The Mayan Indians lived in Mexico for thousands of years before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. The Maya were an intelligent, culturally rich people whose achievements were many. The Mayan people knew a lot about nature and the world around them. This knowledge helped them to live a better life than most people of that time, because they could use it to make their lives more comfortable and rewarding. Knowledge about tools and farming, for instance, made their work easier and more productive. In ancient Mexico there were many clearings in the forest. In each clearing was a village with fields of different crops around it. The Maya cut down trees with stone axes and planted seeds by digging holes in the ground with pointed sticks. A farmer was able to grow crops that produced food for several people. But not every Maya had to be a farmer. Some were cloth makers, builders, or priests. The Maya believed in many gods. The people built large temples to honor their gods. Skillful workers built cities around these temples. It was difficult to construct these cities, because they had no horses to carry the heavy stone needed. Workers had to carry the building materials themselves. Today, many of these ancient Mayan cities and temples are still standing. Measuring time was important to the Maya, so they developed a system for measuring it accurately. Farmers needed to know when to plant and harvest their crops. Mayan priests made a system to keep track of time. They wrote numbers as dots (...) and bars ( - ). A dot was one and a bar was five. The Mayan priests studied planets. They made a calendar from what they learned. The year was divided into. 18 months of 20 days each with five days left over. The Mayan calendar was far more accurate than the European calendars of the time. Around the year 800, the Maya left their villages and beautiful cities, never to return. No one knows why. They may have died from an infectious disease. They may have left because the soil could no longer grow crops. Archaeologists are still trying to find the lost secrets of the Maya. They are still one of our greatest mysteries. This article may be taken from ______.