To understand the Maya, let’s begin by considering their environment, which we think of as “jungle” or “tropical rainforest.” That’s not true, and the reason why not proves to be important. Properly speaking, tropical rainforests grow in high-rainfall equatorial areas that remain wet or humid all year round. But the Maya homeland lies more than a thousand miles from the equator, at latitudes 17° to 22°N, in a habitat termed a “seasonal tropical forest.”
