The Maya are a diverse cultural group, and this was as true in ancient times as it is today.
Though linguistic evidence would suggest a proto-Mayan community of as few as 5,000 people in northwestern Guatemala around 2,600 BC these original Mayans had by 1,000 BC managed to spread as far as north as the Yucatan peninsula and as far as northern Honduras.
By the Classic era (AD 300-900) they were a thriving concern in the Highland Chiapas state, Mexico; Belize; El-Salvador; the highlands and lowlands of Guatemala; and both the east and west coasts of Yucatan.
While the languages of these various groups differed there were, nevertheless, certain elements that bound the group together (and it must be said that many of these elements were also shared by other high cultures of Mesoamerica, such as the Teotihuacanos, Toltecs, Aztecs, Olmecs, and Mixtecs).
Chief among these traits were a subsistence based on slash and burn agriculture (although recent evidence has tended to indicate that irrigation was practiced on a larger scale than previously thought); a stratified society of hereditary priests and rules; a sophisticated network of trade and commerce and a religion combining a number of elements, such as a reverence of the sun (kin)m and pantheon of similar deities.
But perhaps them most outstanding of the Maya characteristics that archeology has brought to light is the ability to write and to reckon time in a sophisticated vigesimal number system.
Much of the glyphic record consists of astrological predictions entered in the three surviving codices but many texts also related to the subject of specific kings, and are found on the stone stelae that dot Maya sites of the Classic period.
The Ancient Maya
