The Ancient Maya

The Maya were one of the most sophisticated civilisations in the ancient Americas, thriving in what is now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. At the height of the Classic period (c. 250–900 CE), Maya cities like Tikal and Chichén Itzá were home to hundreds of thousands of people. The Maya built towering stone pyramid temples, elaborate palaces, ball courts and observatories — all without metal tools, the wheel or large pack animals. They developed a complex writing system using hieroglyphs (pictures representing words and sounds), which was carved into stone and painted in folding books called codices. Maya mathematicians independently invented the concept of zero, and their astronomers tracked the movements of the sun, moon and planets with extraordinary precision, developing both a 365-day solar calendar and a 260-day ritual calendar. Maya civilisation did not simply disappear — descendants of the Maya still live in Central America today, maintaining many of their ancestors’ traditions and languages.