Maya Timeline

The first Maya lived in villages, farming corn, beans and squash. Aguada Fénix is the oldest and largest known Maya monument. In the Middle Preclassic, Nakbe was already building big temples on raised platforms. Lowland centers rose to power by holding portages on the peninsula's trade routes. Northern Guatemala's El Mirador became the Maya lowlands' largest Preclassic capital. Tikal became a hub of monumental buildings in the Late Preclassic.

The earliest known Maya writing comes from San Bartolo in Guatemala. Its murals of c. 100 BCE told the Maya story of how the world was created and tied it to kings. Later Tikal texts named Yax Ehb' Xook the founder of its royal dynasty. El Mirador declined and lost its power as the Preclassic ended. Tikal then became a leading Maya power of the Early Classic period. The Classic period that followed grew from the Late Preclassic, carrying forward trends from its last centuries.

Classic Maya kings raised carved stone monuments, dating the events of their reigns with the Long Count calendar. Tikal's Stela 29, dated 292 CE, is among the oldest of these, and its figure is thought to be a ruler. In 378 CE the warlord Siyaj K'ak' reached Tikal. Tikal's king died that same year, and Yax Nuun Ayiin, a new king, took the throne. Siyaj K'ak' had come apparently from Teotihuacan, and his arrival began an era of Teotihuacan influence at Tikal. Under the new king, Tikal then extended its authority over other lowland Maya cities.

K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' became king at Copán in 426 CE and founded its royal dynasty, probably with Tikal's support. Teotihuacan's power faded later in the period. The Snake (Kaan) kings drew cities on every side of Tikal to their side, some of them Tikal's own allies, until the city stood encircled. A coalition under the Snake (Kaan) kings, Caracol among them, defeated Tikal in 562 CE. That defeat began a long decline for Tikal, the 'hiatus', when little was built and few monuments carried dates. The Late Classic era that came next brought the lowland Maya to their intellectual and artistic peak.

Two rival powers, Tikal and the Snake dynasty of Calakmul, struggled to control the Maya world. In 611 CE, for the second time, Calakmul attacked Palenque. In 615 CE, the 12-year-old K'inich Janaab' Pakal became king of Palenque. Those attacks may have spurred bursts of building and of new ideas under Pakal and his successors. Members of Tikal's royal family founded Dos Pilas. Calakmul's Snake kings reached their greatest success under Yuknoom Ch'een II, who governed through a web of loyal vassal kings.

Calakmul next attacked Dos Pilas, whose ruler changed sides, becoming its vassal. Pakal was buried in the Temple of the Inscriptions, a pyramid made as his tomb and carved with one of the lengthiest Maya texts. His son K'inich Kan Bahlam II raised the Group of the Cross, three temples to Palenque's gods. In 695 CE, Jasaw Chan K'awiil I, Tikal's king, defeated Calakmul, a victory that led Tikal's comeback. Toniná captured Palenque's king, K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II, in 711 CE, and Palenque had no king for some time.

A Yaxchilan lintel showed Lady Xook, King Shield Jaguar's wife, bleeding her tongue in a rite rulers owed the gods. In 738 CE, Quiriguá's lord, once Copán's vassal, seized Copán's king, Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, and beheaded him. Copán then revived under its 15th king, K'ak' Yipyaj Chan K'awiil, who dedicated the Hieroglyphic Stairway, the longest Maya text known. Bonampak's murals portrayed combat and the war captives it produced. Maya kingdoms, Dos Pilas's realm among them, broke apart into smaller powers that warred without pause. Scholars think this fighting, by severing trade between cities, helped bring about the Classic Maya collapse.

Classic Maya civilization in the southern lowlands declined, then collapsed. Historians most often cite three possible causes: warfare between the city-states, overpopulation and drought. In 869 CE, Tikal raised its last royal portrait stela in the Great Plaza. Tikal, like the region's other cities, was later abandoned. Across the lowlands, the custom of raising dated stone monuments, stelae, ended. At Toniná in 909 CE, a monument was carved bearing the Long Count's last known date.

As the southern cities emptied, many inhabitants probably left, some heading north. Meanwhile, some northern Maya cities flourished as never before, even as the great southern centers declined. In the north, Uxmal became the Puuc region's leading city. Rain mattered deeply there, and its buildings bore many carvings of Chaac, the Maya rain god. The southern lowlands, once the Maya's most densely settled land, were never heavily resettled.

The southern lowlands stood nearly empty, but the northern Yucatán Peninsula grew, its cities flourishing. Chichén Itzá led the north early on, probably heading a wider group of states. It then lost that role, and Mayapán rose to lead Yucatán. On the east coast, Tulum was an important center of trade and religion, and several of its buildings show stucco figures depicting a winged god diving downward.

Mayapán's rule over northern Yucatán ended when the rival Xiu family overthrew its ruling Cocom family. Northern Yucatán then broke into many small independent states. Several Maya kingdoms, the K'iche' among them, held the Guatemalan highlands, many based in fortified hilltop centers. Kaqchikel rulers Huntoh and Vukubatz founded Iximché after the Kaqchikel broke with their former K'iche' partners. When the Spanish arrived, most Maya were village farmers.

Francisco Hernández de Córdoba's Spanish expedition reached the Yucatán coast in 1517 CE. Epidemic disease struck the Maya even before Spanish troops arrived, and the Spanish used this to their benefit. They also exploited wars among Maya kingdoms, backing the Kaqchikel against the K'iche'. The Spanish overran the K'iche' in 1524 CE, and Pedro de Alvarado put their capital, Utatlán, to the torch. That same year, Alvarado founded Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, Guatemala's first Spanish settlement and capital. In Yucatán, the Maya resisted Francisco de Montejo's invasion with fierce determination, and the Spanish conquest there advanced slowly.

Francisco de Montejo founded Mérida in 1542 CE on the site of the Maya town of T'ho. In the Spanish alphabet, K'iche' Maya writers recorded the Popol Vuh, their people's history and creation story. The Franciscan Diego de Landa held an auto-da-fé at Maní, suspecting the Maya of human sacrifice. He judged their books superstition and lies of the devil and burned them, and the Maya grieved deeply. The Itza Maya held out against conquest until 1697 CE, when their capital fell to the Spanish.

The Dresden Codex was among the few Maya books to survive the burning of Maya books. In 1739 CE, Johann Christian Götze, director of the Royal Library at Dresden, obtained it in Vienna from a private owner. Published reports describing ancient ruins in Central America stirred the American John Lloyd Stephens's curiosity, and he set out to find and explore them. From 1839 CE to 1842 CE, he and the English illustrator Frederick Catherwood explored and surveyed the Maya ruins of Central America and Mexico.

At Copán, Stephens bought the ruined city's site for $50. Catherwood drew the ruins using a camera lucida, which projected their outlines onto paper. Stephens argued that Native peoples of the Americas made them, not Old World migrants. Stephens's book, with Catherwood's drawings, caused a storm of interest in the Maya, popular and scholarly. Their explorations began Middle American archaeology and laid a foundation for the later study of the Maya. Maya peoples still live in southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, on their ancestors' lands.