The Maya is a civilisation from Central America which occupied the area we now know as southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

The Maya are among the most ancient peoples of this area, and were the only peoples to develop a full written language of hieroglyphs. Thus they were able to write their history in books centuries before the Spanish conquest.

The Maya were, like nearby societies, pyramid builders, using them as places where they could be closest to their gods in the heavens, and also as tombs for their kings.

Maya can be traced back to at least 2000BC, and probably before. They survived through over 3000 years, with their unique civilisation undisturbed, their influence stretching out 1000km from their heartland.

Most of the buildings we now see date from the last part of this period, but this is because they built new temples right over the top of old ones.

The Maya civilisation is like other civilisations and empires of the area, for example, the Aztec, because there was much trade and cultural contact between them. The Aztec carved out their empire towards the end of Maya times, so they did not have the long history of the Maya.

The Maya empire was made up of a number of city states which often went to war with each other. In the area that the Aztec eventually occupied, there was another civilisation, even stronger than the Maya. In the end, this other civilisation took over the Maya, although they allowed them to continue in their own ways. Then that civilisation faded away, leaving the Maya as independent rulers again.

The Maya civilisation collapsed centuries before the Spanish arrived, so they were not destroyed by the Spanish in the same way as the Aztecs. When the Spanish arrived, they did not even know of the great Maya cities, because they had been abandoned and the rainforest had spread back and covered up all of their lands.

Nobody really knows why the Maya left their cities and spread out into villages among the hills and mountains, where they can still be found today. The most likely cause is that their populations grew to be too big, so that they started to need more food than the poor rainforest soils could provide. They were further weakened by wars between cities. So in the end, the people started to starve, rioted against their rulers and burned down their palaces before leaving to find other ways of surviving.

There are still about six million people of Maya descent living in the area that was once controlled by the Maya civilisations.