Maya Civilization: Who the Maya Were and Who They Are Today

The Maya were the peoples who built cities, kingdoms and a shared culture across southeastern Mexico and Central America. They were never one empire. Instead, many city-states had their own rulers and often competed. Tikal and Calakmul, for example, were powerful rivals in the Classic period.

Maya society included farmers, traders, builders, scribes, artists, priests and rulers. Shared writing, beliefs and art tied the cities together across a wide region.

The Maya civilization spans more than 3,000 years, from early villages to the Spanish conquest. Scholars give slightly different dates for each period, so treat the dates below as approximate.

Each Maya city-state had its own king. Classic-period kings used the title k'uhul ajaw, or 'holy lord', and claimed a special link to the gods. Nobles, scribes and priests served at court. Kings recorded their wars, alliances and family lines on carved stone monuments.

Most Maya people were farmers. They grew maize, beans and squash in fields called milpas. They lived in houses of wood and thatch, often on low stone platforms, with gardens and fruit trees nearby.

A Maya city was a center of plazas, pyramids, palaces and ball courts, with homes and farms spread around it. Raised stone roads called sacbeob linked buildings inside a city, and some joined nearby cities.

Trade tied the cities together. Merchants carried cacao, jade, obsidian, cotton cloth and feathers, and cacao beans also served as money. Salt from the Yucatan's northern coast was one of the region's most valuable goods. Traders moved goods on foot and by canoe along rivers and the coast.

The Maya developed a full writing system, a precise calendar and careful astronomy. They also used one of the earliest known zeros, grew cacao and made rubber. Only four Maya books, called codices, survive today.

The Maya honored many gods linked to rain, wisdom, the Moon, healing and the underworld. Our guide to Maya gods and Kukulkan explains the main gods and where to see them at Chichen Itza.

Many cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned in the 800s CE, in what scholars call the Terminal Classic collapse. People moved away, and the population shifted north toward the Yucatan.

Scholars still debate the causes. Warfare, environmental stress and drought are the main explanations, and several may have worked together.

Northern Yucatan kept growing while many southern cities emptied. In the 800s and 900s, Uxmal and the other Puuc cities, such as Kabah, Sayil and Labna, flourished in the hills of western Yucatan. Their carved stone mosaic facades are still among the finest in Maya building.

Chichen Itza became the strongest city in the north during this time. Our history of Chichen Itza explains when the city rose and why it lost power.

Mayapan rose in the 1100s and became the main city of northern Yucatan. It was a walled city, and its main pyramid is a smaller copy of El Castillo at Chichen Itza. Mayapan was abandoned around 1448, and the north then split into smaller Maya provinces.

Those provinces were still in place when the Spanish arrived. Spain founded Merida in 1542 over the Maya city of T'ho and completed its conquest of northern Yucatan in 1546.

Maya people did not disappear. More than 6 million Maya people live in Mexico and Central America today, and they speak around 30 Mayan languages.

Yucatec Maya is spoken today across the Yucatan Peninsula, in villages, towns and cities such as Merida and Valladolid. It is one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in Mexico, and most speakers also speak Spanish. The fall of ancient cities changed Maya life, but it did not end Maya people, language or culture.

Use Maya for the people, the culture and the ancient cities, and Mayan for the languages, as most scholars do. Speak of Maya people in the present tense, since they are part of Yucatan life today. Ask before you take close photos of people, especially in small towns.