After awhile, some other civilization finds an even better form of intensive agriculture or warfare or trade or whatever and the wealth stops flowing in like it used to. Soon the conspicuous consumers are hard pressed even to make ends meet. That is when they began reducing (using less stuff in the first place) reusing and recycling for all they are worth!

This is the only "large" temple at the Postclassic Maya city of Mayapan built in Yucatan, Mexico, around A.D. 1250. The fill and facing stones at Tikal were precisely cut and carved; the ones in Mayapan's Temple were not, thus reducing labor. To reduce labor even more, the outside face of the Mayapan Temple was made of shaped and carved plaster. Again, unlike Temple 1, the fill of Mayapan's Temple stones that were reused metates (originally used to grind corn) and cut stones that were removed from old buildings that were no longer in use.

Size Reduction in the Postclassic