Classic Maya civilization
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The classic Maya civilization flourished in the lowlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras between about 250 and 900 CE, a world of competing city-states rather than a single empire. Cities such as Tikal, Calakmul, Palenque and Copan competed for alliance and tribute, their kings recording accessions, wars and dynastic anniversaries on carved stelae in the Maya script, the fully developed writing system of the pre-Columbian Americas. The Long Count calendar tracked time over millions of days, and astronomers at Copan observed Venus and eclipses with an accuracy that later astonished European observers. Rulers lived in palace complexes above their subjects, played the ritual ball game, and commissioned the stucco portraits and painted ceramics that survive in museums. Maize was the staple crop, grown on raised fields and terraces, and trade networks carried jade, obsidian and cacao over hundreds of kilometres. From the ninth century the southern lowlands were abandoned: warfare, drought evidenced by lake sediments, and the exhaustion of soils all played a part, and the northern Yucatan cities such as Chichen Itza outlasted them, while millions of Maya speakers remained. Copan's dynastic records run back to the fifth century, giving a chronology for the whole Maya region.