Mayapan

Mayapan was a pre-Columbian Maya city on the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico that served as the political and cultural capital of the Maya in the region during the Late Postclassic period, from the 1220s until the 1440s. The walled city held around 4,000 structures and an estimated 15,000 to 17,000 people within a defensive perimeter wall roughly 9.1 kilometers long with twelve gates, and it rose after the decline of Chichen Itza, when regional lords gathered to establish a new governing center under the leadership of the Cocom family. This arrangement lasted more than two centuries until around 1441, when the rival Xiu faction, led by Ah Xiu Xupan, rebelled, killed most of the Cocom lineage, and brought about the city's abandonment amid violence that archaeologists later confirmed through evidence of burning in the ceremonial district and mass burials.