In the first millennium AD, the Maya created the most intellectually and artistically advanced civilization of ancient America. Despite a mysterious collapse in the ninth century, and Spanish invasion in the 16th, some five million people throughout Guatemala, Belize and south-eastern Mexico still speak Mayan languages and preserve a Mayan identity today. Ronald Wright set out to discover the roots of the Maya and the extent of their survival after centuries of invasion. This work is the account of that journey - at once a travel memoir and the study of a civilization, embracing history, politics, anthropology and literature.