Maya

Maya denotes the Mayan language family, whose members are spoken across southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and neighboring parts of Central America. All descend from Proto-Mayan, placed by reconstruction in the Guatemalan highlands; around 2200 BCE the Huastecan branch split off first, while the remaining languages diversified.

During the Classic period of roughly 250 to 900, scribes wrote a prestigious Ch'olan variety in Maya hieroglyphs, leaving thousands of inscriptions and a handful of bark-paper codices. In 1337 the Yucatán was divided among rival city-states after the fall of Mayapan.

From the 1520s to the 1540s the Spanish conquest brought the peninsula and the Guatemalan highlands under colonial rule. Missionaries then taught the Latin alphabet, and Maya speakers produced colonial literature in their own languages, including the K'iche' Popol Vuh and the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam.