Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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.
Maya armies of the Contact period were highly disciplined, and warriors participated in regular training exercises and drills; every able-bodied adult male was available for military service. Maya states did not maintain standing armies; warriors were mustered by local officials who reported back to appointed warleaders.
Map of the Maya region showing locations of some of the principal cities. Click to enlarge. Until the 1960s, scholarly opinion was that the ruins of Maya centres were not true cities but were rather empty ceremonial centres where the priesthood performed religious rituals for the peasant farmers, who lived dispersed in the middle of the jungle. [11]
The Maya area within Mesoamerica. The Maya (/ ˈ m aɪ ə /) are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica.The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region.
The Maya Forest is a tropical moist broadleaf forest that covers much of the Yucatan Peninsula, thereby encompassing Belize, northern Guatemala, and southeastern Mexico.It is deemed the second largest tropical rainforest in the Americas, after the Amazon, with an area of circa 15 million hectares (150,000 km 2), of which at least 3 million (30,000 km 2) lie within protected areas.
The height of the Maya kingdom, which stretched from 250 to 900 AD, included the rise of the Maya Ballgame, sometimes called pitz, and its ball court structures in the center of major cities.The ...
The proper derivation of the word Yucatán is widely debated. 17th-century Franciscan historian Diego López de Cogolludo offers two theories in particular. [8] In the first one, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, having first arrived to the peninsula in 1517, inquired the name of a certain settlement and the response in Yucatec Mayan was "I don't understand", which sounded like yucatán to the ...