10/18 MAYA的文章 - 英檢

Although it has a somewhat unpredictable rainy season from May to October, it
also has a dry season from January through April. Indeed, if one focuses on
the dry months, one could describe the Yucatán as a "seasonal desert."

Complicating things, from a farmer's perspective, is that the part of the
Yucatán with the most rain, the south, is also the part at the highest
elevation above the water table. Most of the Yucatán consists of karst—a
porous, sponge-like, limestone terrain—and so rain runs straight into the
ground, leaving little or no surface water. The Maya in the lower-elevation
regions of the north were able to reach the water table by way of deep
sinkholes called cenotes, and the Maya in low coastal areas without sink
holes could reach it by digging wells up to 75 feet deep. Most Maya, however,
lived in the south. How did they deal with their resulting water problem?

Technology provided an answer. The Maya plugged up leaks on karst
promontories by plastering the bottoms of depressions to create reservoirs,
which collected rain and stored it for use in the dry season. The reservoirs
at the Maya city of Tikal, for example, held enough water to meet the needs
of about 10,000 people for eighteen months. If a drought lasted longer than
that, though, the inhabitants of Tikal were in deep trouble.

大概是這篇的改寫的樣子，但是寫得更長
原文出處連結:
http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2003/Civilization-Collapse-EndJun03.htm
MAYA這個主題在考古學上似乎很重要，無聊可以讀一下

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