514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1963 



sure of population on the land resource increased. Hence it became 

 necessary to establish milpas farther and farther away from the urban 

 centers where the farmers had their homes and to which they had to 

 carry their crop on their backs, often as much as 50 miles, or even 

 more. Besides, they had to pay heavy taxes in kind to the political 

 and religious authorities. It is possible that the cost in time, of trans- 

 portation, plus heavy taxation, ultimately made the system unwork- 

 able, and the population, like swarms of bees, migrated in all direc- 

 tions to establish new centers closer to their farms; thus neAv cities 

 were being founded in Yucatan at the same time that older ones were 

 being abandoned to the encroaching second-growth brush and forest. 



And in another century or so the cycle was completed again — from 

 subsistence farmer, to populated urban agglomeration, to disintegrat- 

 ing urban center, back to the subsistence farmer on his small plot far 

 from any organized settlement. 



After exhaustive studies of present-day soil fertility in the Peten, 

 Dr. Cowgill concludes that "with present agricultural methods the 

 central Peten is capable of permanently supplying food needs of per- 

 haps 200 people per square mile and certainly not less than 100 people 

 per square mile (compared to 1.5 people per square mile for the entire 

 department at present). ... In other words, half the adult popula- 

 tion could be full time, non-food producing specialists supported by 

 the other half of the population." ^ 



Most of the less-developed nations, with their huge contingents of 

 subsistence farmers, have heads too small for their bodies, as it were. 

 The rural areas, unorganized and poorly coordinated, are like the 

 lumbering bodies of gargantuan dinosaurs, capriciously lunging about, 

 with little or no direction from the central nerve centers, i.e., the 

 regional and national capitals, themselves in imbalance because of 

 the influx of rural dwellers and the consequent accretion of slums. 

 The concept of the hollow frontier does not fit into this picture at all. 

 The vast, sparsely populated areas are largely in forest fallow; where 

 subsistence agriculture is the way of life of practically all rural 

 dwellers, the maximum human carrying capacity is a function of the 

 amount of forest land available for clearing at any given time, which 

 in turn depends on the amount of time required for afforestation, 

 or the regrowth of forest on the cutover sections, and for the soil- 

 formation thereby implied. Wherever subsistence agriculture is a 

 reality, the concept of the hollow frontier is inapplicable, for such a 

 frontier cannot exist there; the terms are territorially mutually 

 exclusive. 



3 Ursula M. Cowgill, "Soil Fertility and the Ancient Maya," Transactions, Connecticut 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 42, Oct. 1961, p. 40. 



