The Maya are one of the most well know of civilizations in mesoamerica. The Mayan originated in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C., they grew rapidly around A.D. 250 in present day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern belize and western Honduras. They built on the inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, they developed astronomy, a accurate calender system and a advanced language. The Maya were known for elaborate and well decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple pyramids, palaces and observatories which were all built without advanced tools or machines. They were also skilled farmers, they cleared large sections of tropical rain forest and built huge underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater. The Maya were very skilled as weavers and potters, they cleared routes through jungles and swamps to make extensive trade networks with people very distant from them.
Around 300 B.C., the Maya adopted a hierarchical system of government which was ruled by nobles and kings. This civilization developed into highly structured kingdoms during the classic period of A.D. 200-900. Their society had many independent states, each with a rural farming community and large urban sites which were built around ceremonial sites.
The Mayan society started to decline around A.D. 900 when they were still a very misunderstood culture. The southern Maya abandoned their cities due to loss of resources. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by A.D. 1200, the Maya dynasty finally came to a end, although some areas continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century.
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