The Romans, The Maya, and back to Basics

The Romans and the Maya's rise mimicked the pyramid of hierarchy, and later they both had declined due to the deterioration of their local environments. These were two great civilizations that owed most of their initial success to their geographic locations that were rich in the resources needed to cover the basic needs of it as a whole and of each individual. Through the fast success of completing the basic needs, the civilizations were able to begin forming themselves as a society that had advanced ideologies, therefore being able to move up on the pyramid of Hierarchy and being able to do skills such as developing working governmental and social structure . These two were so successful because they both came up with productive ways to harvest food through uniquely thought out systems. For example, the Maya developed a highly detailed agricultural system that was productive but in the long run, it was not a sustainable system. The same thing happened with the Romans, they too thought they had a way figured out to feed all their citizens and avoid having starvation but with so many citizens, much more land was needed to farm the food. Trees were cleared to make space for bigger farms and although they had gotten to be able to deal with potential environmental crises, they were not able to deal with what came later, erosion.

It seems to me that most of the ancient society/ civilizations have come to an end due to lack of food sources.  This lack of food source is directly related to unbalance and lack of appropriate care for their environments. This unbalance, is also directly connected to the spread of disease. With the Romans, the deforestation highly increased the contamination of malaria, so much in fact that it reached epidemic levels several times.

I don’t understand why instead of expanding out more, seeking out fertile land, they didn’t do what farmers now do? Why didn’t they rotate crop land every few years and place organic fertilizers so to give it back some of it’s nutrients to the land..?