14 DAY TRIAL // A long, long time ago, the city of Cantona in Mexico was a thriving metropolis. It was inhabited by about 90,000 people, and being located in a dry volcanic basin where naturally occurring glass known as obsidian was easy to come by, it was a flourishing trade center.
All this changed between AD 900 and AD 1050, when the city's inhabitants simply packed their belongings and left the region. Simply put, the Cantona metropolis was abandoned.
For quite some time now, researchers have been bending over backwards trying to figure out why it was that this ancient city was deserted. According to a new study, chances are that it was a centuries-long drought that forced Cantona's inhabitants to leave the metropolis.
How the city was lost to severe and frequent droughts
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers explain that, having collected and analyzed sediment samples from a lake close to the city, they found that, prior to the metropolis' being abandoned, the region struggled with lack of water.
Thus, the scientists say that sediment samples from the Aljojuca lake, located at a distance of about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the city, indicate that, between the years AD 500 and AD 1150, Cantona was hit by a series of severe and frequent droughts.
The specialists believe that these droughts were the reason the metropolis' inhabitants eventually decided that it was best for them to abandon Cantona and go settle down in some other region where water availability was not an issue.
This story is backed up by the fact that, apart from selling obsidian and hunting, Cantona's residents relied on agriculture to make a living. When the city and its surroundings were hit by droughts, growing crops became quite a headache and locals found themselves risking hunger.
“When the droughts continued on such a scale, the subsistence base for the whole area changed and people just had to leave. The city was abandoned,” University of California, Berkeley researcher Roger Byrne said in a statement.
“The decline of Cantona occurred during this dry interval, and we conclude that climate change probably played a role, at least towards the end of the city’s existence,” study lead author Tripti Bhattacharya went on to explain.
