IN: Alba was born in Pomona, California, to Catherine Louisa (nee Jensen) and Mark David Alba. Her mother has Danish, Welsh, German, English, and French ancestry, while her paternal grandparents, who were born in California, were both the children of Mexican immigrants. She has a younger brother, Joshua. Her third cousin, once removed, is writer Gustavo Arellano.

Alba posed for a bondage-themed print advertising campaign by Declare Yourself, a campaign encouraging voter registration among youth for the 2008 United States presidential election. The ads photographed by Mark Liddell, which feature Alba wrapped in and gagged with black tape, drew national media attention. Alba said of doing the advertisements that "it didn't freak me out at all." Alba also said, "I think it is important for young people to be aware of the need we have in this country to get them more active politically," and "People respond to things that are shocking." Alba endorsed and supported Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama during the 2008 primary season. In June 2009, while filming The Killer Inside Me in Oklahoma City, Alba was involved in a controversy with residents when she pasted posters of sharks around town. Alba said that she was trying to bring attention to the diminishing population of great white sharks. Media outlets speculated that Alba would be pursued and charged with vandalism. On June 16, 2009, Oklahoma City police said that they would not pursue criminal charges against Alba, because none of the property owners wanted to pursue it. Alba apologized in a statement to People magazine and said that she regretted her actions. She later donated an undisclosed amount of money (over $500) to the United Way, whose billboard she had obscured with one of the shark posters. In 2011, Alba participated in a two-day lobbying effort in Washington D.C. in support of the Safe Chemicals Act, a revision of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. Alba returned to Capitol Hill in 2015 to lobby lawmakers as they once again debated a replacement for the 1976 Substances Control Act. She has also been a strong supporter of gay rights and on June 27, 2013, she expressed her delight with the Supreme Court's decision to strike down DOMA on her Twitter account. She tweeted "#equality #love". Alba's charity work has included participation with Clothes Off Our Back, Habitat for Humanity, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Project HOME, RADD, Revlon Run/Walk for Women, SOS Children's Villages, Soles4Souls, Step Up and Baby2Baby. Alba is an ambassador for the 1Goal movement to provide education to children in Africa. She has also served as a Baby2Baby "angel" ambassador, donating and helping to distribute items such as diapers and clothing to families in Los Angeles. In 2015, Alba and The Honest Company sponsored a laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. The lab was announced to be a specialized room designed to keep out dust and particles, where a team of epidemiologists would research links between household chemicals and autism.
QUESTION: How did that go?
IN: The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its hieroglyphic script--the only known fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas--as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. This region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatan Peninsula, and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, running from the Mexican state of Chiapas, across southern Guatemala and onwards into El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. The Archaic period, prior to 2000 BC, saw the first developments in agriculture and the earliest villages.

The Maya civilization developed within the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers a region that spreads from northern Mexico southwards into Central America. Mesoamerica was one of six cradles of civilization worldwide. The Mesoamerican area gave rise to a series of cultural developments that included complex societies, agriculture, cities, monumental architecture, writing, and calendrical systems. The set of traits shared by Mesoamerican cultures also included astronomical knowledge, blood and human sacrifice, and a cosmovision that viewed the world as divided into four divisions aligned with the cardinal directions, each with different attributes, and a three-way division of the world into the celestial realm, the earth, and the underworld. By 6000 BC, the early inhabitants of Mesoamerica were experimenting with the domestication of plants, a process that eventually led to the establishment of sedentary agricultural societies. The diverse climate allowed for wide variation in available crops, but all regions of Mesoamerica cultivated the base crops of maize, beans, and squashes. All Mesoamerican cultures used Stone Age technology; after c. 1000 AD copper, silver and gold were worked. Mesoamerica lacked draft animals, did not use the wheel, and possessed few domesticated animals; the principal means of transport was on foot or by canoe. Mesoamericans viewed the world as hostile and governed by unpredictable deities. The ritual Mesoamerican ballgame was widely played. Mesoamerica is linguistically diverse, with most languages falling within a small number of language families - the major families are Mayan, Mixe-Zoquean, Otomanguean, and Uto-Aztecan; there are also a number of smaller families and isolates. The Mesoamerican language area shares a number of important features, including widespread loanwords, and use of a vigesimal number system. The territory of the Maya covered a third of Mesoamerica, and the Maya were engaged in a dynamic relationship with neighbouring cultures that included the Olmecs, Mixtecs, Teotihuacan, the Aztecs, and others. During the Early Classic period, the Maya cities of Tikal and Kaminaljuyu were key Maya foci in a network that extended beyond the Maya area into the highlands of central Mexico. At around the same time, there was a strong Maya presence at the Tetitla compound of Teotihuacan. Centuries later, during the 9th century AD, murals at Cacaxtla, another site in the central Mexican highlands, were painted in a Maya style. This may have been either an effort to align itself with the still-powerful Maya area after the collapse of Teotihuacan and ensuing political fragmentation in the Mexican Highlands, or an attempt to express a distant Maya origin of the inhabitants. The Maya city of Chichen Itza and the distant Toltec capital of Tula had an especially close relationship.
QUESTION:
What language did they speak?