Art
Maya art is essentially the art of the royal court. It is almost exclusively concerned with the Maya elite and their world. Maya art was crafted from both perishable and non-perishable materials, and served to link the Maya to their ancestors. Although surviving Maya art represents only a small proportion of the art that the Maya created, it represents a wider variety of subjects than any other art tradition in the Americas. Maya art has many regional styles, and is unique in the ancient Americas in bearing narrative text. The finest surviving Maya art dates to the Late Classic period.
Language
Before 2000 BC, the Maya spoke a single language, dubbed proto-Mayan by linguists. Linguistic analysis of reconstructed Proto-Mayan vocabulary suggests that the original Proto-Mayan homeland was in the western or northern Guatemalan Highlands, although the evidence is not conclusive. Proto-Mayan diverged during the Preclassic period to form the major Mayan language groups that make up the family, including Huastecan, Greater K'iche'an, Greater Q'anjobalan, Tz'eltalan-Ch'olan, and Yucatan. These groups diverged further during the pre-Columbian era to form over 30 languages that have survived into modern times. The language of almost all Classic Maya texts over the entire Maya area has been identified as Ch'olan; Late Preclassic text from Kaminaljuyu, in the highlands, also appears to be in, or related to, Ch'olan. The use of Ch'olan as the language of Maya text does not necessarily indicate that it was the language commonly used by the local populace – it may have been equivalent to Medieval Latin as a ritual or prestige language. Classic Ch'olan may have been the prestige language of the Classic Maya elite, used in inter-polity communication such as diplomacy and trade. By the Postclassic period, Yucatec was also being written in Maya codices alongside Ch'olan.