The Maya culture emerges in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, beginning in about 300. Probably highly influenced by the culture of the Olmec (see entry for 1500 B. C. to A. D. 300), the Maya reach their height between 600 and 900, an era known as the Classic Period. At this time, there are more than one hundred Maya urban centers, each with its own ruler. These centers possibly frequently vie for supremacy by fighting one another.
Worshipping several gods, the Classic Maya hold as a central tenet that time is cyclical and that knowledge of the past can allow one to predict the future. Their religious beliefs, therefore, galvanize their study of timekeeping and astronomy. The complex calendar they develop is more accurate than the Roman calendar used today. They also make great strides in mathematics and create a system of hieroglyphic writing. Using this writing system, they record their history in codices, on stellae, and later in books namely the Popul Vuh (see entry for 1554), the Books of Chilam Balam, and the Annals of the Cakchiquels.
The Maya also excel in architecture and art. They build great palaces and tall pyramids from cut stone. The city of Tikal, for instance, features six pyramids among the 3,000 structures used by a population as large as 60,000. Their artists, often specializing in one craft, produce beautiful murals, masks, stone and wood carvings, feathered clothing, and jewelry decorated with jade, pearl, and shell.
By 900, the Maya civilization in the southern lowlands declines, possibly because of epidemic disease, exhaustion of natural resources, or a change in climate that adversely affects agricultural yields. The Maya continue to flourish in Yucatan until the beginning of the 16 th century. Already weakened by smallpox, ecological changes, or civil war, the Yucatan Maya are subjugated by the Spanish after a series of invasions (see entries for 1523 and for 1546). Although most of their culture has disappeared, Maya dialects are still spoken by more than 3 million descendants of the Classic and Postclassic Maya. (See also entry for 987.)
World History
