For many people in the Western world, Maya culture has been reduced to sacrificial rituals, disfigurement, bloodletting and other dark depictions of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization ... the rain ...

Evidence indicates that the site was first settled as early as the fifth century A.D. but was apparently abandoned thereafter. Then, in 964, the Itzás, a Maya-speaking people from the Petén rain ...

Now, with “Maya,” they’ve built a temple to the foundational civilizations of Latin America that is at once ... strong goddesses or making the sun a feminine source of life.

Jade Skirt: The gods and spirits are so important to my people, the Maya. The king is our head priest ... K’inich Ahau is our Sun god and Chaac brings us rain. The Maize god provides some ...

Some 550 years ago the last of the great city-states of the Maya civilization ... early childhood when the bone was pliable. Credit: Christian Rodriguez Clay pots bearing the faces of gods ...

In the Maya’s belief system, sunsets were associated with death and decay. Every evening the sun god, Kinich Ahau, made the perilous journey through Xibalba, the Maya underworld, to be born anew ...

Each wing is dedicated to a separate civilization ... the Maya calendars although displaying the Aztec Stone of the Sun (including one, we regret, that was published on Scientific American Online).