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The Maya civilization (/ ˈ m aɪ ə /) was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas .
Satellite view of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Maya civilization occupied the Maya Region, a wide territory that included southeastern Mexico and northern Central America; this area included the entire Yucatán Peninsula, and all of the territory now incorporated into the modern countries of Guatemala and Belize, as well as the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. [4]
The social basis of the Classic Maya civilization was an extended political and economic network that reached throughout the Maya area and beyond into the greater Mesoamerican region. [54] The dominant Classic period polities were located in the central lowlands; during this period the southern highlands and northern lowlands can be considered ...
Aztec calendar (sunstone) Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of prehispanic Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian (first human habitation until 3500 BCE); the Archaic (before 2600 BCE), the Preclassic or Formative (2500 BCE – 250 CE), the Classic (250–900 CE), and the Postclassic (900–1521 CE); as well as the post European contact Colonial Period (1521–1821), and ...
The history of Guatemala traces back to the Maya civilization (2600 BC – 1697 AD), with the country's modern history beginning with the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in 1524. By 1000 AD, most of the major Classic-era (250–900 AD) Maya cities in the Petén Basin, located in the northern lowlands, had been abandoned.
The discovery of an early ninth century burning event marks a turning point in Maya rule, archeologists say. The find is a rare archaeological pinpointing of a historic turning point.
In archaeology, the classic Maya collapse was the destabilization of Classic Maya civilization and the violent collapse and abandonment of many southern lowlands city-states between the 7th and 9th centuries CE. Not all Mayan city-states collapsed, but there was a period of instability for the cities that survived.
The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span.