Clues from human waste could shed light on climate change and decline of Maya population

Extreme climate changes, both wet and dry, corresponded with the population decline of a Maya settlement in central America according to new research out of McGill University that looked at indicators left behind by ancient human waste.  

In a study published in April in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, researchers looked at concentrations of human waste biomarkers, called fecal stanols, found in a geologist’s core samples from a small lake near Itzan, a former Mayan settlement in what is now Guatemala. 

Benjamin Keenan, a PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the study’s first author, says human remains don’t last very long in tropical