Yucatan, a Central American peninsula dividing the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, and bordering on British Honduras and Guatemala. It is a flat expanse, ridged only towards the east by a low chain of hills. The interior is overspread with forests of mahogany, rosewood, and other valuable timber, while the south and east teem with maize, pulse, rice, tobacco, indigo, coffee, the henequen, or Sisal hemp plant. Ruins of Uxmal, Chichen, Izamal, Mayapan, &c., consisting of temples and other vast edifices, richly carved and coloured, and of unknown history and meaning, testify to an ancient civilisation. Made known to Europe in 1517, and completely conquered in 1541, this part of New Spain (granted in 1783 to English logwood-cutters for a time; see DESPARD) continued under Spanish domination till 1821. After repeated short periods of independence it has since 1852 belonged to Mexico, as a single state till 1858, as two states, Yucatan and Campeachy, since that date. The state of Yucatan, the north-east part of the peninsula, has an area of 28,178 sq. m. and a pop., mostly Maya Indians, of 275,506. The capital is Merida (q.v.).
See historical works by Cogolludo (1687), Sotomayor (1701), and Baqueiro (1868); Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World (trans. 1887), Le Plongeon, Yucatan: its Ancient Places and Modern Cities (Brooklyn, 1889).