What if that the mayan cities started to send a large amount of people to new cities toward Guatemala and Honduras and further south over time starting in the mid classic age. When the pop of their cities reach capacity they would gives these people the resource to start the new cities.
 
Yes but this was mostly in their core territory or city between the lowlands and the highlands. I saying pushing into native tribe territory in central America
 
As Roger said, this is OTL. As early as the Preclassic the center of Maya civilization was Guatemala, the Maya population in southern Guatemala actually decreased by the time of the Classic Era and the Maya expansion went north and west into Mexico rather than the other way around, the Yucatan didn't have any huge major cities until the Late Classic at least. They also did have some major cities in Honduras, like Copan. As for going further into Honduras, generally the Maya didn't have huge waves of settler groups until the Terminal Classic, aka the great "collapse" of Maya civilization, when various waves of enigmatic Mayan-speaking groups moved across the area settling mostly in Tabasco and the Yucatan, and eventually some refugees went back into the Guatemalan lowlands which had been the epicenter of Classic civilization. I suppose it's not outside the realms of possibility for one group to head into central or eastern Honduras but they'd be getting further away from the various trade centers on which Mesoamerican civilization so relied. Best I can figure, for whatever reason there's no Classic Collapse but we still see western groups like the Putun Maya migrating from the west and either some of them pass through the region or they displace local groups who in turn go further east.
 
Colonia getting started maybe?

Yes, I think what the OP is looking for is not populations moving when things get bad, but an expansion of the whole.

The new cities to co-exist with the old ones

But my Maya knowledge is rather notional, so actually coming up with suggestions is a puzzle to me
 
Yes that what I saying Mayans starting to move large amount of people to expand not because thing got bad to areas of Guatemala that the Mayan have never been before and Honduras and then eventually started pushing into Costa Rica and the Panama where they probably be stopped in that area by swamps and the. gradually put more and more cities into these areas
 
Yes that what I saying Mayans starting to move large amount of people to expand not because thing got bad to areas of Guatemala that the Mayan have never been before and Honduras and then eventually started pushing into Costa Rica and the Panama where they probably be stopped in that area by swamps and the. gradually put more and more cities into these areas
The problem is that historically mass resettlement by the Maya was a response to societal collapses in the Preclassic, Classic, and even Postclassic eras. If things aren't bad they aren't going to be moving a large number of people around. At best maybe, and this is a big maybe since the Terminal Classic/early Postclassic era isn't very well understood since there's few records from the era and post-conquest accounts are unreliable and often mythologized, some of the "Mexicanized" Maya groups from the west move eastward despite there having been no Classic Collapse. Also, the parts of Guatemala the Maya have never been before? There's barely any indigenous people in Guatemala that aren't Maya, and historically they've had sites even in El Salvador.
 
No not durning areas of diaster just in regular periods and if there we no tribes then even the better it will be very easy then to onto these areas and will expand the trade area and will bring new resource an wealth into meoamerica trade nodes
 
The Maya classical collapse was apparently due to drought; which should make Nicaragua very attractive given the number of lakes; especially Lago de Nicaragua.
 
The problem is that historically mass resettlement by the Maya was a response to societal collapses in the Preclassic, Classic, and even Postclassic eras. If things aren't bad they aren't going to be moving a large number of people around. At best maybe, and this is a big maybe since the Terminal Classic/early Postclassic era isn't very well understood since there's few records from the era and post-conquest accounts are unreliable and often mythologized, some of the "Mexicanized" Maya groups from the west move eastward despite there having been no Classic Collapse. Also, the parts of Guatemala the Maya have never been before? There's barely any indigenous people in Guatemala that aren't Maya, and historically they've had sites even in El Salvador.

If you have any clues about why the Mayans didn't colonize outside their area in the Classical era, I'd love to know. What was keeping them out? Other people? Or some kind of carrying capacity limit (inasmuch as that can be estimated)?
 
No not durning areas of diaster just in regular periods and if there we no tribes then even the better it will be very easy then to onto these areas and will expand the trade area and will bring new resource an wealth into meoamerica trade nodes
What I'm saying is that they aren't likely to expand without a disaster forcing a population to move. And if there were no tribes in the region then who's going to work the land for the new overlords?
If you have any clues about why the Mayans didn't colonize outside their area in the Classical era, I'd love to know. What was keeping them out? Other people? Or some kind of carrying capacity limit (inasmuch as that can be estimated)?
At a guess, the sociopolitical situation didn't really allow for it. The Maya area is divided into numerous small kingdoms, which king is going to allow thousands of people to move east out of their kingdom to settle new lands while rivals are eyeing up what they already have? And if the people move on their own that means something's happened to the political structure. Before the Classic era there was a quite a bit of migration and colonization during the Preclassic, but AFAIK that was also following some localized disasters that saw the collapses of not just cities but large regions of settlement like the Guatemalan highlands that didn't have any major kingdoms again until the Postclassic.
I also believe it was due to over population and a massive war between Tikal and calakmul and their allies
Generally overpopulation is an impetus to expand and colonize, not an impediment. But no Maya kingdom in the Classic seemingly had the reach or inclination to move their people around like that and when disasters caused kingdoms to fall people moved on their own, generally out of the Guatemalan lowlands and into the Guatemalan highlands or to the Yucatan. Honduras was just too remote comparatively and didn't have resources they couldn't find closer to home even if they had trade contacts as far as Costa Rica or even Panama. But there's a big difference between trading and settlement. I'm not saying further expansion into Honduras is impossible, but it requires a more complex POD and a likely minimal impact. If anything a POD that allows enough Maya to settle new lands in Central America to form even a small city would have much more major implications for the heartland of Maya civilization than the new region of settlement.
 
Well if you don't want some sort of disaster then I guess you're going to have to try and tackle the quagmire that is avoiding the Classic Collapse by breaking the stalemate and bringing some sort of stability to the region by allowing larger states to form. How you'd do that is a whole 'nother can of worms, but in such a TL the Maya expansion into Honduras and Costa Rica is going to be far less exciting than the repercussions of the lowland Maya states not collapsing and the Maya potentially forming an actual empire, plus the effect this would have on Mexico.
 
That would require I magor changes to because it takes long time to reach other Mayan cities and that why no united government ever formed so we need much faster time for Mary and people to get to other cities
 
That would require I magor changes to because it takes long time to reach other Mayan cities and that why no united government ever formed so we need much faster time for Mary and people to get to other cities
That's not the problem, tributary empires did occur in Mesoamerica as you see with the Aztecs and the Teotihuacanos before them (who even took over some Maya cities and placed puppet rulers on the their thrones). It's not the same kind of direct, centralized Empire you often see in the old world but they still happened and could have expansionist policies. And the Maya also just so happened to have had the best road system in the region.
 
Yes but Mayan still instead form federation under the most powerful city state and Arnie to travel 30 miles could take weeks and the longer they traveled th cost of it increased more and more and more so we need to have the road be big enough that more could travels on it
 
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