The Maya
![Map of the Maya Region Maya Region](images/maya_map.jpg)
At the start of the Late Classic the Maya lowlands in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras boasted of great cities, wealth, and relative stability.
By the end of this period, however, these cities had been abandoned, never to recover again as the florescence of Maya civilization shifted to the cities in northern Yucatan and eventually to the southern highlands of Guatemala where new Maya kingdoms arose.