The Maya Area is of outstanding archaeological importance because its early inhabitants achieved the highest civilization in pre-Columbian America. The early Maya and Mexicans surpassed other highly developed pre-Columbian American cultures because they possessed a form of writing and an intricate calendrical system. While the question of priority and derivation of culture in the Mexican-Maya area is still a moot one, there is no doubt that the Maya developed writing, representational art, and the sciences of mathematics and astronomy to a degree of excellence far beyond that attained by the Mexicans.

The Maya lived, before the Conquest as today, in Yucatan and the country south of it. We have little evidence concerning the archaic or earliest peoples of this region. We know that in the southern part there was such a cultural substratum, identified by modelled figurines and distinctive pottery.