Cauac Maya Tzolkin Calendar Kin

The Maya are an indigenous people or group of indigenous people in Central America, known especially for the empires they founded in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and their highly developed culture. In their heyday, the Maya represented a powerful advanced civilization. One usually speaks of "the" Mayan culture; in fact, there are also many similarities between the various sites from the past - but behind this culture are different peoples with Mayan languages that are more or less closely related to each other. Not only because of the spatial conditions one traditionally distinguishes between highland Maya (in Chiapas and Guatemala) and lowland Maya (on the Yucatán peninsula, in Petén and Belize).

Throughout history, a shift of cultural centers from the highlands to the lowlands and then to the north of the Yucatán Peninsula (e.g., Chichen Itza) can be observed. At the time of the arrival of the Spanish at the end of the 15th century, most of the centers of postclassic Maya culture were located in the north of Yucatán, while the central lowlands were sparsely populated. In the southwestern highlands, quite independent Maya cultures existed at that time, for example the culture of the Quiché (Q'umarkaj), the Cakchiquel (Iximché), the Mam (Zaculeu) or the Pocomam (Mixco Viejo). Unlike many other indigenous peoples, the Maya still exist today and live in the Mexican part of Yucatán, in Chiapas and in Tabasco, as well as in Belize and Guatemala, and also in El Salvador and Honduras.

The Maya are famous for the cultivation of corn, their mathematics and for their highly developed calendar, written in Mayan script. The script, now largely deciphered, was the only known fully developed writing medium in the Americas until the arrival of the Spanish. Arts and crafts (working stone, ceramics, wood, textiles) and painting were highly developed, metalworking (gold, silver, copper) played a role only late and almost only for ritual purposes, not for tool making. In the Maya cities there were high temple pyramids, Maya acropolis, palaces, observatories and ball courts.