Chichén Itzá summary

Maya, Indigenous people of Mesoamerica occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. In the early 21st century some 30 Mayan languages were spoken by more than five million people, most of whom were bilingual in Spanish. Before the Spanish conquest of

Mexico, country of southern North America and the third largest country in Latin America, after Brazil and Argentina. Mexican society is characterized by extremes of wealth and poverty, with a limited middle class wedged between an elite cadre of landowners and investors on the one hand and masses

Yucatán Peninsula, a northeastern projection of Central America, lying between the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north and the Caribbean Sea to the east. Encompassing some 76,300 square miles (197,600 square km), it includes the Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán and, in the

World Heritage site, any of various areas or objects inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. The sites are designated as having “outstanding universal value” under the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural