Mayan History

Nobody really knows exactly why they came to this narrow river valley in what is now western Honduras.

And nobody really knows why they left.

But for hundreds of years, the ancient Maya lived here and achieved a level of civilization unmatched in the Americas until many centuries later.

In the ancient Maya world, Copan was a famous polity; its site glyph appeared on numerous monuments throughout the Maya world. By the 700s AD, in the tropical pine forests of the Copan Valley, more than 27,000 people lived and worked. Here, the Maya refined their significant developments in commerce, urban planning, mathematics, astronomy, writing, architecture and art.