Much of ancient Maya civilization flourished in the period from AD 250–900 in the area encompassing the whole of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, and the countries of Belize, Guatemala, western Honduras, and El Salvador. During the course of nearly twenty centuries of development, the distinctive architectural styles of the Maya heartland evolved and collapsed. As with other aspects of the Native American legacy, ancient Maya architecture was once seen as far too sophisticated to have been the product of aboriginal genius, and was long credited to Old World voyagers ranging from Egyptians to Israelites, and from white men or Danes to “great white Jewish Toltec Vikings” (Silverberg, 1968).
As scholarly knowledge of Maya architecture, settlement patterns, and city planning has grown exponentially over the course of the last 60 years, so too has our respect and admiration for this ancient American tradition (Morley, 1983). Until quite recently,...
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Mendoza, R.G. (2016). City Planning: Maya City Planning. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_8514
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