The ancient Maya were amazing people who built a great civilization. That fact alone is a reason to find them interesting. But one of the most fascinating questions about ancient Maya civilization (200–900 CE) is what happened to cause it to end.

Archaeologists believe that the Maya left their cities sometime between 800 and 900. It’s possible this event happened over just a few decades. Until the 900s, the Maya kept careful historical records. They used their hieroglyphs to carve names and dates on pyramids and temples. Then in the 900s, the writing mysteriously stopped. The temples and pyramids began to fall into disrepair.

So what happened? Archaeologists have theories, but they can’t find clear proof for any one of them.

One theory holds that farmers rose up against the priests and nobles. But this raises another question: what happened to the farmers? There is no evidence of a new group of people replacing the old ones in power.

Some have guessed that disease wiped out the Maya population. But no mass burial grounds have been found. Archaeologists have found signs that some people in this area did die from diseases. Almost all of these deaths, however, seemed to have occurred after 1500, when the Spanish brought new diseases to the Americas. The Maya had been gone for years before that.

Did disaster strike the Maya? Did drought or heavy rainfall bring famine? Was there an earthquake? Did shifting trade routes affect the lowland Maya rulers and their settlements? Could invaders have toppled the civilization?

No one knows for sure. We only know that the once-great Maya cities were abandoned and swallowed up by the rain forest. The Maya scattered. But the people themselves did not disappear. Today, millions still speak languages related to ancient Mayan. These ancestors of the pyramid-builders have lived in villages, towns, and cities in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras for centuries. They have a rich heritage, one that we are learning more about with each passing year.