Toniná

A lightly inhabited valley spreads out below the ruins of Toniná.



The wave of mysterious abandonment that swept through Classic Maya cities ends at this remote city in Chiapas, Mexico. The wave seems to have begun along the Usumacinta River. The last recorded date at Bonampak is 792, at Piedras Negras 795, at Palenque 799, and at Yaxchilán 808. The wave then moved east into the heart of Maya civilization in the Petén region of what is today modern Guatemala and south into Honduras. Quiriguá fell silent in 810, Copán in 822, Caracol in 859, and Tikal in 889. The very last Classic Maya date—909—appears at Toniná. Strangely, no record of impending doom appears anywhere in Maya iconography. Scholars have advanced many possible causes of the collapse—among them plague, famine, earthquake, invasion, and peasant revolt—but the enigma remains.



Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/maya/worl_sans3_06.html