The Maya· built byUuser-e8a0f3

The Maya 97

• 6500 BC Maize is domesticated Balsas valley, Mexico Teosinte, a wild grass with a few hard seeds, was bred over centuries into maize. Everything that followed in Mesoamerica — cities, calendars, kings — rested on it.
• 3400 BC Maize reaches the Maya lowlands Belize Pollen and phytolith evidence from wetland cores shows maize being cultivated in what is now Belize, thousands of years before the first cities.
• 2500 BC Manioc, squash and chilli under cultivation Maya lowlands A full agricultural package developed alongside maize. A buried manioc field at Joya de Cerén in El Salvador later preserved the planting rows intact under volcanic ash.
• 1800 BC The earliest Maya pottery Cuello, Belize The Swasey phase ceramics at Cuello are among the oldest known from the Maya lowlands, marking the shift to fully settled village life.
• 1800 BC The first permanent villages Pacific coast Settled communities appeared along the Soconusco coast of Chiapas and Guatemala, making some of the earliest pottery in Mesoamerica.
• 1500 BC The Olmec rise at San Lorenzo Veracruz, Mexico The first Mesoamerican civilisation to build monumental sculpture. Much of what the Maya later did with calendars, ballcourts and rulership has Olmec roots.
• 1000 BC Aguada Fénix is built Tabasco, Mexico A raised platform 1,400 metres long, the largest and oldest monumental construction known in the Maya world. It was invisible from the ground and went unrecognised until a lidar survey in 2020.
• 1000 BC Nakbe becomes the first great Maya city Petén, Guatemala Nakbe grew into the earliest large settlement in the lowlands, with platforms, causeways and the first Maya monumental architecture in stone.
• 800 BC Ceremonial centres spread across the lowlands Petén and Belize Villages that had been farming for a millennium began raising plazas, platforms and pyramids, a pattern repeated across hundreds of sites.
• 700 BC Kaminaljuyú rises in the highlands Guatemala City, Guatemala A major highland centre controlling obsidian and jade routes. Most of it now lies beneath modern Guatemala City.
• 600 BC El Mirador is founded Petén, Guatemala The city that would become the largest in the Preclassic Maya world, covering more than 25 square kilometres in dense rainforest.
• 500 BC Tikal and Uaxactún are settled Petén, Guatemala Two sites that would dominate the Classic period began as ordinary farming villages with small ceremonial platforms.
• 400 BC Izapa and the southern tradition Chiapas, Mexico Izapa's carved stelae show narrative scenes that bridge Olmec and Maya art, including imagery later recorded in the Popol Vuh.
• 350 BC El Mirador at its height Petén, Guatemala La Danta, its largest pyramid complex, contains roughly 2.8 million cubic metres of fill — by volume one of the largest ancient structures anywhere. Around 100,000 people may have lived in the city and its hinterland.
• 300 BC The earliest known Maya writing San Bartolo, Guatemala A painted glyph block found on a wall fragment at San Bartolo pushed the origin of Maya script back several centuries. It cannot yet be read.
• 250 BC Raised fields and canals across the wetlands Maya lowlands Large-scale drainage and field systems in the bajos supported populations far denser than the rainforest could otherwise carry.
• 100 BC The San Bartolo murals are painted Petén, Guatemala A buried chamber preserved the earliest known Maya painting: the maize god's birth, death and resurrection, and the crowning of a king, in colours still vivid two thousand years later.
• 36 BC The earliest Long Count date Chiapa de Corzo, Mexico A stela fragment carries the oldest known Long Count date in Mesoamerica, counting days from a mythical starting point in 3114 BC — a calendar that would run unbroken for over a thousand years.
• 100 El Mirador is abandoned Petén, Guatemala The greatest Preclassic city emptied over a few generations. Deforestation for lime plaster, soil erosion and drought are all suspected, in a pattern that would repeat eight centuries later.
• 150 Teotihuacan becomes a power Central Mexico The city grew to over 100,000 people. Its reach into the Maya world would shape Maya dynasties for centuries, without anyone yet knowing who its rulers were.
• 250 The Classic period begins Maya lowlands Defined by the practice of erecting dated stone monuments naming individual rulers — history written by and about kings.
• 292 Tikal's earliest dated monument Petén, Guatemala Stela 29 bears the oldest Long Count date in the Maya lowlands and names a king, beginning the continuous dynastic record of the Classic Maya.
• 378 The Entrada Tikal, Guatemala A stranger named Siyaj K'ak' arrived at Tikal from the west. The same day, Tikal's king Chak Tok Ich'aak died. Within a year a new dynasty was installed with strong Teotihuacan connections. The inscriptions record the events without explaining them.
• 426 The Copán dynasty is founded Copán, Honduras K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' arrived and founded a line of sixteen kings who ruled for four centuries. Isotope analysis of his bones shows he grew up elsewhere, probably near Tikal.
• 431 The Palenque dynasty begins Chiapas, Mexico K'uk' Bahlam I founded the line that would produce Pakal, and that left the most complete dynastic inscriptions in the Maya world.
• 435 Quiriguá is founded Izabal, Guatemala Established as a satellite of Copán, controlling the Motagua river route and its jade. Three centuries later it would turn on its patron.
• 500 Caracol emerges as a power Cayo, Belize A city that would grow to over 100,000 people across an area larger than modern Belize City, connected by a network of stone causeways.
• 562 Tikal is defeated Petén, Guatemala Caracol, probably backed by Calakmul, defeated Tikal in a star war. Tikal erected no monuments for 130 years afterwards — a silence archaeologists call the hiatus.
• 599 Calakmul attacks Palenque Chiapas, Mexico The Kaan dynasty of Calakmul struck deep into the west, sacking Palenque and disrupting its dynasty for a generation.
• 603 K'inich Janaab' Pakal is born Palenque, Mexico Born into a dynasty in crisis after two defeats by Calakmul. He would rule for 68 years, one of the longest reigns recorded anywhere in the ancient world.
• 615 Pakal takes the throne at twelve Palenque, Mexico His mother Lady Sak K'uk' ruled in his name for years. Palenque's inscriptions go to unusual lengths to justify a line of descent running through women.
• 631 Calakmul defeats Naranjo Petén, Guatemala The Kaan dynasty's network of client kingdoms reached its widest extent, encircling Tikal on every side.
• 647 Pakal begins rebuilding Palenque Chiapas, Mexico The Temple of the Count and the Palace complex began a construction programme that made Palenque the most refined architecture in the Maya world, with roof combs and corbelled vaults lighter than anything built before.
• 672 Dos Pilas breaks from Tikal Petén, Guatemala A dynasty founded by a Tikal prince switched allegiance to Calakmul and made war on its own city of origin — the best-documented case of a Maya civil war.
• 682 Jasaw Chan K'awiil I accedes at Tikal Petén, Guatemala He ended the 130-year silence, resumed monument building and began the recovery that would break Calakmul's power.
• 682 Lady Six Sky arrives at Naranjo Petén, Guatemala Sent from Dos Pilas to re-found the Naranjo dynasty, she ruled in her own right, led war campaigns and is shown on stelae standing on captives.
• 683 Pakal dies and is buried Palenque, Mexico He was buried in a five-tonne limestone sarcophagus deep inside the Temple of the Inscriptions, wearing a jade mosaic mask. The carved lid shows him falling into the underworld along the world tree.
• 695 Tikal defeats Calakmul Petén, Guatemala Jasaw Chan K'awiil captured Calakmul's king Yich'aak K'ak' and broke the Kaan hegemony. Tikal's great temples were built on the proceeds.
• 711 Palenque's king is captured Toniná, Mexico K'an Joy Chitam II, Pakal's son, was taken prisoner by Toniná and shown bound on a carved monument — a humiliation Palenque's own inscriptions pass over.
• 724 Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil rebuilds Copán Copán, Honduras The thirteenth king filled the Great Plaza with deeply carved portrait stelae, the most three-dimensional sculpture in Maya art.
• 738 Copán's king is beheaded Quiriguá, Guatemala K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat of Quiriguá captured and decapitated his own overlord. Quiriguá, a minor satellite, then built the tallest stelae ever raised by the Maya. Copán erected no monuments for seventeen years.
• 749 The Hieroglyphic Stairway is completed Copán, Honduras Sixty-three steps carrying roughly 2,200 glyph blocks, the longest Maya inscription known. It collapsed and was rebuilt out of order in the 20th century, so much of it can no longer be read in sequence.
• 761 Dos Pilas is destroyed Petén, Guatemala Its population tore down the royal palace for stone and built defensive walls across the plaza. The city was abandoned within a generation.
• 776 Altar Q is dedicated Copán, Honduras The sixteenth king carved all sixteen rulers of the dynasty around a single block, receiving the sceptre from the founder across 350 years — a claim to legitimacy at the moment it was failing.
• 790 The Bonampak murals are painted Chiapas, Mexico Three rooms covering a royal ceremony, a battle and its aftermath, including the torture of captives. Their discovery in 1946 ended the idea that the Maya had been a peaceful civilisation of astronomer-priests.
• 799 Palenque's last monument Chiapas, Mexico The final dated inscription at Palenque. Within decades the court was gone and the buildings were being reclaimed by forest.
• 810 Calakmul's last Long Count date Campeche, Mexico One of the two great powers of the Classic period stopped recording history.
• 822 Copán's last altar is left unfinished Copán, Honduras Altar L was begun in the old style and abandoned mid-carving, with half its figures never completed. Copán's valley population kept farming for another century.
• 830 The collapse accelerates Southern Maya lowlands Across the central and southern lowlands, cities stopped building, dynasties stopped recording, and populations fell by an estimated 80 to 90 per cent within a century. Drought, soil exhaustion, endemic warfare and the failure of divine kingship all played a part.
• 869 Tikal's last dated monument Petén, Guatemala Stela 11 closes a dynastic record that had run without a break since 292. Squatters later camped in the palaces.
• 909 The last Long Count date ever carved Toniná, Mexico Monument 101 at Toniná bears the final date recorded in the Long Count system. The calendar had run for nearly a thousand years of continuous history, and then stopped.
• 950 The north takes over Yucatán, Mexico While the southern lowlands emptied, the northern cities of Yucatán — Uxmal, Chichén Itzá and the Puuc sites — grew to their greatest extent.
• 987 K'uk'ulkan arrives at Chichén Itzá Yucatán, Mexico Later chronicles date the arrival of a Toltec-associated figure to this year. Chichén Itzá's architecture mixes Maya and central Mexican forms in ways still argued over.
• 1000 Chichén Itzá dominates Yucatán Yucatán, Mexico El Castillo, the great ballcourt — the largest in Mesoamerica — and the Sacred Cenote made it the most powerful city in the peninsula, and a pilgrimage centre drawing offerings from as far as Costa Rica.
• 1050 The Puuc cities are abandoned Yucatán, Mexico Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil and Labná emptied over a few generations, a northern echo of the southern collapse.
• 1200 Chichén Itzá falls Yucatán, Mexico The city lost its dominance and much of its population, though the Sacred Cenote kept drawing pilgrims for centuries afterwards.
• 1263 Mayapán becomes the capital Yucatán, Mexico A walled city of around 12,000 people ruled Yucatán through a league of allied noble families, with a scaled-down copy of El Castillo at its centre.
• 1441 Mayapán is sacked Yucatán, Mexico A revolt led by the Xiu family destroyed the city. Yucatán fragmented into sixteen or so rival provinces — which is how the Spanish would find it.
• 1470 The K'iche' kingdom at its height Q'umarkaj, Guatemala The highland K'iche' state dominated its neighbours from the fortified capital of Q'umarkaj, until a Kaqchikel revolt split its power.
• 1511 Gonzalo Guerrero is shipwrecked Yucatán, Mexico A Spanish sailor cast ashore was enslaved, then adopted. He married a Maya noblewoman, tattooed and pierced himself, fathered the first mixed children of the mainland, and refused rescue — later helping the Maya fight the Spanish.
• 1517 The first Spanish expedition lands Yucatán, Mexico Hernández de Córdoba's ships reached the coast and were driven off with heavy losses at Champotón. He died of his wounds, but reports of stone cities reached Cuba.
• 1524 Alvarado invades the highlands Guatemala Pedro de Alvarado, with Spanish troops and thousands of Mexican allies, defeated the K'iche' and burned Q'umarkaj. Tecún Umán, killed in battle at Quetzaltenango, became Guatemala's national hero.
• 1527 The conquest of Yucatán begins Yucatán, Mexico Francisco de Montejo started a campaign that would take nearly twenty years, far longer than the conquest of the Aztec empire, because there was no single capital to capture.
• 1542 Mérida is founded on T'ho Yucatán, Mexico The Spanish built their capital directly on top of a Maya city, quarrying its pyramids for the cathedral — still the oldest cathedral on the American mainland.
• 1546 The Great Maya Revolt Yucatán, Mexico A coordinated uprising across eastern Yucatán killed hundreds of Spanish and allied Maya before being crushed over several months.
• 1562 The burning of the books at Maní Yucatán, Mexico Bishop Diego de Landa held an auto-da-fé, torturing hundreds and burning the Maya codices he could find. Four survive worldwide. A literature accumulated over a thousand years was destroyed in an afternoon.
• 1566 Landa writes his account Spain Recalled to Spain to answer for his cruelty, Landa wrote a description of Maya life that included a garbled glyph alphabet. It became, four centuries later, the key that let the script be read.
• 1650 The Popol Vuh is written down Guatemala K'iche' nobles recorded their creation story in their own language using the Latin alphabet — the hero twins, the underworld, the making of humans from maize. It survived because a priest copied it in 1701.
• 1697 The last independent Maya kingdom falls Petén, Guatemala Nojpetén, the Itza capital on an island in Lake Petén Itzá, was stormed by the Spanish 175 years after Cortés first passed by. Maya political independence ended.
• 1712 The Tzeltal Revolt Chiapas, Mexico Thirty-two Maya towns rose after a village girl reported a vision of the Virgin. The rebels ordained their own priests and held out for months.
• 1761 The Jacinto Canek rebellion Yucatán, Mexico A Maya man crowned himself king at Cisteil and called for the expulsion of the Spanish. He was tortured to death in Mérida's main square.
• 1821 Independence from Spain Mexico and Central America The new republics inherited the colonial land system. For most Maya communities, independence changed who collected the debt rather than whether it was owed.
• 1839 Stephens and Catherwood reach Copán Copán, Honduras An American lawyer and an English architect hacked through forest to find carved monuments nobody outside the region knew existed. Stephens bought the site for fifty dollars.
• 1841 Incidents of Travel is published New York, United States Stephens's account, with Catherwood's drawings, sold in enormous numbers and established that the ruins were built by the ancestors of the Maya people still living around them — a claim many readers refused to accept.
• 1847 The Caste War of Yucatán begins Yucatán, Mexico A Maya uprising against the landowning class drove the whites to the edge of the peninsula and came close to taking Mérida. It became the longest and most successful indigenous rebellion in the Americas.
• 1850 The Talking Cross Chan Santa Cruz, Mexico A cross that spoke to the rebels through an interpreter became the centre of an independent Maya state, the Cruzob, which governed eastern Yucatán for half a century with its own church and army.
• 1864 Landa's manuscript is rediscovered Madrid, Spain Brasseur de Bourbourg found a copy in the Royal Academy of History. It gave scholars their first bridge between Maya glyphs and spoken language, though it would be misread for another ninety years.
• 1880 The Dresden Codex calendar is decoded Dresden, Germany Ernst Förstemann, a librarian working on one of the four surviving codices, worked out the Long Count, the Venus tables and the zero. The Maya arithmetic could be read long before the words could.
• 1901 Chan Santa Cruz is taken Quintana Roo, Mexico The Mexican army occupied the Cruzob capital, the nominal end of the Caste War. Fighting in the bush continued for another thirty years, and no formal surrender was ever signed.
• 1924 The Carnegie excavations begin Chichén Itzá, Mexico Sylvanus Morley's long campaign put Maya archaeology on a professional footing, while insisting the Maya had been peaceful stargazers — a reading his own evidence would eventually demolish.
• 1946 The Bonampak murals are found Chiapas, Mexico Guided by Lacandón Maya, outsiders entered three painted rooms showing a battle and the torture of prisoners. The image of the peaceful Maya did not survive the photographs.
• 1952 Knorozov cracks the script Leningrad, Soviet Union Yuri Knorozov, working from a library copy of Landa and never having seen a Maya site, showed the glyphs recorded sounds, not just ideas. Western scholars dismissed him for years, partly because he was Soviet.
• 1952 Pakal's tomb is opened Palenque, Mexico Alberto Ruz Lhuillier followed a blocked stairway down through the Temple of the Inscriptions for four years and found an intact royal burial — the first proof that Maya pyramids could be tombs, as Egyptian ones were.
• 1958 Emblem glyphs are identified Mexico City, Mexico Heinrich Berlin noticed that certain glyphs appeared only at particular sites, and realised they were the names of cities and their dynasties.
• 1960 The inscriptions turn out to be history Washington, United States Tatiana Proskouriakoff showed that the date patterns on Piedras Negras stelae tracked human lifespans — births, accessions, deaths. The monuments were not astronomy. They were royal biography.
• 1973 The first Palenque Round Table Chiapas, Mexico A small meeting at which Linda Schele, Peter Mathews and Floyd Lounsbury reconstructed Palenque's entire dynasty in a single afternoon. Decipherment moved from decades to months.
• 1981 The Guatemalan genocide Guatemala The army's counter-insurgency campaign destroyed more than 600 villages, most of them Maya. A UN-backed commission later found around 200,000 people killed or disappeared, 83 per cent of them Maya, and concluded that acts of genocide had been committed.
• 1992 Rigoberta Menchú wins the Nobel Peace Prize Guatemala A K'iche' woman who had lost most of her family in the violence was awarded the prize in the five hundredth year after Columbus, putting indigenous rights on the world's front pages.
• 1994 The Zapatista uprising Chiapas, Mexico Mostly Maya rebels seized towns across Chiapas on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect. They kept autonomous municipalities running for decades afterwards, with their own schools and clinics.
• 1996 The Guatemalan Peace Accords Guatemala Thirty-six years of civil war ended with agreements that included, on paper, recognition of indigenous identity and rights. Implementation has been partial at best.
• 2012 The thirteenth baktun ends Mesoamerica On 21 December the Long Count rolled over to 13.0.0.0.0, prompting a global industry in apocalypse. Maya inscriptions treat such rollovers as ordinary — one names a date over 4,000 years in the future.
• 2013 Ríos Montt is convicted, then not Guatemala City, Guatemala The former dictator became the first head of state convicted of genocide by a court in his own country. The constitutional court annulled the verdict ten days later.
• 2018 Lidar reveals a hidden landscape Petén, Guatemala Laser survey through the forest canopy mapped more than 60,000 structures across 2,100 square kilometres — causeways, terraces, fortifications and house mounds. Population estimates for the Classic lowlands were revised upwards several times over.
• 2020 Aguada Fénix is identified Tabasco, Mexico Lidar found the oldest and largest known Maya monumental structure hiding in plain sight on a cattle ranch, built by people who had not yet built cities or kings.
• 2023 Ocomtún is found Campeche, Mexico A previously unrecorded city with pyramids over fifteen metres tall was located in the Balamkú reserve, a reminder of how much remains unsurveyed.
• 2023 The Maya Train divides opinion Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico A 1,500-kilometre railway around the peninsula turned up tens of thousands of archaeological finds while cutting through jungle and cave systems, over objections from Maya communities and environmental groups.
• 2026 Seven million Maya Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras More than thirty Maya languages are spoken today, from Yucatec to K'iche' to Q'eqchi', by around seven million people. The civilisation did not disappear; its cities were abandoned and its books were burned, and the people remained.