The Classic Maya developed the most sophisticated calendars and writing systems in the New world and so in the strict sense are a “historical” civilization. Nevertheless, our ability to extract historical information from Maya texts is constrained by several factors. First, texts are comparatively rare. Only four pre-Spanish books have survived. Other texts were carved or painted on stone, pottery, shell, and bone, but they do not remotely approximate in length or comprehensibly those available for most Old World civilizations. Finally, Maya literary was effectively confined to elite and royal persons, and inscriptions focus almost entirely on their concerns. Because the ancient Maya are only incipiently historical from our perspective, inscriptions, archaeological data, studies of iconography, and ethnohistorical and ethnographic information all must be used to make sense out of the Maya past.

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By A.D. 300, when the first large monument inscriptions appear (the earliest at Tikal in A.D. 292), Classic Maya civilization was in full career, although our best insights derive from archaeological remains of the Late Classic period (A.D. 250-800). Inscriptions, dates, and iconography became most abundant, widespread, and intelligible during this time; scores of elite centers dominated the landscape; and regional populations peaked at overall densities of at least one hundred people per square kilometer. Between A.D. 750 and 900, Classic Maya centers in the central and southern Lowlands were largely abandoned, as the so-called Maya collapse proceeded.