02/11/2023
Maya, Mesoamerican Indians occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the . They practiced agriculture, built great stone buildings and pyramid temples, worked gold and copper, and used a form of hieroglyphic writing that has now largely been deciphered.
As early as 1500 BCE the Maya had settled in villages and had developed an agriculture based on the cultivation of corn (maize), beans, and squash. They began to build ceremonial centres, and by 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 by 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. 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 250 CE, and what is known to archaeologists as the Classic Period of Mayan culture lasted until about 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 two million people, most of whom were settled in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala. After 900 CE, however, the Classic Maya civilization declined precipitously, leaving the great cities and ceremonial centres vacant and overgrown with jungle vegetation. 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 destruction of Mayan civilization.
