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The Maya are thought to have been in Belize and the Yucatán region since the second millennium BC. Much of Belize's original Maya population died as a result of new infectious diseases and conflicts between tribes and with Europeans. They are divided into the Yucatec, Kekchi, and Mopan. These three Maya groups now inhabit the country.
"Maya" is a modern term used to refer collectively to the various peoples that inhabited this area, as Maya peoples have not had a sense of a common ethnic identity or political unity for the vast majority of their history. [2]
The peoples and cultures which comprised the Maya civilization spanned more than 2,500 years of Mesoamerican history, in the Maya Region of southern Mesoamerica, which incorporates the present-day nations of Guatemala and Belize, much of Honduras and El Salvador, and the southeastern states of Mexico from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec eastwards, including the entire Yucatán Peninsula.
The Maya Region is firmly bounded to the north, east, and southwest by the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, respectively. [1] [2] It is less firmly bounded to the west and southeast by 'zones of cultural interaction and transition between Maya and non-Maya peoples.' [3] [2] The western transition between Maya and non-Maya peoples roughly corresponds to the Isthmus of ...
In the 1970s, the Mexican government began paying them for rights to log timber in their forests, bringing them into closer contact with the national economy. At the same time, the government built roads into the area, establishing new villages of Tzeltal and Ch'ol Indians who were far more exposed to the outside world than the Lacandon. The ...
The dominant ethnolinguistic group of Soconusco, and indeed the Chiapas coast as a whole may have been Tapachultec, which was a Mixe–Zoque language and not Mayan. [45] The highland Kʼicheʼ dominated the Pacific coastal plain of western Guatemala. [37] The eastern portion of the Pacific plain was occupied by the non-Maya Pipil and Xinca. [46]
Aguada Fenix in Tabasco, Mexico is the oldest Maya city known, the site was built in 1000 BC, it is thought to have been built by communal labor, an early form of social organization and development where it is believed that many tribes decided to establish a major settlement marking the beginnings of the Maya civilization. [39]
The history of Maya civilization is divided into three principal periods: the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods; [1] these were preceded by the Archaic Period, which saw the first settled villages and early developments in agriculture. [2]