lot of time fighting each other for power in Rome, rather than fighting the enemy.\nTo this cataolgue of troubles one needs also to add economic problems. Rome was spending more than it could afford. The free food rations for the poor of Rome and Constantinople were costing a fortune. The Purchasing of exotic spices and silk from the orient ment that over time Rome was spending its gold on overseas luxuries. Gold which didn't return. Soon Rome didn't have enough gold to produce coins with.\nAnd then there were the plagues. Deadly diseases brought in from the east swept across Europe, killing vast numbers among the population of the empire.\nEven if the mass migration of the wild, Germanic people of the eastern plains is no longer seen as the all-important reason for Rome's demise, it naturally still is seen as one of the capital problems which caused the empire to fall.\nAs a last reason I'd also see the disastrous decision of emperor Valens (who was emperor of Constantinople) to allow the Visigoths to settle in Moesia.\nThe Roman empire's borders to the north had been the river Rhine and the river Danube. They are wide streams and therefore hard to cross. This means, the border was easy to defend. But when the Huns from the east attacked the Visigoths on the other side of the Danube, emperor Valens let them settle on the Roman side of the river. True, the Visigoths then were friends of the Romans. But that soon changed. It didn't take long and bad living conditions, poverty and starvation led the Visigoths to revolt. In the following war, the Romans no longer had a protective river from behind which to defend themelves. The enemy was settled within their own empire. - And it should be the Visigoths who eventually sacked the city of
891073
Nothing New About It\n\nhttp://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/aztlan.html\n\nIn 1997, then-President Zedillo proclaimed that \n“I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation \nextends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders.” \n\n\n\n\n\n\nDuring the ''conquista,'' \nSpain tried to impose on Mexico \na common western language, religion, and culture, \nand to the degree it was successful.  \nIt was also anti-American.  \nWe should remember \nthat the Spaniards were building the great cathedral \nat the Zocolo in Mexico City \na hundred years before George Washington \ntook control of the Continental Army \nat Cambridge, Massachusetts.  \nHere are two different world views, sharing the same continent.\n\nIn his article, Clash of Civilizations?, \nSamuel P. Huntington reminds us \nthat cultural differences may cause future wars, \nand that these wars will be along cultural ''fault lines.''  \n\nThe U. S.--Mexican border is one of those fault lines.  \n\nHuntington writes, \n''Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future,\nand the world will be shaped in large measure \nby the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations \n\nThe most important conflicts of the future \nwill occur along the cultural fault lines \nseparating these civilizations from one another.'' \n\nIn regard to Mexico, Huntington writes, \n''During the past decade, \nMexico has assumed a position \nsomewhat similar to that of Turkey. \nJust as Turkey abandoned its historic opposition to Europe \nand attempted to join Europe, \nMexico has stopped defining itself \nby its opposition to the United States \nand is instead attempting to imitate the United States.''  \nHowever, \nunlike Canada, \nMexico has a large, nonwestern, indigenous population \nthat has not yet been integrated into modernity.  \nThis native population also carries \nan unconscious weight of resentment \ntowards the Spanish conquest, \nwhich it now mistakenly displaces onto the U. S. \n\nMexico's indigenous population \nis one of the contemporary strains in that society.  \nSub-Comandante Marcos \nand the uprising in Chiapas of indigenous people \nis a prediction of what is to come in Mexico \nif that strain cannot be relieved.\n  \nThe Mexican elites have decided, therefore, \nto reduce this strain by sending north \nas many poor and jobless Mexicans as they can.  \nInstead of solving their own problems, \nwhich might entail a reduction of their status, \nthe ruling Mexican elites have decided to keep the fiesta going\nand let the U. S. handle the cleanup. \n\nA top adviser \nto past Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari \ndescribed to Huntington all the changes \nthe Salinas government was making.  \nWhen the advisor finished, Huntington remarked: \n''That's most impressive.  \nIt seems to me that basically you want to change Mexico \nfrom a Latin American country into a North American country.''\nHe looked at me with surprise and exclaimed: \n''Exactly!  \nThat's precisely what we are trying to do, \nbut of course we could never say so publicly.'' \n \nWhat also could not be said publicly \nis that Mexico wants to reclaim its ''lost'' territory.  \nIt will use economics and illegal immigrants to do this.\n\nMany Mexican elites believe that to become a modern nation,\nMexico has to restructure its economy \nand regain the territory it lost during the first Mexican war.  \nFor over a century, \nMexican nationalists have used the myths and symbols \nof a lost but glorious indigenous past \nto motivate its plans for expansion. \n \nD. H. Lawrence wrote about this myth building in his novel, \nThe Plumed Serpent. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf the ''reconquista'' continues unchecked \nfor the next twenty years, \nthe U. S. will be a fundamentally different society than it is today.\n\nThere will be more poverty and low-wage jo
110249
Gee, where do I start.  Let's see, corrupt government. Incompetent officials.  Brutal police force and military.  Deep religious divide.  Lack of accountability (I guess that goes with the corrupt government).  I would be surprised if it's NOT falling apart.  It has been failing apart for a good part of the past few centuries.
927405
Don't be silly silly person.  Mexico never owned it to began with. Just how dam old do you think mexico is. the entire place was a spainish colony(rememeber your language ? spainish? or do you think the gods spoke spainish when they made you?
5439
No. It is pretty much accepted that it was a combination of environmental change and devastating meteor strikes that wiped them out.
438705
The Maya civilization is a historical Mesoamerican civilization, which extended throughout the northern Central American region which includes the present-day nations of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, and the Yucatán peninsula states of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán.\n\nOrigins\nArchaeological evidence shows the Maya had started to build ceremonial architecture by approximately 1000 BC. There is some disagreement about the boundaries which differentiate the physical and cultural extent of the early Maya and their neighboring Pre-Classic Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec culture of the Tabasco lowlands and the Mixe-Zoque– and Zapotec–speaking peoples of Chiapas and southern Oaxaca. Many of the earliest significant inscriptions and buildings appeared in this overlapping zone, and evidence suggests that these cultures and the formative Maya influenced one other.\n\nThe earliest monuments consist of simple burial mounds, the precursors to pyramids erected in later times.\n\nEventually, the Olmec culture faded after spreading its influence into the Yucatan peninsula, present-day Guatemala, and other regions.\n\nThe Maya developed the famed cities of Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Kalakmul, as well as Dos Pilas, Uaxactun, Altun Ha, Bonampak and many other sites in the area (see list of sites, below). They developed an agriculturally intensive, city-centered empire consisting of numerous independent city-states. The most notable monuments are the pyramids they built in their religious centers and the accompanying palaces of their rulers. Other important archaeological remains include the carved stone slabs usually called stelae (the Maya called them Tetun, or "Tree-stones"), which depict rulers along with hieroglyphic texts describing their genealogy, war victories, and other accomplishments.\n\nFor more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Civilization#Origins
953516
some of those civilizatrions sounded rather sophisticated yet brutal...  kinda like having two ball players play and killing the losers?  The Incas Aztecs and Mayans were descendents of people who spead out from Babel after the flood\n\ninterestingly the Mayan Calender goes back to roughly 56 years shorter than the 4004BC calender of Bishop Ussher. Sounds familiar... why might that be  having Calienders dating to the Bbilical creation on the other side of the world almost as if people spread out from Babel at one time after the flood.
901128
NO.\nChristianity and other factors break down the roman empire
1163086
History shows when you destroy the middle class the economy and state will fall as well.  This is why the roman empire fell.  There can not be black and white meaning poor and rich.  Look at the depression.
678746
Mayans used to play a similar sport except where they had to put the ball thru was a ring similar to basketball but it was vertical and a few feet above the ground on a wall and they had to kick the ball thru it however the ball was made with some animal skin and was way heavier than the balls now a days also whoever lost the game was killed and offered to the gods.
64258
People and animals that died were afterwards covered with coal dust from the eruption. The sediments were extremely fine-grained and they preserved even small details of the people who died there, thus creating natural casts (negatives).\nIn the 1860s, researchers were able to fill the casts with plaster to create molds(positives). Once the casts were broken, these molds were seen to be extremely detailed reproductions of those bodies. \nBrrr I get goosebumps just from thinking about it :-S