The Mayan civilization is one of the most long-lasting civilizations, not just in the ancient Americas, but in the world in general. You can see the rough outline here on this map of where the Mayan civilization occurred. You can see it has the Yucatan Peninsula in the north, the Sierra Madre Mountains in the south, and it covers regions of modern day southeast Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Western Honduras, and El Salvador. We believe that there were settlements in this region as early as 2000, as early as 2000 BCE, and then we have the emergence of the first cities around 750 BCE. And even then, there are signs of significant cultural advancements. There's evidence that there was a sophisticated base 20 numeral system that included the use of place value as early as 1000 BCE. To put that in context, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which we now use, and most of the world now uses, it wasn't devised, we don't believe, until about a thousand years later.