Residents upset with greedy elites burned the city down

[happyslug]

15. Sounds like someone is reading to much Marx.

Last edited Thu Mar 19, 2015, 03:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Karl Marx made the statement that no Class of people have EVER given up power without a fight. I have NO dispute with that comment, but it is the comment in the article about:

We interpret this event as a revolt against the ruling elite, perhaps a response to a late intervention on the part of the state to control the entrepreneurial movements of the intermediate elite.”

i.e. the Rich wanted to suppress the raising Middle Class and the Middle class revolted. Please note I am using the term Middle Class in its European meaning, i.e. what we in the US call the Upper Middle Class, those people in the top 10% of earners but excluding the top .1% who are the billionaires.

The better answer (and even more Marx) is that the common people revolted when the elite failed to adjust the system to reflect lower level of productivity do to the onset of the Dark Age Cold Period, which started about 450 AD.

https://simonjmeath.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/the-roman-warm-period-and-dark-ages-cold-period/

On top of that it is believed that Lake Ilopango in El Salvador erupted sometime between 450 and 550 AD (with most people thinking 535 AD). This lead to a massive drop in world wide Temperatures (The largest drop in 2000 years).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Ilopango

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536

http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/aag-eruption-el-salvador%E2%80%99s-ilopango-explains-ad-536-cooling

Please note the 550 AD Date for the collapse of Teotihuacan is a estimate, it may be earlier, it may be later. Thus it may be a few years after the above eruption.

Proper Marxian interpretation would be something cause a massive shortage of food, probably the eruption of Lake Ilopango. This lead to a rapid decline in living standards, but no revolt, for revolts do NOT occur as things go bad, but as things bottom out and the economy is booming.

The eruption of Lake Ilopango was one of the most massive eruptions in history, and appears to have accelerating an already existing decline in world wide temperatures that had started in the 400s (Temperatures peaked in the early 200s, then went into decline in the 200s, but then went back up in the 300s but no where near they peaks, then went into decline in the 400s, with some increase around 750, then another decline, then a rapid increase after 900 AD.

Thus Teotihuacan was under strain do to the start of the Dark Age Cold Period about 100 years before, and the eruption of Lake Ilopango would have destroyed what faith the people had in their ruling elites, especially if the elite did NOTHING but demand what the peasants had been giving them during the previous warm period (Rome appears to have undergoing the same strains, leading to Roman Peasants joining any invading tribe rather then support the existing Roman Elite, China went through a similar period of decline, but ).

Just a comment, it probably had to do with greed, but greed by the ruling elite that the peasants could no longer satisfy, and rather then starve the peasants revolted.