Introduction: Before the last glacier of the Ice Age melted northward, a wandering people traveled from Asia to America across a natural bridge of land which melted away into the Bering Strait. The islands between Asia and Alaska used to be the mountain tops of the sunken land. Most scientists agree that the journeying took place between ten and twenty thousand years ago.

Location: The territory covered by this Mayan.civilization was less than half the size of Texas. To the south the land of the Maya included the beautiful highlands and plateaus Guatemalaa and a small northern corner of Honduras. Its central area extended roughly west to the Gulf of Mexico. and east to the Caribbean Sea, and included Briitish Houduras and 'that portion of Guatamala called the Department of the Peten. Peten is famous for its lush, steamy rainforest. At the top of the Yucatan Penninsula is a low plain country, its dry meager soil covering the earth's limestone crust. This inhospitable land also belonged. to the Maya.

Climate The Mayan countries has a subtropical climate, with a well-marked dry season from late February to May and a wet season from June, to November which is interrupted from August to September by another dry season. The mean temperature is 74 degrees F (23 degrees C) in December and 84 degrees F (27degrees C) in July. The mean annual rainfall increases sharply from 51 inches in the north to 74 inches in the south. Trade winds blow onshore most of the year, and from September to December northerly winds bring cooler, drier air. Hurricanes are a threat from July through November.

Here is a link to more information on landscape, climate, and vegetation from Introduction to the Maya World.

The southern Maya country is a land of mountains, swamps, and tropical jungle. The southern half of the counry is dominated by the rugged Maya Mountains, an igneous plateau cut by erosion into hills arid valleys that stretch in a southwesterly to northeasterly direction.