Mayan

·add. ·adj Of or pertaining to the Mayas.

II. Mayan ·add. ·adj Designating, or pertaining to, an American Indian linguistic stock occupying the Mexican States of Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatan, together with a part of Guatemala and a part of Salvador. The Mayan peoples are dark, short, and brachycephallic, and at the time of the discovery had attained a higher grade of culture than any other American people. They cultivated a variety of crops, were expert in the manufacture and dyeing of cotton fabrics, used cacao as a medium of exchange, and were workers of gold, silver, and copper. Their architecture comprised elaborately carved temples and places, and they possessed a superior calendar, and a developed system of hieroglyphic writing, with records said to go back to about 700 ·a.d.