The Maya
In terms of contemporary people, ‘Maya' refers to the speakers of roughly thirty different (but related) Mayan languages across eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and portions of El Salvador and Honduras.
The PreColumbian Maya were the ancestors of those people who occupied roughly the same territory as today. Although this volume is chiefly concerned with 500-1500 ce, that is an arbitrary and awkward timeframe within which to consider the ancient Maya. Instead, this chapter focuses chiefly on the Maya of the Classic period (250-900 ce), but also draws on information from the Late Preclassic (400 bce - 250 ce), Postclassic (900-1502) and Post-Columbian Maya (1502 to the present). The Preclassic period was a time of emergence and transformation: the ancestors of the Maya transitioned from semi-sedentary populations, reliant on foraging and horticulture, to fully sedentary agricultural villages. It was from these roots that kingship emerged. The Classic period was the epoch of the great polities of the southern lowlands (northern Guatemala, southern Mexico and Belize) and is generally divided into the Early Classic (250-600) and Late Classic periods (600-900). By the Late Classic period this region comprised a dense constellation of polities consisting of urban centres and nearby smaller villages. Although alliances and hegemonies were occasionally forged, most notably by the royal dynasties at Tikal and Calakmul, the region was never politically unified. Nevertheless, much was shared across the Maya world in terms of artistic style and especially the calendar and hieroglyphic language for which the Maya are best known. The end of the Classic period was marked by the demise of the southern polities, their particular system of kingship and much of the tradition of writing on stone, including the use of a long-count calendar that marked the passage of time from a fixed point in the past. Nevertheless, new polities and even hegemonies emerged during the Postclassic period in the northern lowlands (notably at Chichen Itza and later Mayapan) as well as in the Chiapan and Guatemalan highlands during the Late Postclassic period (1200-1502).
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