Maya Civilization

The classic Maya region falls into three areas. The northern area is the Yucatan Peninsula; the central area is the Peten forest of northern Guatemala and adjacent lowlands in Mexico (to the west) and Belize (to the east); the southern area consists of the highlands of Guatemala and Honduras and the Pacific coast of Guatemala.
 

Classic Mayan centers in Mexico fall into four zones: Chiapas, in the central Mayan area, and Rio Bee, Chenes and Puuc, all on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Chiapas the chief Chiapas sites are Yaxchilan, its tributary Bonampak , Palenque, which to many people is the most beautiful of all Mayan sites, and Torrina. Palenque rose to prominence under the 7th century ruler Pakal, whose treasureloaded tomb deep inside the fine Templo de las Inscripciones.

Rio Bec & Chenes these zones, noted for their lavishly carved buildings, are in a wild, little investigated zone of the southern Yucatan Peninsula. The archaeological sites here, which include Calakmul, draw few visitors. Puuc this zone was the focus of northern Classic Mayan culture.

The Maya inhabited a universe with a center and four directions (each with a color: east, red; north, white; west, black; south, yellow; the center, green), 13 layers of heavens, and nine layers of underworld to which the dead descended. The earth was the back of a giant reptile floating on a pond. (It's not too hard to imagine yourself as a flea on this creature's back as you look across a Mayan landscape!) The current world was just one of a succession of worlds destined to end in cataclysm and be succeeded by another. This cyclical nature of things enabled the future to be predicted by looking at the past.


 

The Mayan Collapse In the second half of the 8th century, trade between Mayan states started to shrink and conflict began to grow. By the early 10th century the central Mayan area was virtually abandoned, most of its people probably having migrated to the northern area or the highlands of Chiapas. Population pressure and ecological damage have been considered probable reasons for this collapse.

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