Yucatán

(noun)

A geographic area in the south of modern day Mexico near Belize.

Related Terms

Examples of Yucatán in the following topics:

  • The Decline of the Maya

    • The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatán continued to flourish; some of the important sites in this era were Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Edzná, and Coba.
    • The area degenerated into competing city-states until the Spanish arrived in the Yucatán and shifted the power dynamics.
    • The Spanish campaign, sometimes termed "The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán," would prove to be a lengthy and dangerous exercise for the invaders from the outset, and it would take some 170 years and tens of thousands of Indian auxiliaries before the Spanish established substantive control over all Maya lands.
    • However, the Yucatán does not offer rich mining opportunities, and some areas were difficult to navigate because of the dense jungle environment.

  • Meso-American Culture

    • The aboriginal Americans settled in the Yucatán peninsula of present-day Mexico around 10,000 BCE.
    • The region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre.

  • Biodiversity Change through Geological Time

    • The cause of this extinction is now understood to be the result of a cataclysmic impact of a large meteorite or asteroid off the coast of what is now the Yucatán Peninsula.

  • Architecture of the Maya

    • The Maya civilization which had emerged during the late Preclassic period (250 BCE-250 CE), reached its peak in the southern lowlands of Guatemala during the Classic period (250-900 CE), and shifted to northern Yucatan during the Postclassic period (900-1521 CE).
    • Priests would climb the steep stone staircase on the exterior to reach the temple on top, which recalls the kind of pole-and-thatch houses the Maya still build in parts of the Yucatan today.
    • Their principal center, Chichen Itza, (Yucatan State) Mexico which means "at the mouth of the well of the Itza," flourished from the ninth to the thirteenth century CE, eventually covering about six square miles.

  • European Empires in North America

    • The Spanish conquest of the Maya civilization—based in the Yucatán Peninsula of present-day Mexico and northern Central America—was a much longer campaign, lasting from 1551 to 1697.

  • Codices of the Mixtec

    • They also produced beautiful manuscripts and great metal work, and influenced the international artistic style used from Central Mexico to Yucatan.