Latin America's most highly developed pre-Conquest civilisation, the Maya once inhabited an area covering parts of present-day Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. The hieroglyphic inscriptions they left behind on monuments still puzzle decipherers, but it is thought that the race probably originated around 1000 BC and was sophisticated in the arts, sciences and especially in architecture. The Maya made regular human sacrifices and feared an apocalypse, perhaps rightly, because by the eighth century their cities had been mysteriously abandoned. No one knows what happened to them.
They sound fascinating, but this book isn't the place to start if you want to know anything more about the Maya. Alfred Maudslay (1850-1931) was a pioneer not in the deciphering of inscriptions, but in methods of recording them for the benefit of scholars.
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