(narrator) toward the end of the first millennium b.c., a complex society sprang to life in mesoamerica-- imaginative, literate, philosophically-inclined and sophisticated. evevi cture out of the primordial forest and sunk its roots into the soil. today, we know the region by its countries-- mexico honduras el salvador, belize and guatemala. but long ago it was the world of the maya. not an empire, nor a country the classic maya culture flourished from the third to the ninth century in a far flung collection of city-states.