page_title: History of Honduras
section_title: Pre-Columbian era
hierarchical_section_title: History of Honduras / Pre-Columbian era
caption_attribution_description: Español: Los_Naranjos_Honduras
context_page_description: Honduras was already occupied by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech, the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico.
context_section_description: Archaeologists have demonstrated that Honduras has a multi-ethnic prehistory. An important part of that prehistory was the Mayan presence around the city of Copán in western Honduras near the Guatemalan border. Copán was a major Maya city that began to flourish around 150 A.D. but reached its height in the Late Classic (700–850 A.D.). It has left behind many carved inscriptions and stelae. The ancient kingdom, named Xukpi, existed from the 5th century to the early 9th century, and had antecedents going back to at least the 2nd century. Other Mayan city was El puente, that ended up being conquered by Copan during the classic period, which ruins are a few kilometers from Copan. Mayan culture extended from what today are the departments of Copan, Santa Barbara, and Cortes. Archaeological studies determined that these people made several villages around the territories that comprise these departments.
  The Mayan civilization began a marked decline in population in the 9th century, but there is evidence of people still living in and around the city until at least 1200. By the time the Spanish came to Honduras, the once great city-state of Copán was overrun by the jungle, and the surviving Ch’orti' were isolated from their Choltian linguistic peers to the west. The non-Maya Lencas were then dominant in western Honduras, creating several villages in the valleys. The Lenca people was the biggest and most well organizaed society in terms of military organization by the time of the conquest at the early XVI century.
  Many other regions were host to large societies. Archaeological sites include Naco, La Sierra, and Playa de los Muertos in the northwest (thought to have been populated by Western Jicaque speakers),  Los Naranjos north of Lake Yojoa, Tenampua and Yarumela in the Comayagua valley (Built by the ancestors of the Lenca people).
  Honduras was mainly part of Mesoamerica, and was home to complex settled societies for several thousand consecutive years, just as the other neighboring regions, and it is clear that neighboring Maya societies and more distant Central Mexican societies were a major influence on Honduran communities, both through trade (especially with the Maya civilization, and, during the Formative Period, the Olmec civilization) and occasionally migration. For example, during internal conflict in the late Toltec Empire, around 1000 to 11000 AD, Nahuatl-speakers migrated from Central Mexico and dispersed into different parts of Central America, including Honduras, especially Chapagua. In present day El Salvador, they became the Pipil and founded Kuskatan, and in Nicaragua, they became the Nicarao. 
  La Ciudad Blanca is the major exception, which lies on the very fringe of Mesoamerica and is better described in relation to the Isthmo-Colombian area. This civilization  
  thrived from 500 AD to 1000 AD, and included sophisticated management of the environment in accordance with large urban centers.
caption: One of the Pyramids of Los naranjos, these ones are considered to be the oldest structures of Honduras.
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