Villages to El Mirador to the Entrada of 378.
Farming villages appear on the Pacific coast and in northern Belize by c. 2000 BC, growing maize, beans, squash and chili. By 1000 BC the lowlands hold E-Group observatory plazas and triadic pyramids honouring the three hearthstones of creation.
The first Maya state is El Mirador (c. 300 BC-AD 150): the Danta complex, 72 m high and 2.8 million cubic metres, is among the largest pyramids ever built, joined to Nakbe and Tintal by 40 km raised causeways. Sculptors carve the first Long Count dates and the Popol Vuh heroes on stucco friezes.
Around AD 150 El Mirador falls - prolonged drought visible in lake cores, soils exhausted by raised-field farming, perhaps revolt against labour demands. The basin empties for centuries. Tikal, 50 km south-east, and Calakmul inherit its roads, gods and calendar and grow into Classic superpowers.
On 16 January 378 Siyaj Kak (Fire is Born), warlord of distant Teotihuacan, enters Tikal; king Chak Tok Ichaak dies the same day. Yax Nuun Ahiin, son of Teotihuacan's king Spearthrower Owl, takes the throne. Talud-tablero pyramids, Tlaloc goggles and atlatl darts spread to Copan, Palenque and beyond.
E-Groups track solstices: a western pyramid faces a long eastern platform whose three shrines mark sunrise extremes. Triadic groups - three temples on one platform - honour the Maize God and the Hero Twins. Both forms persist 1500 years, from Preclassic Nakbe to Classic Tikal's twin-pyramid groups.
El Mirador's engineers move millions of cubic metres without wheels, beasts or metal: limestone quarried with stone tools, burned to lime plaster, carried in baskets. Reservoirs dam bajos; canals drain fields. Population perhaps 100,000 - larger than most Classic cities.
The entrada of 378 is recorded at Tikal (Stela 31), Uaxactun and Copan (Altar Q): strangers in goggle-eyed helmets install a new dynasty. DNA and strontium on Copan's founder Yax Kuk Mo shows a foreign-born warrior with healed wounds - the legend is flesh.
Writing emerges on Preclassic celts, jade and San Bartolo murals (c. 100 BC) showing the Maize God myth already complete. The earliest Long Count - 7.16.3.2.13 (36 BC, Chiapa de Corzo) - proves the calendar predates the Classic by centuries.
El Mirador's La Danta: climb 72 m over jungle canopy. Causeways 40 m wide run straight 40 km - surveyable today by lidar showing 1000+ structures.
San Bartolo murals (discovered 2001): 12 m of painted myth - the Maize God's birth, kings crowned by gods - the Sistine Chapel of the Preclassic.
Tikal Stela 31: Yax Nuun Ahiin in Mexican warrior dress over a Maya backrack - the two worlds fused in one portrait.
Sources: WHE Maya/Tikal/Calakmul/Palenque/Copan/Yaxchilan; Britannica; Mesoweb; Penn Museum; British Museum; Commons.