Summary

The Maya ruins draw tourists and are currently surrounded by healthy foliage and are remote from modern civilization. The Mayan society was once the most advanced Native American civilization in the Americas, prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Currently the abandoned Maya cities are considered “pure” archeological sites because there was nothing built over them. The Maya cities were hidden by forest growth and were only recently discovered. Forty-Four sites and cities and, judging from their art and architecture, it was obvious that the cities had been inhabited by an advanced civilization.

Scientists have been able to study the Mayan culture much more thoroughly than other collapses societies because of the pristine condition that the abandoned civilization had been left in. Unlike other smaller cultures that collapsed, the Maya civilization was large and advanced and located in an environment that...