At the height of the Mayan empire 1,400 years ago, the city of Tikal in modern-day Guatemala was a bustling metropolis the size of London during the Middle Ages. But when the Spanish conquistadors ...

This story appears in the September 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. Your National Geographic Society membership helped fund recent excavations at Holmul and La Corona, Guatemala.

When most people think of ancient Maya civilization, they imagine godlike kings building towering pyramids and reveling in bloody human sacrifice. But commoners also played a significant role in the ...

Chichén Itzá, "the mouth of the well of the Itzás," was likely the most important city in the Yucatán from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Evidence indicates that the site was first settled as ...

Whether it's Tulum with its breathtaking ocean view, Cobá with its jungle setting and climbable pyramid, or Chichén Itzá with its grand architecture, each offers a unique yet equally impressive ...

FOR DECADES, scholars have argued about what caused the so-called Maya collapse. Several million Maya lived in southeastern Mexico and northern Central America in the early 800s. A hundred years later ...

The quest to decipher Maya hieroglyphs began with the very Spanish invaders whose hegemonic rule did so much to wipe out the ancient Maya script. Among them was the conquistador Hernando Cortes ...

On the edge of a small cornfield near the ruined Maya city of Chichén Itzá, in the sparse shade of a tropical tree, a voice ricochets wildly up the mouth of a well. “¡Lo vi! ¡Lo vi!” ...

A holidaymaker and another man have reportedly been arrested after they scaled the stairs of The Temple of Kukulcán in Mexico ...