"For more than ten centuries until A.D. 900, the Maya flourished in the lowlands of Central America, reaching a population near ten million and reliant on delicate water management in a drought-prone terrain. Like the great civilizations of the , , Nile, and rivers, the Maya could overcome droughts that stretched years or even decades. But a three-hundred-year dearth of rain—lake-bed cores show that it lasted from 750 to 1050—proved too much."