Yucatán Peninsula - Wikipedia

 

Pre-human

edit Main article: Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event

The Yucatán Peninsula is the site of the Chicxulub crater impact, which was created 66 million years ago[16] by an asteroid of about 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) in diameter at the end of the Cretaceous Period.[17]

Prehistory

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In 2020, an underwater archaeological expedition led by Jerónimo Avilés excavated Chan Hol cave, near the Tulum archaeological site in the state of Quintana Roo on the peninsula, and revealed the skeleton of a woman approximately 30 years of age who lived at least 9,900 years ago. According to craniometric measurements, the skull is believed to conform to the mesocephalic pattern, like the other three skulls found in Tulum caves. Three different scars on the skull of the woman showed that she was hit with something hard and her skull bones were broken. Her skull also had crater-like deformations and tissue deformities that appeared to be caused by a bacterial relative of syphilis.[18]

According to study lead researcher Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, "It really looks as if this woman had a very hard time and an extremely unhappy end of her life. Obviously, this is speculative, but given the traumas and the pathological deformations on her skull, it appears a likely scenario that she may have been expelled from her group and was killed in the cave, or was left in the cave to die there".[citation needed]

The newly discovered skeleton was 140 meters away from the Chan Hol 2 site. Although archaeologists assumed the divers had found the remains of the missing Chan Hol 2, the analysis soon proved that these assumptions were erroneous. Stinnesbeck compared the new bones to old photographs of Chan Hol 2 and showed that the two skeletons represent different individuals.[19]

Due to their distinctive features, study co-researcher Samuel Rennie suggest the existence of at least two morphologically diverse groups of people living separately in Mexico during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene.[20]

Maya

edit Main article: Maya civilization

 

The Yucatán Peninsula constitutes a significant proportion of the ancient Maya lowlands and was the central location of the Maya Civilization. The Maya culture also extended south of the Yucatán Peninsula into Guatemala, Honduras, and the highlands of Chiapas.[7] There are many Maya archaeological sites throughout the peninsula; some of the better-known are Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum, and Uxmal.[21]

In the 9th century, there was a widespread political collapse in the central Maya region, resulting in civil wars, the abandonment of cities, and a northward shift of population.[22] The Postclassic period saw the rise of Chichen Itza in the north.

Further information: Putún

Spanish conquest

edit Main article: Spanish conquest of Yucatán

The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a prolonged affair; the Maya kingdoms resisted integration into the Spanish Empire with such tenacity that their defeat took almost two centuries.

With the Caste War of Yucatán, which started in the 1840s, all non-natives were driven from the region. The independent Mayan state of Chan Santa Cruz was conquered by the Mexican federal army in 1901.

Indigenous Maya and Mestizos of partial Maya descent make up a sizable portion of the region's population, and Mayan languages are widely spoken there.