• Cancuen: Place of serpents
• Trade
• Farming
• Daily life
• Village administration and military duty
• Entertainment
• The survival of the Maya
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From the Classic Maya (pronounced MY-uh) era, beginning about 250 C.E., Maya artists and scribes (people who wrote glyphs—the Maya writing system using figures for words and sounds—on monuments and in books) focused their writing on the lives of the rich and powerful of their time. Almost all of the writing and art left behind portrays the heroic deeds and courtly lives of the nobles of ancient Maya cities.

The upper classes of Maya society represented only a...