Big History 2: Maya

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THIS IS THE BEGINNING of the old traditions of this place called Quiché. Here we shall write and we shall begin the old stories, the beginning and the origin of all that was done in the town of the Quiché, by the tribes of the Quiché nation.

How do people from different cultures view themselves, the world and their origins?

An interactive map with details and photographs of key sites.

A Flash-animated exploration of the beliefs of the Maya about how the world and human life were created. Includes overviews of Mayan culture and the Mayan pantheon of gods.

A beautiful visual tour of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, Greece, China, Rome, Venice, Mongolia, and Mesoamerica.

This site describes the geography and landscape of the areas once inhabited by the Mayas. There is also information on Mayan writing, literature, culture, political organization, Mayan art, and other information on the Mayan Civilization.

Although these pictures are artist's ideas, they come pretty close to giving students a good idea of the magnificence of the Maya Empire. Be sure to watch the videos and click into the related stories throughout the website.

The Maya of Yucatan and Guatemala exhibited a cultural continuity spanning more than 2,000 years (1000 BC-AD 1542), and many aspects of their culture continue to the present.

The ancient Maya created the most advanced civilization in the New World.

The Maya series of articles consists of a map, Maya civilization timeline, cities, numerals and calendar, historical conflicts, and trade and commerce.

The earliest days of the Maya date back to 2000 BC when small farming villages first appeared in the highlands and Pacific coastline of Guatemala. Crops such as corn, squash and beans made up the staple of their diet and are believed to have been brought from previous migration through Mexico.

The first concrete traces of the Mayan civilization date back to the Preclassic period around 1,800 BC in the Mirador Basin in Petén, northern Guatemala, though some settlements are thought to be over 6,000 years old (Coe, 2005).

The growth of the great Mayan civilization is as much a mystery as its disappearance.

In 800 A.D., the Maya Empire consisted of a number of powerful city-states spreading from southern Mexico to northern Honduras.

A severe drought, exacerbated by widespread logging, appears to have triggered the mysterious Mayan demise.

The so-called “collapse” of Maya civilization has been the subject
of popular speculation, as well as serious study and debate throughout the twentieth century. What must be made clear at the outset is that — in keeping with the theme of this volume — this crisis in the Maya tradition was the end of only one manifestation of that tradition: it was specifically the end of the city-states in the Maya lowlands, especially the southern lowlands.

Almost overnight, from a historical standpoint, the Maya Civilization collapsed. The suddenness of this collapse has been shrouded in mystery until recent explorations of sediment records have shed some light on the subject. Cores from lakes in the Yucatán and from the Cariaco Basin off the northern coast of Venezuela reveal overall favorable climatic conditions during the development and height of the Maya. The cores also show that the time period coinciding with the collapse of the Maya was an extended period of drought punctuated by shorter intense droughts in A.D. 810, 860, and 910. These periods of drought, considered rapid climate changes, may have triggered the collapse of the Maya at a time when their population was stretching the limits of the environment.