A culture of peoples residing in the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula (lowland Maya) & highlands of today Chiapas Mexico, Guatemala, & Belieze. Often referred to as a singular 'civilization' the Maya were never unified into a singular 'Maya state' instead existing as related polities. The Maya used a fully fledged phonetic script & wrote in classic Mayan. Since European colonization the unifying classic Mayan language has split into many others, notably Yucatec & K'iche, as well as literacy in the classic Mayan script being wiped from memory by the Spanish until very recently. I highly reccomend The Friar and the Maya for an in-depth view on this latter process.