Mayan Civilization Quotes

“The Maya did not emerge from the lost tribes of Israel or Atlantis. Instead, based on overwhelming evidence from linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology, ancestors of all New World people, including the Maya, migrated from Asia as nomadic hunters and gatherers. The debate surrounds the timing of their arrival in the Yucatan region and whether the migration across the Bering Strait occurred at about 12,000 BCE, 40,000 BCE or even earlier. Scholars continue to debate whether the Maya made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming villages in the lowland areas they occupied or if it spread into the lowlands from elsewhere.”
― Hourly History, Mayan Civilization: A History From Beginning to End

“when the Spanish arrived in the 1580s, along the Caribbean coast, a Franciscan priest and his secretary Antonio de Ciudad Real asked some Indians, "What's the name of this place? How did it get its name?" In response, the Indians said uic athan, which means, “what do you say” or “what do you speak?” In other words, the Maya didn't understand them. Ciudad Real wrote, "The Spaniard ordered it set down to be called Yucatan.”
― Hourly History, Mayan Civilization: A History From Beginning to End