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Relief from Palenque
© Jacob Rus / Wikipedia
The people of the Maya, whose origin is unknown, settled in Central America around 2000 BC. From 300 until 900 AD, the territorial dominion of this high sophisticated civilization reached from the peninsula Yucatán via Guatemala, parts of the Mexican states Tabasco and Chiapas, Belize to the adjoining territories of Honduras and El Salvador.
The Maya possessed a knowledgeable arithmetic and a sophisticated astronomy. They could calculate eclipses, the orbits of the moon and planets as well as reference points of the planets among each other and to the earth precisely. They also had an extremely complex calendar (the "Maya calendar"), which has been the most precise one in the world until the 16.Century. The centre of their religion was the worship of a plurality of divinities, above all the Creator-God Kukulcan. Many ruins of the big religious Maya centres are well preserved, for example Palenque, Copán, Tikal and Chichén Itzá.
With the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish in 1521, the culture of the Maya was destroyed almost completely. Their records were burned up by overzealous missionaries, to Christianize the “primitive Indians” from their point of view better. Only three scripts (Codices) of the residual scientific and religious works remained, the complete decipherment of which has not been successful till this day.