Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century explorers and travellers to South America brought back various ideas on the Maya ruins they had visited and/or discovered. This study traces the history of these theories and the controversy that ensued over contemporary understanding of the Mayan civilisation and in particular the meaning and function of their cities and territories, Mayan architecture, site distribution, spatial arrangement, settlement hierarchies, and their inscriptions. This history is divided into six chronological phases from 1760 to 1990 as it looks at the development of ideas and trends in thinking about the Maya. Spanish text.