The Maya
Independent city-states in the rainforest with full writing, calendars and astronomy.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 250 years
- Known to
- ± 20 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
Maya civilisation reaches its classic form from around 250 CE across the Yucatan and Guatemala — Tikal, Palenque, Calakmul and dozens more, each an independent kingdom with a divine ruler, in shifting alliance and constant war. They develop the only fully worked-out writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas, capable of recording anything spoken, along with positional notation including zero and astronomical tables of remarkable accuracy.