Полуостров Юкатан: История, Геология и Древние Тайны

Peninsula in North America

The Yucatán Peninsula (,/j//uː//k//ə/'/t//ɑː//n/, also /UK/,/j//ʊ//k// /, /US// /'/t//æ//n//, /,/j//uː//k//ɑː/'/t//ɑː//n/; lang es ɟʝukaˈtan) is a large peninsula in southeast Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west of the peninsula from the Caribbean Sea to the east. The Yucatán Channel, between the northeastern corner of the peninsula and Cuba, connects the two bodies of water. The peninsula is approximately in area. It has low relief and is almost entirely composed of porous limestone. In the first one, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, having first arrived to the peninsula in 1517, inquired the name of a certain settlement and the response in Yucatec Mayan was "I don't understand", which sounded like yucatán to the Spaniards. For discussion of the different interpretations of this somewhat mythic encounter, see Castañeda 2002|name=for name info, see: This origin story was first told by Hernán Cortés in his letters to Charles V. The second major theory is that the name is in some way related to the yuca crop, as written by Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

[[File:Chicxulub impact artist impression. jpg|thumb|250px|right|Artistic impression of the asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas of the sulfur rich Yucatán Peninsula in what is today Southeast Mexico. The aftermath of this immense asteroid collision, which occurred approximately 66 million years ago, is believed to have caused the mass extinction of non avian dinosaurs and many other species on Earth.

In 2020, an underwater archaeological expedition led by Jerónimo Avilés excavated Chan Hol cave, near the Tulum archaeological site in the state of Quintana Roo on the peninsula, and revealed the skeleton of a woman approximately 30 years of age who lived at least 9,900 years ago. According to craniometric measurements, the skull is believed to conform to the mesocephalic pattern, like the other three skulls found in Tulum caves. Three different scars on the skull of the woman showed that she was hit with something hard and her skull bones were broken. Her skull also had crater like deformations and tissue deformities that appeared to be caused by a bacterial relative of syphilis. According to study lead researcher Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, "It really looks as if this woman had a very hard time and an extremely unhappy end of her life. Obviously, this is speculative, but given the traumas and the pathological deformations on her skull, it appears a likely scenario that she may have been expelled from her group and was killed in the cave, or was left in the cave to die there”. The newly discovered skeleton was 140 meters away from the Chan Hol 2 site. Although archaeologists assumed the divers had found the remains of the missing Chan Hol 2, the analysis soon proved that these assumptions were erroneous. Stinnesbeck compared the new bones to old photographs of Chan Hol 2 and showed that the two skeletons represent different individuals. Due to their distinctive features, study co researcher Samuel Rennie suggest the existence of at least two morphologically diverse groups of people living separately in Mexico during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene.

thumb|Relief map of the Yucatán Peninsula showing major Mayan archeological sites. The Yucatán Peninsula constitutes a significant proportion of the ancient Maya lowlands and was the central location of the Maya Civilization. The Maya culture also extended south of the Yucatán Peninsula into Guatemala, Honduras, and the highlands of Chiapas. There are many Maya archaeological sites throughout the peninsula; some of the better known are Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum, and Uxmal. Indigenous Maya and Mestizos of partial Maya descent make up a sizable portion of the region's population, and Mayan languages are widely spoken there.

Due to the extreme karst nature of the whole peninsula, the northern half is devoid of aboveground rivers. Where lakes and swamps are present, the water is marshy and generally unpotable. Due to its coastal location, the whole of the peninsula is underlain by an extensive contiguous density stratified coastal aquifer, where a fresh water lens formed from meteoric water floats on top of intruding saline water from the coastal margins. The thousands of sinkholes known as cenotes throughout the region provide access to the groundwater system. The cenotes have long been relied on by ancient and contemporary Maya people.

The vegetation and plant communities of the peninsula vary from north to south. The Yucatán dry forests occupy the dry northwestern peninsula, and include dry forests and scrublands and cactus scrub. The Yucatán moist forests occur across the middle and east of the peninsula, and are characterized by semi deciduous forests where 25 to 50% of the trees lose their leaves during the summer dry season. The Belizian pine forests are found in several enclaves across central Belize. The southernmost portion of the peninsula is in the Petén–Veracruz moist forests ecoregion, an evergreen rain forest. Northern Guatemala (El Petén), Mexico (Campeche and Quintana Roo), and western Belize are still occupied by the largest continuous tracts of tropical rainforest in Central America. However, these forests are suffering extensive deforestation. Mangroves occur along the coast, with the Usumacinta mangroves around the Laguna de Términos in the southwest, the Petenes mangroves along the west coast, Ría Lagartos mangroves along the northern shore of the peninsula, and the Mayan Corridor mangroves and Belizean Coast mangroves to the east along the Caribbean Sea.

Population throughout the Yucatán Peninsula is very different throughout each part of the Peninsula. Population density and ethnic composition are two factors that play into the total population. The most populated area is Mérida in Yucatán state and the surrounding region, contrasted by the state of Quintana Roo, the least populated part of the peninsula. In terms of ethnic composition, a majority of the population consisted of both Maya and Mestizos.