Kharara

  The Rise and Fall of the Maya Civilization: Power, Landscape and Resilience in the Maya World of Mesoamerica – By Dr. Rahul S Kharat Abstract: The Maya produced one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the pre-modern Americas. Across the lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, Guatemala and Belize, and the highlands and Pacific piedmont to the south, they built cities of monumental stone, developed the only fully deciphered indigenous script of the New World, charted the movements of the Sun, Moon and Venus, and sustained dense populations in a challenging tropical environment. This article surveys the long arc of Maya history, from the first villages of the Preclassic period to the great kingdoms of the Classic age, the political and demographic disintegration of the southern lowlands in the ninth and tenth centuries CE, the Postclassic revival in the north and highlands, and the Spanish conquest and its aftermath. It reviews the principal explanations offered for the Class...