The Maya people at this time, in Maya reckoning the close of Katin 18, were at once at the zenith of their power, and at the threshold of their decline. For generations now, the heavily forested lands which originally had surrounded their cities, towns and villages, had been gradually transformed under their primitive methods of cultivation into grassy savannas. This method of cultivation consisted in felling patches of the forests at the end of the rainy season in January or February, in burning the dried trees and bushes at the end of the dry season in March or April, and in planting after the first rains in May. The following year a new patch of forest was sought and the process repeated, nor was the first patch planted again for several years until a new growth of bush had come up, since experience showed that the use of the same cornfield two successive years would yield only a half crop the second year. This method of cultivation however, had two serious defects: not only was the greater part of the land thus always held idle, but also there eventually came a time when woody growth no longer came back to replace the original forests. Instead only perennial grasses would grow, and gradually the whole countryside was transformed into savannas. These savannas the Maya could not cultivate since they had no means of turning the sod, and they were thus obliged to go ever farther and farther from their homes in order to find suitable land for planting their corn. But the limit to which even this expedient was practicable had been reached at last. The cornfields now lay two, and even three days’ journey from the cities, and people were beginning to lose faith in deities who permitted living conditions to remain so intolerable, and who either could not, or would not make possible the cultivation of the savannas.