Who were the Maya? Cities, writing and calendars explained

The short answer

The Maya were a group of peoples who lived in the tropical lowlands and highlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and neighbouring parts of Central America. They never formed a single empire. Instead they built many independent city-states, each with its own ruler, temples and pyramids, which traded, cooperated and fought with each other. Their culture flourished for well over a thousand years.

Three big periods

Scholars divide Maya history into the Preclassic, the Classic and the Postclassic period. The first villages and early cities, for example in the Mirador Basin in today’s Guatemala, belong to the Preclassic. The Classic period, roughly from the 3rd to the 9th century CE, is the time of the largest cities and the most monuments. In the Postclassic period new centres such as Chichén Itzá rose while many old cities were abandoned. These labels are tools for historians, not judgements about progress or decline.

Cities and kings

Powerful cities like Tikal and Calakmul led alliances and rivalries that shaped politics across the region. A city was usually ruled by a divine king, who took part in ceremonies believed to keep the world in balance. The ruling class included nobles, priests, scribes and artists. Ordinary people farmed maize, beans and squash and built the great monuments. Cities also managed water: Tikal, for instance, collected rainwater in reservoirs to get through the dry season.

Writing, numbers and calendars

• Writing: The Maya developed a full hieroglyphic script that combined signs for words and signs for syllables. Scribes recorded the deeds of kings and events on stone monuments, painted pottery and folding books called codices. Only a few codices survived the centuries.
• Numbers: They used a system based on 20 and knew a symbol for zero.
• Calendars: They used several interlocking calendars, including a 260-day ritual calendar and a 365-day solar calendar. The Long Count counted days from a fixed starting date and allowed them to date events far in the past or future.

What happened to the Maya?

Between about the 8th and 10th century many cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, including Tikal. This is often called the Classic Maya collapse, but many historians now describe it more as a transformation. Several causes probably worked together, such as long droughts, warfare, political rivalries and pressure on farmland. Maya cities in the north, like Chichén Itzá, continued and grew. Later the Spanish arrived. The last independent Maya kingdom, Nojpetén, fell in 1697.

Myths about the Maya

• “The Maya disappeared.” They did not. Millions of Maya people live in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and neighbouring countries today and many speak Maya languages.
• “The Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012.” The Long Count reached the end of a long cycle in December 2012. That was a calendar milestone and the calendar simply continued.
• “They lived in a single Maya empire.” Maya cities were independent and often rivals.

Explore it in Temporis

The history app Temporis has a campaign called Classic Maya with seven chapters. It covers chronology and the Maya region, calendars and ritual life, dynastic politics, the rise and fall of Tikal and the Tikal–Calakmul rivalry, the hieroglyphic script, the collapse debate and the Spanish conquest. Lessons are short, end with quizzes and work offline. More on the Temporis page.