The Maya Area forms the eastern part of Mesoamerica, defined by the distribution of archaeological sites with the distinctive material culture of Classic Maya civilization and by the historical distribution of Mayanspeaking peoples (Maps 5.1, 5.2). It runs from the flat, low-lying peninsula of Yucatan, thrusting north into the Caribbean and dividing it from the Gulf of Mexico, southward through the highlands of the continental divide to the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador. On the east the formal boundary of the Maya lands has been defined along the valleys of the Ulua, flowing north into the Caribbean, and the Lempa, running through central El Salvador to the Pacific, but recent field research has shown that this frontier is, rather, a broad zone of shirting cultural and linguistic affiliations. The same is true of the western boundary, which runs across Tabasco and Chiapas east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, although here the historical linguistic interface of Mayan and Mixe-Zoque groups is fairly close to the western margin of Classic Maya culture as defined archaeologically. Although the prehispanic cultures of the Isthmus region and those farther west in Oaxaca, the Gulf Coast, and central Mexico were as early in their emergence and in many respects as complex as Maya civilization, the boundary between eastern and western Mesoamerica is strikingly clear in spite of continuous contact across it.

Within the limits of the Maya Area the ancient populations seem to have been almost exclusively of the Mayan linguistic group, apart from some eastward penetration of the highlands and Pacific coastal area by peoples from western Mesoamerica during the late first and early second millennia A.D. (see Sheets, Chap. 9, and Sharer, Chap. 10, this volume). The greatest diversity of language is in the highlands of Guatemala and adjacent Chiapas, thought to have been the area of Maya origins: Terr ence Kaufman recognized twenty-three languages clustered in ten groups and three main divisions, of which the majority are in the highland zone (Map 5.2). His eastern division of Quichean and Mamean in Guatemala adjoins the Kanjobal and Chuj of the western division; this also includes the Tzeltal-Tzotzil of Chiapas and the Cholan, Choi, and Chorti, who formerly occupied almost the entire Usumacinta basin as well as the lower Motagua Basin, thus spanning the base of the Yucatan Peninsula from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Honduras.