There were a few factors that led to the ultimate collapse of the Copan society. The first event that we believe led to this was the fall of the royal line with the 17^th king. This did not account for the sudden decline of population that the archeologist originally thought had occurred. The decline in population happened because of overuse of the land. The Mayans used to do long fallows on pieces of land, letting the forest grow back in order to replenish nutrients. However, when the population grew too large, they either reduced or completely removed fallow years. This caused the maize to quickly use up the available nutrients and reduced the yield of the crops to a point that the Mayans were unable to sustain themselves and slowly died out over a few centuries.

The researchers used obsidian that had absorbed hydrogen atoms to discover the time that the empire ended. They found these by going to a valley where they were believed to live and found the remains of houses and tools. They observed the people currently working the land to see how quickly the land turned infertile to determine that the population size is what caused the fall of the empire.

Sustainability today is becoming more and more important. As global warming reduces the amount of workable land, we will need to find different ways to sustain ourselves without destroying the land we use to do so. Vertical farming, which takes up much less space and water is a wonderful example of how we can reduce our consumption of resources and still keep everyone alive and healthy.