Maya Civilization

El Mirador, in the northern Petén rainforest of Guatemala, was one of the earliest and largest Maya cities, reaching its peak around 300–100 BCE. Its centrepiece, the La Danta pyramid complex, rises…

Yax Ehb Xook (roughly 'First-Step Shark') is identified from retrospective inscriptions as the dynastic founder of Tikal, one of the greatest Maya city-states, located in the Petén department of…

On January 16, 378 CE, a figure called Siyaj K'ak' ('Fire is Born') arrived at Tikal in the Petén rainforest of Guatemala, bearing the title 'kaloomte' of the west' on behalf of a ruler of…

On April 29, 562 CE, Caracol — a large Maya city on the Vaca Plateau in what is now the Cayo District of Belize — defeated Tikal in a 'star war,' a ritually significant battle timed to the appearance…

In 657 CE, Yuknoom Ch'een II — known as Yuknoom the Great — ruler of Calakmul, the 'Snake Kingdom' located in the dense jungles of Campeche, Mexico, led a star-war assault on Tikal, driving Tikal's…

This is Palenque, a Maya city in what is now the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, nestled where the highlands of Central America descend into the humid lowlands near the Gulf of Mexico coast. King…

The Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, in the modern state of Chiapas, Mexico, is the largest step-pyramid at the site and was built as the funerary monument for K'inich Janaab' Pakal — known as…

In 695 CE, Jasaw Chan K'awiil I — king of Tikal in the Petén department of Guatemala — led forces against Calakmul and won a decisive victory, capturing the city's patron deity effigy. The triumph…

On April 27, 738 CE, K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat (Cauac Sky), king of Quiriguá, captured and beheaded Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil (Eighteen Rabbit), the greatest ruler of Copán — a far larger and more…

This is Palenque, a Maya city in what is now southern Mexico, nestled in the jungle foothills where the Sierra Madre highlands descend toward the Gulf coastal plain — exactly the lowland jungle zone…

This is Tikal, in present-day Guatemala — deep in the Petén rainforest, on the limestone lowlands of Central America, far from any coast and far from the narrow land bridge that connects North and…

The Bonampak murals, painted around 790–792 CE during the reign of Chan Muwan II, cover the interior walls of three rooms in a small building on the acropolis at Bonampak, in the Usumacinta region of…

These abandoned city-states — including Tikal in present-day Guatemala — sit in the southern lowland rainforests of the Yucatán Peninsula region, on the narrow land bridge connecting North and South…

This is Uxmal, a Maya city-state located in the Yucatán Peninsula of present-day Mexico, on the low limestone shelf that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea — exactly the peninsula…

El Caracol is a round observatory at Chichen Itza, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula — a flat limestone shelf of land separating the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest from the Caribbean Sea to the east…

Monument 101 at Toniná, a Maya city built on a steep hillside near present-day Ocosingo in Chiapas, Mexico, bears the Long Count date corresponding to January 15, 909 CE — the last known Long Count…

Around 900–1000 CE, Chichén Itzá on the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico emerged as the dominant political and commercial centre of the Maya world after the collapse of the southern Classic…

From around the 1220s to 1441 CE, Mayapán served as the political capital of a confederation of Maya city-states across the northern Yucatán Peninsula in what is now the state of Yucatán, Mexico. The…

On July 12, 1562, Friar Diego de Landa, the leading Catholic authority in Yucatán, presided over an auto-da-fé in the central plaza of Maní — a town in the central Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico…

On March 13, 1697, Spanish forces led by Martín de Ursúa y Arismendi launched a naval assault across Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala, storming the island city of Nojpetén — the capital of the…