About the Maya
The Maya and Decline of the Maya
One of
the greatest civilizations the world has ever known once centered in what
is now Guatemala, and Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras a region
known as Mesoamerica. The area is 325,000 square kilometers.
The Mayan
Empire developed about 350BC in the tropical lowlands of northern Guatemala
and adjacent Belize reached its peak from about 250AD to 900 A.D.
But
Spanish conquests in the 16th century spelled the final ending of the Mayan
culture, which had already faded with many of its great cities and monuments
deserted.
In the 8th and 9th centuries AD Classic Maya culture began to decline, with most of the cities of the central lowlands abandoned. Warfare, ecological depletion of croplands, and drought are suspected reasons for the decline. There is archaeological evidence of warfare, famine, and revolt against the elite at some of the lowlands sites.
The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatan continued to flourish for centuries more; some of the important sites like Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Coba, and Calakmul. Chichen Itza went into decline as ruler over Yucatán shifted to Mayapan. Mayapan was the political capital of the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula from about the late 1220AD until 1440AD after the decline of the ruling dynasties of Chichen and Uxmal. Mayapan ruled all of Yucatan until a revolt in 1450, when many began to city states until the Spanish Conquest.
Post-Classic Maya states also continued to thrive in the southern highlands of what is now Guatemala. One of the Maya kingdoms in this area, the Quiché and others are responsible for the most of Mayan work of Popol Vuh and other history and mythology.
The Spanish started their conquest of the Maya lands in the 1520s. A few Maya states offered long fierce resistance; Spanish authorities did not subdue the last Maya city-state until 1697.
The Spanish American Colonies were largely cut off from the outside world, and the ruins of the great ancient cities were little known except to locals. In 1839 however, American traveler, John Lloyd Stephens, hearing reports of lost ruins in the jungle, visited Copan, Palenque, and other sites with English architect & draftsman Frederick Catherwood. Their illustrated accounts of the ruins sparked strong interest in the region and the people, and they have once again regained their position as a vital link in Mesoamerican heritage.
In many rural areas population of Guatemala and Belize the population is Maya by descent and Mayan dialects remain their primary language. Also Mayan culture still exists in areas in rural Yucatan and Chiapas, Mexico.
TO
BE CONTINUED