The Maya classic era: cities of the calendar

Maya city-states developed the most sophisticated pre-Columbian script and astronomical calendars, recording dynasties and sky events in stone.

Why it matters

Maya scribes achieved full literacy with a logo-syllabic script and tracked lunar and planetary cycles with impressive precision — independent invention of both writing and mathematical astronomy.

Related events

• c. 100 CE – 550 CE

  Teotihuacan becomes the Americas' first metropolis

  A planned city of perhaps 100,000 people with monumental pyramids, apartment compounds and apparent multiethnic governance rose in the Basin of Mexico.

  Civilizations · americas

• c. 750 BCE – 100 BCE

  Babylonian astronomers systematize the sky

  Late Babylonian scribes kept centuries of systematic records of celestial positions and developed mathematical schemes to predict lunar and planetary phenomena.

  Science · middle east

• c. 1325

  Tenochtitlan rises from Lake Texcoco

  The Mexica built their capital on an island, engineering causeways, aqueducts and chinampa gardens into one of the world's largest cities.

  Civilizations · americas

Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica — Maya civilization