Maya

Maya (mī'u, Span. mä'yä) [key], indigenous people of S Mexico and Central America, occupying an area comprising the Yucatán peninsula and much of the present state of Chiapas, Mexico; Guatemala and Belize; parts of El Salvador and extreme western Honduras. Speaking a group of closely related languages (with an outlier, Huastec, spoken in the Pánuco basin of Mexico), the population of Maya today is over 4 million.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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