The Maya are the native people of Central America, living in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. As early as 1500 BCE the Maya had settled into villages and had agriculture and farming. By 200 CE they had built great cities with palaces, temples, courts for playing ball, and pyramids. They cultivated crops, worked gold and copper, and used a hieroglyphic writing which has now been mostly deciphered. Before the Spanish conquest of the Americas in the early 16th century, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilisations of the Western hemisphere.

We know about Maya civilisation through the ruins that have been found of their great cities, of the fragments of Mayan writing that has been discovered, and through stories and legends that have been handed down through time or preserved in books such as the Popol Vuh.

Here are some of their fascinating stories for you to read.