the many graves unearthed at Copán show that after AD 650, the health and nutrition of the common people appeared to decline. This happened even as the ruling classes apparently swelled in size over succeeding generations, with each generation larger than the last—in what archaeologists call the “increasingly parasitic role of the elite.” (We see the same process today in the gross expansion of the Saudi royal family into no fewer than fifteen thousand princes and princesses.) This proliferation of noble lineages may have triggered vicious internecine warfare and killing among the elite.
