The people of the Maya civilization lived in three different areas: the southern Maya highlands, the central lowlands, and the northern lowlands. They had many different types of land, including mountains and dry plains. People living in the low plains by the sea were affected by hurricanes and tropical storms from the Caribbean.
The area covered what we now call the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, and the Yucatán Peninsula states of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Yucatán. They also included where we now call Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras.
The first Maya settlements started about 1800 BC. They lived in the Soconusco region, now the state of Chiapas in Mexico, on the Pacific Ocean. This is called the "early pre-classic period" in Mayan history'. People in Central America had been nomads who went from place to place to find food and shelter. Around this time they began to settle down.They started to farm animals and make pottery and small clay figures. They buried their dead in simple burial mounds. Later they started to make these mounds into step pyramids.
There were other people around at the time, especially in the north. The Olmec, the Mixe-Zoque, and Zapotec civilizations mostly lived in the area we now call Oaxaca. We don't know exactly where the borders of the Maya civilization were. Many of the most important early examples of writing and buildings appeared in north, so these cultures probably affected the Maya civilization.
From about 250 to 909, the Maya civilization built many monuments and cities, and made many important carvings. The "southern lowlands" were an important place at the time. The Maya civilization made many discoveries about art and thinking there.
Like Ancient Greece, their civilization was made up of numerous cities, which all worked in different ways. People gathered around these cities to farm. Well-known cities were Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Calakmul. Lesser-known cities were Dos Pilas, Uaxactun, Altun Ha, and Bonampak, among others. In general, we know more about where the cities were in the south than we do in the north. Some northern cities we do know about were Oxkintok, Chunchucmil, and Uxmal.
Their most famous monuments are the pyramids they built as part of their religious centers, and the palaces. The palace at Cancuén is the largest we know about in the Maya area. The Maya also made carved stone slabs which they called "tetun", or "tree-stones". These slabs show rulers along with hieroglyphic writing describing their family, military victories, and other things that they did well.
The Maya had trade routes that ran over long distances. They traded with many other Mesoamerican cultures, such as Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, and other groups in central and gulf-coast Mexico. They also traded with groups that were farther away. For example, people who study the Maya civilization found gold from Panama in the Sacred well at Chichen Itza.
Some important things they traded were cacao, salt, sea shells, jade and obsidian.
Between 900 AD and 1000 AD, the cities in the southern lowlands had more and more problems until all the people left. The Maya civilization there stopped making big monuments and carvings. People who study the Maya civilization are not sure why this happened. They have many different ideas - some people think there was a big environmental disaster, or a disease affected a lot of people, or there were just too many people for the amount of food they could grow.
In the north, the Maya civilization kept going. Other cultures started mixing with Mayan culture much more. Some of the important sites in this time were Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Edzná, and Coba. At some point, the families who ruled over Chichen and Uxmal got weaker and the rulers in the city of Mayapan ruled all of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatán peninsula until there was a revolt in 1450. After the revolt, the whole area broke up into different cities who fought against each other, until the Spanish conquest of Yucatán.
The Itza Maya, Ko'woj, and Yalain groups around what is now Guatamela were still around, but there were not very many of them. By 1520, they had built themselves back up again and started to build cities. The Itza had their capital at Tayasal (also known as Noh Petén), and people who study the Maya civlisation think what's left of this city is below the modern city of Flores, Guatemala on Lake Petén Itzá. The Ko'woj had their capital at Zacpeten. Some Mayan cultures were still living in the southern highlands.
The Quiché kingdom produced the most famous Mayan work, the Popol Vuh. It talks about the creation of the world, the Mayan gods and goddesses, how humans and animals were created and why the Quiché kingdom was the best one in the Maya civilization.
The Spanish started to conquer Maya lands. It took them a long time (170 years) to finish doing this because the Mayans had no capital city and each city had a different culture. The last Mayan states, the Itza city of Tayasal and the Ko'woj city of Zacpeten, still had people living in them late into the 17th century. They were finally conquered in 1697.
There are still about 6 million Maya people living in Central America.
Mesoamerican chronology
Looking at the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica one can see some rather different periods between the first humans and the early Colonial period (which followed the Spanish colonization of the Americas) in the end.
The Paleo-Indian (not so often Lithic) period or era is that which begins with the first signs of human presence in the region and leads to agriculture and other practices (e.g. pottery, permanent settlements) characteristic of proto-civilizations. In Mesoamerica, the end of this phase was at ca. 8,000 BC. It was a period of hunter-gatherers.
c. 8,000 BCE - 2,000 BCE
In this time agriculture and permanent villages developed in the region. Late in this era, people used pottery and started weaving with a .
c. 2,000 BCE - 200 CE
Nation-states developed and with them the first large scale ceremonial architecture and cities. That were the Olmec civilization, the early Zapotec, Monte Alto Culture in Guatemala's pacifc lowlands, and Maya civilization.
c. mid 2nd century - early 10th century
Teotihuacan grows to a metropolis and its empire dominates Mesoamerica. During this time the cities of the Maya southern lowlands, such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copán have their greatest era.
The Classic Era ended earlier in Central Mexico, with the fall of Teotihuacan around the 7th century, than it did in the Maya area, which continued for centuries more. Around this time, many southern lowland sites (most notably in Tikal) experienced a short period of limited decline, called the Middle Classic Hiatus. The later period of Maya's continued growth is sometimes known as the Florescent Era.
In the early 20th century, the term Old Empire was sometimes given to this era of Maya civilization in an analogy to Ancient Egypt; the term is now considered inaccurate and has long been out of use by serious writers on the subject.
10th century - 16th century.
Many of the great nations and cities of the Classic Era collapsed, but some continue, such as in Oaxaca, Cholula, and the Maya of Yucatán, such as at Chichen Itza and Uxmal. This is sometimes seen as a period of increased chaos and warfare. The Toltec for a time dominate central Mexico in the 11th - 13th century, then collapse. The northern Maya are for a time united under Mayapan. The Aztec Empire rises in the early 15th century and seems on the path to gain a dominance over the whole region not seen since Teotihuacan, when Mesoamerica is discovered by Spain and conquered by the Conquistadores.
The late florescence of the northern Maya was sometimes called the New Empire in the early 20th century, but this term is no longer considered appropriate and is no longer used.