New Ideas About ‘People With No Name’ : Environment: Mystery clan of farmers and artisans thrived for a time, then vanished after laying waste to their resources.

Among the most recently recognized examples of the environmental destruction caused by primitive civilizations involves a mysterious group that lived along the south coast of Guatemala dating back about 1,800 years.

Contemporaries of the Maya and the Teotihuacan of Mexico, these farmers and artisans, as yet unnamed by researchers, seemingly came out of nowhere and established a regional civilization that thrived for 600 years. Then, having overused their local resources and otherwise fouled their nest, the “People With No Name” fragmented, fell into warfare and disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived.

As recently as 10 years ago, archeologists thought that this was a relatively insignificant group, a handful of villages that represented perhaps a colony of Teotihuacan or conquered vassals.

But major new discoveries by UC Santa Barbara archeologist Fred Bove--particularly the extended urban area around the recently found city of Los Chatos--are rapidly changing that assessment.

Far from being a small, subjugated community, Bove has found, the “People With No Name” were a sophisticated civilization with their own styles of written language, art and architecture. They lived between the Maya and the Teotihuacan, trading with both and adopting the best features of their cultures. Their history, as Bove has pieced it together, is the tale of Central America in microcosm.

Bove has been working on the South Coast since the late 1970s. His first discovery was the city called Balberta. Occupied by the “People With No Name” before AD 200, it flourished briefly until it was abandoned around AD 350.

No signs of warfare or natural disaster remain to explain its collapse, Bove said. The group simply moved as mysteriously as it had appeared--perhaps to nearby Los Chatos, which eventually fell into environmental ruin.

The Los Chatos region, explored by Bove for the first time in the late 1980s, is an extraordinarily large site, extending as much as five miles along the river. It has two highly unusual characteristics for Central American sites: It was not built over by subsequent civilizations, and it has apparently been largely untouched by looters. Bove’s team, which is based at the University of San Carlos, has only barely begun to examine the site, but already they have found many unique treasures that provide insight to the lives of the “People With No Name.”

Perhaps the first sign of impending environmental disaster occurred around AD 700 when Los Chatos’ central authority fragmented and small communities began to exert their own authority. One indicator is the widespread appearance of ceremonial handball courts--which previously have been found only at government centers.

That decentralization, according to archeologist Charles L. Redman of Arizona State University, may have resulted from people in outlying areas needing to conserve their resources and food, which had shrunk because of over-harvesting of trees and poor farming practices.

The inevitable collapse soon followed, Bove said. The ruling elite consumed too many resources and could no longer be supported by the underclass. “They polluted water reservoirs with their own refuse,” Bove said. “They deforested large areas for their construction. The elite population . . . lost the balance that the elites need with the common people that support them” and the society collapsed in chaos. “Without waxing poetic about it, there is a lesson here for all of us.”