MayaMesoamerican Indians occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. In the early 21st century some 70 Mayan languages were spoken by more than five million people, most of whom were bilingual in Spanish. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere (see pre-Columbian civilizations: Pre-Classic and Classic periods). They practiced agriculture, built great stone buildings and pyramid temples, worked gold and copper, and made use of used a form of hieroglyphic writing that has now largely been deciphered.

As early as 1500 bc bce the Maya had settled in villages and had developed an agriculture based on the cultivation of corn (maize), beans, and squash; by ad 600 , ce cassava (manioc) was also grown. (See also origins of agriculture.) They began to build ceremonial centres, and by ad 200 ce these had developed into cities containing temples, pyramids, palaces, courts for playing ball, and plazas. The ancient Maya quarried immense quantities of building stone (usually limestone), which they cut using harder stones such as chert. They practiced mainly slash-and-burn agriculture, but they used advanced techniques of irrigation and terracing. They also developed a system of hieroglyphic writing and highly sophisticated calendrical and astronomical systems. The Maya made paper from the inner bark of wild fig trees and wrote their hieroglyphs on books made from this paper; . The surviving books are called codices. They The Maya also developed an elaborate and beautiful tradition of sculpture and relief carving. Architectural works and stone inscriptions and reliefs are the chief sources of knowledge about the early Maya. Early Mayan culture showed the influence of the earlier Olmec civilization.

The rise of the Maya began about ad 250 ce, and what is known to archaeologists as the Classic Period of Mayan culture lasted until about ad 900 ce. At its height, Mayan civilization consisted of more than 40 cities, each with a population between 5,000 and 50,000. Among the principal cities were Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque, and Río Bec. The peak Mayan population may have reached 2,000,000 two million people, most of whom were settled in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala. After ad 900 ce, however, the Classic Maya civilization declined precipitously, leaving the great cities and ceremonial centres vacant and overgrown with jungle vegetation. The causes of this decline are uncertain; some Some scholars have suggested that armed conflicts and the exhaustion of agricultural land were responsible for the sudden decline. Discoveries in the 21st century led scholars to posit a number of additional reasons for the sudden decline destruction of Maya Mayan civilization. One cause was probably the war-related disruption of river and land trade routes. Other contributors may have been deforestation and drought. During the Post-Classic Period (900–1519), cities such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Mayapán in the highlands of the Yucatán Peninsula continued to flourish for several centuries after the great lowland cities had become depopulated. By the time the Spaniards conquered the area in the early 16th century, most of the Maya had become village-dwelling agriculturists who practiced the religious rites of their forebears. See also pre-Columbian civilizations: Pre-Classic and Classic periods.


Systematic explorations of Mayan sites were first undertaken in the 1830s, and a small portion of the writing system was deciphered in the early and mid-20th century. These discoveries shed some light on Mayan religion, which was based on a pantheon of nature gods, including those of the sunSun, the moonMoon, rain, and corn. A priestly class was responsible for an elaborate cycle of rituals and ceremonies. Closely related to Mayan religion—indeed, inextricable from it—was the impressive development of mathematics and astronomy. In mathematics, positional notation and the use of the zero represented a pinnacle of intellectual achievement. Mayan astronomy underlay a complex calendrical system involving an accurately determined solar year (18 months of 20 days each, plus an unlucky a 5-day period considered unlucky by the Mayans), a sacred year of 260 days (13 cycles of 20 named days), and a variety of longer cycles culminating in the Long Count, a continuous marking of time, based on a zero date in 3113 bc bce. Mayan astronomers compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus and were able to accurately predict solar eclipses.


The present-day Mayan peoples can be divided on linguistic and geographic grounds into the following groups: the Yucatec Maya, inhabiting Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and extending into northern Belize and northeastern Guatemala; the Lacandón, very few in number, occupying a territory in southern Mexico between the Usumacinta River and the Guatemalan border, with small numbers in Guatemala and Belize; the Quichéan K’ichean-speaking peoples of the eastern and central highlands of Guatemala (KekchíQ’eqchi’, PicomohiPiqomchi’, PocomamPoqomam, UspantecUspanteko, QuichéK’iche’, CakchiquelKaqchikel, TzutujilTz’utujil, SacapultecSakapulteko, and SipacapaSipakapense); the Mamean peoples of the western Guatemalan highlands (Mam, Teco [Tektiteko], AguacatecAwakateko, and Ixil); the Kanjobalan Q’anjobalan peoples of Huehuetenango in the same region and adjacent parts of Mexico (MotozintlecMotocintlec, Tuzantec, JacaltecJakalteko, AcatecAkateko, Tojolabal, and Chuj); the Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples of Chiapas in southern Mexico; the Cholan peoples, including the Chontal and Chol speakers in northern Chiapas and Tabasco and the linguistically related Chortí of the extreme eastern part of Guatemala; and the Huastec of northern Veracruz and adjoining San Luís Potosí in east-central Mexico. The chief division in Mayan cultural types is between highland and lowland cultures. Yucatec, Lacandón, and Chontal-Chol are lowland groups. The Huastec are , a linguistically and geographically isolated group who never were Mayan culturally, and the other Mayan peoples live in highlands across Guatemala.

