Modern-Day Countries of the Mayan Empire on a Map

The Mayan Empire did not exist. Rather, the Maya were organized into a bunch of warring city states, that as far as I know, were never united until the Spanish conquered them all over a several hundred year period.

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The Maya were not an empire. They were like the Greeks or Mesopotamians in that their civilization was divided into city-states.

Not true. Yes, they were a group of city-states with the same culture, but they also fought together to conquer territory, and almost never against each other.

That doesn't make them an empire. Also do you have a source that the Maya cities almost never fought against each other? This wiki page doesn't seem to support that claim.

Maybe during the absolute peak of the power of the League of Mayapan, which was a loose alliance of Mayan city-states that controlled most of the Yucatan, you could argue that they were in any way fighting together or unified, but that alliance did not control anywhere near as much territory as shown here, and it was only dominant across the entire peninsula for around a half century or so, before beginning to disintegrate, though it remained a regional power in the northern third of the peninsula for a few centuries.

We have plenty of accounts of Mayan city-states fighting one another. The Classical Period of Mayan History is more or less defined by the continual wars and proxy wars between the rival city states of Tikal and Calakmul, with induvidual wars going on for decades.

I think the issue is that when it comes to Precolombian societies, we tend to use "Empire" as a way to mean "civilized". At least that's the connotation it's seemed to have in my upbringing. The "three empires" as I learned them were the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, a characterization which seems to be less about political cohesion and more about the fact that these peoples had architecture, agriculture, and population somewhat comparable to western European states at the time. At least that's my headcanon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Awesome quiz Nilles!

Maybe lower time?