What was Maya Civilization ?

Cities of Stone: The Classic Maya, A.D. 250-900

The Classic Period, which began around A.D. 250, was the golden age of the Maya Empire.

Classic Maya civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held

population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000.

Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the ball games that were ritually and politically significant to

Maya culture. Maya cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers.

Though the Maya practiced a primitive type of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, they also displayed evidence of more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing.

Early Maya, 1800 B.C. to A.D. 250.

The earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C.,

or the beginning of what is called the Preclassic or Formative Period.

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization

noted for Maya script,

the only known fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas,

as well as for its art,

architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems.

The Ancient Maya developed the science of astronomy

calendar systems and hieroglyphic writing.

The Olmec, a full-blown civilization by 1200 B.C., were distributed over Mesoamerica from the Pacific Coast of Guatemala to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, were responsible for the erection of huge carved stone monuments, masks, plaques of jade and the first attempts at a calendar (which has come to be known as the "Maya ...

The Maya, Inca, and Aztecs built great civilizations in Mexico and in Central and South America between 1,800 and 500 years ago.

The first of these was the Maya civilization. About 2,800 years ago,

people known as the Maya lived in farming villages on the Yucatan Peninsula and the highlands to the south.

From the late eighth through the end of the ninth century, something unknown happened to shake the Maya civilization to its foundations

One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned,

by A.D. 900, Maya civilization in that region had collapsed.

lthough the Mayan people never entirely disappeared