"For many centuries before Christ to about AD 900, the lowland Maya civilization achieved its apogee in the and the adjacent portions of Mexico, Belize, and western Honduras, what today we call the "Maya lowlands" ... For over 1,500 years, this region was covered by a network of kingdoms dominated by "holy lords," sacred kings who were linked by complex ties of kinship, ritual, trade, and military alliance. Their political and religious centers included great acropoli of massed palaces, temples, stone tombs, and ballcourts. These centers of power and pageantry were supported by thousands of farmers who practiced a complex system rain forest agriculture—a system which only is beginning to be understood."