February 21, 2017

Yesterday, February 20, the United Nations (UN) declared a famine in parts of South Sudan, a nation in eastern Africa. Famine is a prolonged food shortage that causes widespread hunger and death. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said that war and a collapsing economy have left 100,000 people facing starvation in South Sudan, and a further 1 million people are on the brink of famine. The WFP called for urgent and immediate humanitarian aid to slow or reverse “an escalating catastrophe.” Nearly 5 million people—more than 40 percent of South Sudan’s population—are in need of agriculture, food, and nutrition assistance.

Displaced people prepare food provided by humanitarian aid in a temporary camp near Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Credit: © Vlad Karavaev, Shutterstock

South Sudan broke away from the rest of Sudan to form the Republic of South Sudan in 2011. In late 2013, however, disagreements between ethnic groups led to civil war in the new nation. Fighting killed thousands of people until the warring sides signed a peace agreement in August 2015. Sporadic fighting resumed in July 2016, however, forcing many people from their homes and disrupting the nation’s agriculture, economy, and transportation. Crops have been ruined or left unharvested, and livestock populations have declined rapidly. Many people cannot afford the nation’s ever-rising food prices, and others are unable to reach camps that have food, water, and medical supplies.

Relief operations have been underway across South Sudan since early 2014. Aid programs have stemmed the severity of the food crisis in some areas, but they could not prevent famine in the nation’s northern Unity state, scene of the worst of the fighting. Famine struck the same area during an earlier civil conflict in 1998.

Throughout history, famine has struck at least one area of the world every few years. The famine in South Sudan is the first to be declared since 2011 when some 250,000 people died of hunger in nearby Somalia. Famine is again threatening areas of Somalia this year, and parts of Nigeria and Yemen are also currently at risk. The UN declares a famine when at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, 30 percent of people are suffering from acute malnutrition, and the daily death rate from hunger exceeds 2 in every 10,000 people.

June 24, 2013

Pyramids, palaces, ball courts, and houses from an ancient Maya city overgrown by centuries of thick jungle vegetation have been discovered in a remote area of southeastern Mexico by scientists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Occupied from about A.D. 600 until 900, the city has been newly renamed Chactun. The scientists reported that the city, which covered about 54 acres (22 hectares), is the first ancient Maya complex found in a now heavily forested area of Campeche province in the western Yucatán Peninsula. Also found at the site were plazas and altars as well as stone monuments called stelae. The name “K’inch B’ahlam,” which may refer to one of the city’s rulers, was carved on one stele.

The scientists discovered Chactun while examining aerial photographs of the area. Visiting the site required hacking their way along paths once used by loggers and workers who tapped the area’s rubber trees.

The Maya civilization reached its peak from about A.D. 250 to 900. During that time, known as the Classic Period, it was centered in the tropical rain forest of the lowlands of what is now northern Guatemala. By about 900, most of the Maya abandoned the lowlands and moved to areas to the north and south, including Yucatán and the highlands of southern Guatemala. In those areas, they continued to prosper until Spain conquered almost all of the Maya in the mid-1500′s. Scholars are still trying to discover the reasons for the collapse of Classic Maya society in the lowlands. Some experts point to a combination of such factors as overpopulation, disease, exhaustion of natural resources, crop failures, warfare between cities, and the movement of other groups into the Maya area.

In a study published in November 2012, a research team headed by environmental archaeologist Douglas Kennett of Pennsylvania State University concluded that a 100-year drought played a major role in the collapse of the Classic Maya society. The drought, which plagued the lowlands from 1020 to 1100, had followed a drying period that began in about 660. According to Kennett, Maya writings from this period link the drought to widespread famine, disease, and wars, among other disruptive events.

Additional World Book article include:

• Chichén Itzá
• Copán
  
• Mexico (History of)
• The Ancient Maya: Deciphering New Clues (a special report)
• Archaeology (1924) (a Back in Time article)