Who were the Maya, and did they ever really disappear?

No, the Maya never disappeared. Their great stone cities in the rainforest were emptied, but the people were not: today their descendants number well over 6 million, speak more than twenty-eight Mayan languages, and live in nearly the same area where their ancestors built their civilization. In Guatemala alone, around 42 percent of the population is Indigenous people of Maya descent, and in Yucatán State in 2009 about 1.2 million people, just under 60 percent of the inhabitants, spoke a Mayan language.

The "vanished civilization" story comes from mixing up two things. In the 9th century the central Maya region suffered a major political collapse: cities were abandoned, dynasties ended, and activity shifted north. But even then a significant Maya presence remained, clustered near permanent water. The last independent Maya city, the Itza capital Nojpetén, only fell to the Spanish in 1697. After that the Maya kept their languages and beliefs alive despite vigorous efforts by Catholic missionaries, and the 260-day calendar is still used in highland Guatemala and Chiapas.

"Maya" is really a modern umbrella word. The many peoples of the region did not share one identity or one government for most of their history. What they did share was an astonishing culture: temples, glyphs, mathematics, a calendar and astronomy, and the most sophisticated writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas.

So the Maya are best understood not as a lost people but as many peoples whose story runs from the first cities around 750 BC to today.