Maya civilization

The Maya civilization flourished in Mesoamerica from ancient times into the early modern period. It is famous for its stone temples, hieroglyphic writing, art, architecture, mathematics, calendars, and knowledge of astronomy. Their script is considered the most advanced writing system ever developed in the pre-Columbian Americas. This civilization arose in what is now southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Today, over six million descendants, collectively called the Maya, still live in roughly the same region and speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages.

The earliest farming villages and agricultural developments appeared before 2000 BC, during the Archaic period. The Preclassic period (around 2000 BC to 250 AD) saw the first complex societies emerge, along with the cultivation of staple foods like maize, beans, squashes, and chili peppers. The first Maya cities appeared around 750 BC, and hieroglyphic writing was in use by the 3rd century BC. In the Late Preclassic, large cities grew in the Petén Basin, and Kaminaljuyu became important in the Guatemalan Highlands. The Classic period, starting around 250 AD, is defined by the Maya raising sculpted monuments with Long Count dates. During this time, many city-states developed, linked by extensive trade networks. In the Maya Lowlands, the rival cities of Tikal and Calakmul grew powerful, and the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan interfered in Maya dynastic politics. In the 9th century, a widespread political collapse hit the central Maya region, leading to civil wars, abandoned cities, and a population shift northward.

The Postclassic period saw the rise of Chichen Itza in the north and the expansion of the aggressive Kʼicheʼ kingdom in the Guatemalan Highlands. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire colonized the region, and after a long series of campaigns, the last Maya city, Nojpetén, fell in 1697. During the Classic period, rule centered on the "divine king," who was believed to mediate between mortals and the supernatural. Kingship was usually passed from father to eldest son, though not always. A prospective king had to be both a successful war leader and a ruler. Closed patronage systems dominated Maya politics, though their influence varied among city-states. By the Late Classic, the aristocracy had grown, reducing the king's exclusive power. The Maya created sophisticated art from both perishable and non-perishable materials, including wood, jade, obsidian, ceramics, stone monuments, stucco, and murals. The elite were literate and used a complex hieroglyphic writing system. They recorded history and ritual knowledge in screenfold books, of which only three undisputed examples survive, and many texts also appear on stelae and ceramics. The Maya developed intricate interlocking ritual calendars and used mathematics that included one of the earliest known explicit zeros in human history. Human sacrifice was part of their religion.

The term "Maya" is a modern label for the various peoples of this area, as they historically did not share a common ethnic identity or political unity. Early Spanish and Mayan-language colonial sources in the Yucatán Peninsula used "Maya" to refer to the Yucatec Maya language and the area around the abandoned city of Mayapán. The name itself comes from Mayapán. Some colonial Mayan-language sources also used "Maya" for other Maya groups, sometimes pejoratively for those more resistant to Spanish rule.

The Maya civilization covered a vast territory including southeastern Mexico and northern Central America—the entire Yucatán Peninsula, all of modern Guatemala and Belize, and western Honduras and El Salvador. Most of the peninsula is a flat plain with few hills and a low coastline. The Maya territory spanned a third of Mesoamerica, and they had dynamic relationships with neighboring cultures like the Olmecs, Mixtecs, Teotihuacan, and Aztecs. During the Early Classic, Tikal and Kaminaljuyu were key nodes in a network extending into central Mexico, and there was a strong Maya presence at Teotihuacan's Tetitla compound. Chichen Itza and the distant Toltec capital of Tula had a particularly close relationship. The Petén region is a densely forested limestone plain with a chain of fourteen lakes. To the south, the plain rises toward the Guatemalan Highlands. The dense Maya forest covers northern Petén and Belize, most of Quintana Roo, southern Campeche, and part of southern Yucatán state. Farther north, the vegetation becomes lower forest and dense scrub. The Soconusco coastal zone lies south of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, consisting of a narrow coastal plain and foothills. The Maya highlands stretch east from Chiapas into Guatemala, reaching their highest elevations there.