WI Mayans in Cuba

Yucatan is the part of Central America closer to Cuba, at least on the map, and the Mayans were living there at least at the XI century AD if I am not mistaken. They had built a temple in Cozumel.

Couldn't they have reached and colonized Cuba, and maybe, from there, the Caribean?

It was apparently possible to cross the strait between Cuban and MEsoamerica with the available . I once read that a Caribbean or taino canoe had reached Yucatan around 1500, warning locals of the arrival of Europeans, and about what they were doing in Cuba and Hispaniola. I don't remeber when I read it, and it may be wrong anyway, but, couldn't it had happened?

How would Colón or his ATL equivalent had reacted had he seen huge cities instead of small villages in Hispaniola or Cuba? Would a population that has better agriculture be almost wiped out as OTL native Caribean population, or would it survived to the present day, even if conquered, as in other areas where advanced precolumbian civilizations existed? With a bigger population, would the Atlantic slave trade develop, or would native Americans be used as labour force as they were OTL in Mexico or the highlands? And if it never develops there, would it develop elsewhere, or not exist at all?
 
The Maya did trade with the Taino, particularly in the Classic Era.

A few years ago, a Mayan calendar was excavated in Georgia. People flipped out and some idiots thought it was evidence that the Maya were in the American SE. What it actually proved was that there were complex and far reaching trade networks throughout pre-Columbian America.
 
A few years ago, a Mayan calendar was excavated in Georgia. People flipped out and some idiots thought it was evidence that the Maya were in the American SE. What it actually proved was that there were complex and far reaching trade networks throughout pre-Columbian America.

I remember that silly shit. My archaeologist friends just groaned when news stories were going around about Maya temples in Georgia.

To give you another example of how far flung the trade networks were, even with the plains tribes, my friend has his clans ancestral bundle (spiritual items) and in it were parrot feathers from around the Yucatan.
 
OK, there may have been some trade, but I guess it was probably more about Tainos in Yucatan than Mayans in Cuba.

What I wonder is what would have happened if Mayans had settled in Cuba and built cities, in the same way they settled Yucatan after the Classical perios?
 
I was thinking about this earlier. Considering all the Mayan ruins in the Caribbean in game
 
Top