Learning from past society-environment interactions is discursive rather than substantive

Abstract Environmental changes pose unprecedented risks to human societies worldwide. Over the past few decades, burgeoning academic literature argues or assumes that past societies’ responses to environmental impacts can provide valuable lessons to guide adaptation to contemporary environmental changes. The ancient Maya civilization, whose decline is often linked with historically unprecedented droughts, constitutes a major case study for extracting such lessons. To analyze these lessons, we conduct a meta-analysis of the discourse of learning from past Maya-environment interactions. We demonstrate that although studies often refer to learning from the Maya explicitly, the learning is primarily declarative and discursive rather than substantive, and lessons are often vague, misguided, or inapplicable. Only a few articles employ research designs conducive to learning from the past, and only a few reflect on the process of, or the problems associated with, learning from the past. On the other hand, many articles are content with reaching ‘inspirational’ lessons, calling, for example, for increasing resilience, while only a fifth of the papers drew more specific lessons that offer somewhat concrete recommendations and courses of action. Many studies also claimed that their findings are applicable to present-day societies far outside the core regions of Maya habitation, ignoring pertinent social and geographical differences. Although the paper does not preclude the theoretical possibility of learning from the past, it argues that such learning must undergo significant changes to achieve robustness and relevance for the present. This would also require a more open discussion between scholars of the past and adaptation practitioners.