What makes the lowland area so exciting, is that it in modern times, it is one of the few places in the world where active archeology digs are ongoing. New discoveries at El Mirador, at Yaxha National Park in Guatemala, site of one of the Survivor television shows, and elsewhere in the region, provide greater insight into the cultures that once inhabited the region. Maya territories and cities developed at different times. But there was no unified Maya state, although alliances may have existed between kings of neighboring ‘cities’. Many tribes, the Itza and the Toltec among them, were also competing with the Maya for dominance.

Maya cities were not cities in the sense that urban planning developed. There was no grid; many were developed outward from a temple area or main plaza.

The area where the Maya existed is north of the Equator but south of the Tropic of Cancer. This area comprises climate that provided rain and a density of trees for use in building. In fact it was recently postulated, that the Maya in some areas might have brought about their own demise by clearing too many trees used to heat the lime that became the plaster used to cover many buildings. The available wetlands and streams may have become clogged with the lime plaster, further robbing them of an available water supply for agriculture.

Maya Houses

So within the larger scheme of the lowland area, and the Maya 'cities' and compounds within the region, what were the homes of the average Maya like? According to Mary Ellen Miller in Maya Art and Architecture, Maya houses were one-room homes. So much attention seems to have been given the creation of temples and monuments that there was little attention paid to private interior space. Some houses had corbelled roofs of stone; some had flat, ‘trabiated’ (designed or constructed with horizontal beams or lintels), roofs which used wooden beams and stucco. The Maya used plaster and stucco made from broken up limestone that was superheated by the burning of green, unseasoned trees. Paint was used; the mineral cinnabar was used as the main pigment for the color red.

Welcome to the Lowland Area!