The archaeologists need to know about the rain patters in the period and place where the Maya existed because the rain was crucial about the growth and well being of the crops that this civilization used. A longer drought than usual can make a huge problem with starvation, and that can be a key reason for the fall of one of the greatest civilizations in the Americas.
''The Maya world probably had too many people'' refers to the food supplies available and their reserves, and the amount of people that were using them, so it is thought that the Maya had too many people that produced and used limited amount of food, so their reserves were very low and would have lasted for a very short term period of time.
Marco Polo is very well known for his travels on this silk road as well as his 24-year journey to Asia. Throughout this time he became very well acquainted with the people he encountered and became a confidant of Kublai Khan. Since Kublai Khan was the Khagan of the Mongol Empire this allowed Marco polo to fit in better.
The answer is: cultural anthropologist.
Cultural anthropology is the branch of anthropology concerned with the study of human societies and cultures and their development.
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist who wrote about anthropology and its holistic approach to the human species. She wrote about how human development, also sexual, could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations. She compared gender roles in different societies, concentrating heavily on the regions of South Pacific and Southeast Asia.
She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions and her thinking influenced the sexual revolution in the 1960's.
Because its created a religious devied between secular Christian religious Calvinists