By Jeanine Lee Kitchel

All Mayaphiles will love the August issue of National Geographic which not only gives insight as to why the culture declined but explains how the arrival of a warlord from the west may have affected Maya civilization.

New clues gleaned from another decade of deciphering Maya monuments point to Fire Is Born, from Teotihuacan (near Mexico City), whose singular influence may have jump-started the Maya’s classic period.

Based on interviews with present day scholars and archeologists including Arthur Demarest, Vanderbilt University, David Freidel, Southern Methodist University archeologist, and epigrapher Stanley Guenter, the series of articles give an updated status of the Maya and theories on why their civilization collapsed. As an added bonus you’ll find a separate two-part pullout: one side is a map of Mexico and Central America and the back side details how Mexico and Central America were formed over the past 60 million years.