An Introduction to the Classic Period Maya I ~*Roots*~
roots of Maya civilization, the size and location of their territories, more
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Maya Roots
The Classic Maya civilization has
roots that link to an ancient "mother culture", the Olmec, who occupied Mesoamerica from approximately 1500 - 300 BC. Thriving from 300 AD and throughout the Classic period, the Maya, with their accomplished architects, engineers, astronomers, scribes and historians, reached their pinnacle during the Late-Classic period, between 600 and 900 AD. During this time, vast city
centers were constructed. Palenque, Tikal, and Bonampak came to life in the southern lowland region. To the north, Caracol and Xunantunich flourished. Chichen Itza, Dzibilchaltun, and Uxmal were built in the northern lowland region of the Yucatan Peninsula. And it was here, on the Yucatan, during the Late Classic/Early Post-Classic Maya Period, that the walled city of Tulum, then
called "Zama", rose in blood-hued majesty, above the temperate turquoise waters
of the Caribbean Sea.
Maya territory covered an estimated 125,000 square miles, stretching all the way from modern day Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to the Mexican states of Chiapas, Campeche, Tabasco and Quintana Roo. From the Pacific Ocean in the west, to the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean in the east, the Classic Maya landscape encompassed everything from the most dry, barren, inhospitable areas, to steamy jungle rain forests, sprawling out to include the Sierra Madre de Guatemala Mountain Range and its its thirty-three Pacific coast volcanoes. Great cities like Tikal could have been inhabited by more than 100,000 people. Population estimates are as large as three to five million in the southern lowlands alone.
~from Zama Roca's TULUM http://www.quia.com/files/quia/users/titian1/member/Zama/TulumSplash.htm
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