Growth Functions and Culture History: A Perspective on Classic Maya Cultural Development

Abstract

Using two kinds of asymptotic growth functions, the logistic and the Gompertz curves, the author argues that growth in the absolute numbers of Classic Maya temple centers in the lowlands was probably a process with built-in self-limitations. The logic of the two mathematical functions and the argument from the data provide a growth model embodying a simultaneous acceleration of growth and resistance to growth. After a statistical fitting of Sylvanus G. Morley's site data (drawn from The Ancient Maya, 1946), the model is compared against growth-limiting processes posited by the participants in a recent symposium on the collapse of Classic Maya civilization (Gordon R. Willey and Demitri B. Shimkin, "The Collapse of Classical Maya Civilization in the Southern Lowland: A Sym posium Summary Statement," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 27: 1-18, 1971).

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