Maya << MAH yuh >> were an Indigenous (native) people who developed a magnificent civilization in Central America and south Mexico. The Maya civilization reached its period of greatest development about A.D. 250 and continued to flourish for hundreds of years. The Maya produced remarkable architecture, painting, pottery, and sculpture. They made great advancements in astronomy and mathematics and developed an accurate yearly calendar. They were one of the first peoples in the Western Hemisphere to develop an advanced form of writing.
The Maya lived in an area of about 120,000 square miles (311,000 square kilometers). Today, their territory is divided among Mexico and several Central American countries. It consists of the Mexican states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo and part of the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. It also includes Belize, most of Guatemala, and parts of El Salvador and of Honduras.
The Maya civilization was at its peak from about A.D. 250 to 900. During that time, known as the Classic Period, it was centered in the tropical rain forest of the lowlands of what is now northern Guatemala. Many of the major Maya cities, such as Piedras Negras, Tikal, and Uaxactun, developed in this area. By about 900, most of the Maya abandoned the Guatemalan lowlands and moved to areas to the north and south, including Yucatán and the highlands of southern Guatemala. In those areas, they continued to prosper until Spain conquered almost all of the Maya in the mid-1500’s.
Today, descendants of the Maya live in Mexico and Central America. They speak Maya languages and carry on some religious customs of their ancestors.
Way of life
Religion.
The Maya worshiped many gods and goddesses. One Maya manuscript mentions more than 160 of them. For example, the Maya worshiped a corn god, a rain god known as Chac, a sun god called Kinich Ahau, and a moon goddess called Ix Chel. Each god or goddess influenced some part of Maya life. Ix Chel, for instance, was the goddess of medicine and weaving. 
Religion played a central part in the daily life of the Maya. Each day had special religious importance, and religious festivals in honor of particular gods took place throughout the year. The Maya regarded their gods as both helpful and harmful. To obtain the help of the gods, the Maya fasted, prayed, offered sacrifices, and held many religious ceremonies. Deer, dogs, and turkeys were sacrificed to feed the gods. The Maya frequently offered their own blood, which they spattered on pieces of bark paper. They practiced some human sacrifice, such as throwing victims into deep wells or killing them at the funerals of great leaders.
In their cities, the Maya built tall pyramids of limestone with small temples on top. Priests climbed the stairs of the pyramids and performed ceremonies in the temples. Major religious festivals, such as those for the Maya New Year and for each of the Maya months, took place in the cities. See Pyramids (American pyramids).
The Maya observed special ceremonies when burying their dead. Corpses were painted red and then were wrapped in straw mats with a few of their personal belongings. They were buried under the floor of the houses where they had lived. Maya rulers and other important persons were buried in their finest garments within the pyramids, under the temples. Servants were killed and buried with them, along with jewelry and utensils, for use in the next world.
Family and social life.
Entire Maya families, including parents, children, and grandparents, lived together. Everyone in a household helped with the work. The men and the older boys did most of the farmwork, such as clearing and weeding the fields and planting the crops. They also did most of the hunting and fishing. The women and the older girls made the family’s clothes, prepared meals, raised the younger children, and supplied the house with firewood and water. The Maya had no schools. The children learned various skills by observing adults and helping them.
Religious festivals provided one of the favorite forms of recreation for the Maya. These festivals were held on special days throughout the year. Dancing and feasts took place at the festivals. In addition, the Maya had a sacred game that was played on special courts. The players tried to hit a rubber ball through a stone ring with their hips.
Food, clothing, and shelter.
Maya farmers raised chiefly beans, corn, and squash. Corn was the principal food of the Maya, and the women prepared it in a variety of ways. They filled corn dough with meat, making what are today called tamales, and made corn flat bread, which today are called tortillas. The Maya also used corn to make an alcoholic drink called balche, which they sweetened with honey and spiced with bark. The Maya also raised avocados, cacao (chocolate), cashews, cassava, chili peppers, guava, jicama, and sweet potatoes.
Maya farmers became skilled at making the best use of natural resources. They dug canals in swampy lowlands to drain the soil and used the unearthed soil to build raised fields in which they grew crops. On sloping land, farmers built terraces to hold the soil in place and walls to control water flow. With such methods, the Maya grew enough food to feed a large population.
The Maya kept domestic dogs for use in hunting and for food and raised turkeys and honey bees on farms. The Maya hunted armadillos, deer, rabbits, piglike animals called peccaries, and other wild animals. They fished and collected shellfish from the rivers and sea. They also gathered fruits and vegetables from the countryside.
The clothing of the Maya kept them comfortable in the hot, tropical climate. Men wore a loincloth, a strip of cloth tied around their hips and passed between their legs. Women wore loose dresses that reached their ankles. The people wove these garments from cotton or other fibers. The people of the upper classes wore finer clothes decorated with embroidery and ornaments. They had splendid headdresses made of the brightly colored feathers of tropical birds. The wealthy also wore large amounts of jewelry, much of which was carved out of green jade and colorful shells.
Most of the ancient Maya were farmers living in rural homesteads or small villages near their fields. They built their houses from poles lashed together and used palm leaves or grass to thatch the roofs. Many Maya cities were home to tens of thousands of people. One of the largest known cities of the Classic Period, Tikal, probably had a population of about 60,000 at its peak. Another 30,000 people lived in the surrounding area. People from the countryside gathered in the Maya cities for markets, religious festivals, and other important events.
Trade and transportation.
The Maya took part in a trade network that linked a number of groups in Central America. The people of the Maya lowlands exported many items, including handicrafts, forest and sea products, and jaguar pelts. They imported jade, obsidian (volcanic glass), and the feathers of a bird called the quetzal from Maya in the highlands of Guatemala.
The Maya of Yucatán sent salt and finely decorated cottons to Honduras. In return, they received cacao beans, which they used in making chocolate. The Maya also transported goods as far as the Valley of Oaxaca in Mexico and the city of Teotihuacan, near what is now Mexico City. They carried most goods on their backs or on rivers in dugout canoes. They did not use the wheel or any beasts of burden, such as horses or oxen.
Government.
Each Maya city governed its surrounding area, and some large cities each controlled one or more smaller cities. A city ruler would usually be succeeded by his younger brother or by his son. In some cases, modern scholars know that generations of a single family ruled for hundreds of years. At Copán, for example, carved figures on a large stone altar record a series of 16 kings from a single family who ruled the city from A.D. 426 to A.D. 810. 
The Maya never united to form a single, centrally governed nation. But in late Maya times, the governments of such cities as Chichén Itzá and Mayapán controlled large parts of the Maya population.
Communication and learning.
The Maya developed an advanced form of writing that consisted of many symbols. These symbols represented combinations of sounds or entire ideas and formed a kind of hieroglyphic writing (see Hieroglyphics (Other hieroglyphic writing)).
The Maya kept records on large stone monuments called stelae, as well as on some buildings and household utensils. They used the stelae to record important dates and to take note of great events in the lives of their rulers and the rulers’ families. The Maya also made books of paper made from fig tree bark. Only a few books, dating from the 1100’s to the early 1500’s, have survived. They contain astronomical tables, information about religious ceremonies, and calendars that show lucky days for such activities as farming and hunting. 
Other cultural advances by the Maya included the development of mathematics and astronomy. The Maya used a mathematical system based on the number 20, instead of 10 as in the decimal system. A dot represented the number one, a bar represented five, and special symbols represented zero. The Maya were among the first people to use symbols for the idea of zero. Maya priests observed the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. They made tables predicting eclipses and describing the orbit of the planet Venus. 
The priests also used mathematics and astronomy to develop two kinds of calendars. One was a sacred almanac of 260 days. Each day was named with one of 20 day names and a number from 1 to 13. Each of the 20 day names had a god or goddess associated with it. The priests predicted good or bad luck by studying the combinations of gods or goddesses and numbers. The Maya also had a calendar of 365 days, based on the orbit of the earth around the sun. These days were divided into 18 months of 20 days each, plus 5 days at the end of the year. The Maya considered these last 5 days of the year to be extremely unlucky. During that period they fasted, made many sacrifices, and avoided unnecessary work.
The Maya used herbs and magic to treat illness. Many of these herbs were grown in household gardens, but scholars know little else about Maya medicine.
Arts and crafts.
The Maya produced exceptional architecture, painting, pottery, and sculpture. Highly skilled architects built tall pyramids of limestone, with small temples on top. The Maya also built large, low buildings where rulers and other nobles lived. Many buildings had flat ornaments called roof combs, which extended from the high point of the roof. The combs gave buildings the appearance of great height.
Maya artists decorated walls with brightly colored murals that featured lifelike figures taking part in battles and festivals. The artists outlined the figures and then filled in the color. They rarely shaded the colors. A similar type of painting appears on Maya pottery. 
The Maya made small sculptures of clay and carved huge ones from stone. Most of the small sculptures were figures of men and women. The large sculptures, some standing over 30 feet (9 meters) high, were carved with portraits of rulers. 
History
Scholars think that the Maya may have originated on the Pacific coast of what is now Guatemala. They spread east into the mountains and later the lowlands.
The Preclassic Period.
The heart of the ancient Maya civilization centered around what is now the department (state) of El Petén in the lowlands of northern Guatemala. The first farmers may have settled there as early as 1000 B.C. in search of fertile land. These early Maya lived in small villages. They hunted and gathered food from the surrounding forest and raised crops.
By 800 B.C., the Maya lowlands were completely settled. At that time, the Olmec lived west of the Maya. The Olmec were probably the Central American inventors of numbers and writing. They also had well-developed art. The Olmec civilization influenced Maya culture. The Maya, like the Olmec, began to build pyramids and carve stone monuments. See Olmec Indians.
The Maya built their first large pyramids between 600 and 400 B.C., during the middle of the Preclassic Period. By late in the Preclassic Period, between 400 B.C. and A.D. 250, there were several large Maya settlements in the lowlands. Some of the largest Maya pyramids stood in one of these settlements, at a site now called El Mirador, in northern Guatemala.
The Classic Period
of the Maya civilization lasted from about A.D. 250 to 900. During those years, the Maya founded their greatest cities and made their remarkable achievements in the arts and sciences. They also perfected the practice of erecting stelae to honor the most important events in the lives of their leaders.
During the first 300 years of the Classic Period, the city of Teotihuacan, near present-day Mexico City, had a strong influence on Maya art and architecture, politics, and trade. Throughout the Classic Period, populations grew, and new cities were founded. Toward the end of the period, as competition for land and other resources increased, rival cities began to fight each other. Sometimes a growing city would break away from a larger city’s control. In other cases, one city conquered another and captured its ruler. Defeated rulers and other important prisoners of war were sacrificed in religious ceremonies, and the conquered city probably paid something to the victor. By about 700, the Maya of the Classic Period reached their peak in population and prosperity.
Then, beginning in the 800’s, the Maya stopped erecting stelae in city after city. They abandoned their major centers in the Guatemala lowlands one by one and finally left most of this lowland region. Scholars are still trying to discover the reasons for the collapse of Classic Maya society in the lowlands. Some experts point to a combination of such factors as overpopulation, disease, exhaustion of natural resources, crop failures, warfare between cities, and the movement of other groups into the Maya area.
The Postclassic Period
began about 900, when the Maya abandoned their cities in the Guatemalan lowlands. Some Maya moved north to build new cities in the lowlands of Yucatán. Others moved to southern Guatemala’s highlands and built cities there.
Important changes took place in Maya political and economic systems during the Postclassic Period. For example, sea trade became much more common, resulting in prosperity for Maya cities near the seacoasts. Between 900 and 1200, Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán, grew to be the largest and most powerful Maya city. It was governed by a council of nobles—unlike Maya cities of the Classic Period, which each had a single ruler. Chichén Itzá dominated Yucatán by a combination of military strength and control over important trade routes. Chichén Itzá traded with, and formed other ties to, regions beyond the Maya area. These areas included Tula, the leading city of the Toltec people’s empire in the highlands of what is now central Mexico. See Toltec Indians.
Chichén Itzá declined around 1200, and Mayapan replaced it as the chief Maya city. Although Mayapan never became as powerful as Chichén Itzá had been, it controlled much of Yucatán for another 200 years.
About 1440, the leaders of some Maya cities revolted against the Mayapan rulers and defeated them. Yucatán was then divided into separate warring states. About the same time, several Maya states in the highlands of southern Guatemala used military force to dominate other Maya in that region. Then, in the early 1500’s, Spanish conquerors invaded the Maya territories. By the mid-1500’s, they had overcome almost all the Maya. Some Maya fled into the forest and to small villages away from Spanish control. The Spanish conquered the last independent Maya city in 1697.
The Maya heritage.
Today, many people of Mexico and Central America speak one of more than 20 languages and dialects that developed from the ancient Maya language. Some of these people live in the highlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Others inhabit the northern part of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Many descendants of the Maya farm as did their ancestors and carry on some of the traditional religious customs.
The ruins of the Maya cities are tourist attractions. Sites in Mexico include the ruins of Bonampak and Palenque in Chiapas and Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatán. Tourists also visit the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala and of Copan in Honduras.
