The
Yucatán peninsula is about 70,000 square miles, mostly in
SE Mexico, separating the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico
It comprises the states of Yucatán, Campeche,
and Quintana Roo, Mexico; Belize; and part of Petén, Guatemala.
Mérida and Campeche, Mexico and Belize City, Belize are the
chief cities.
People who live there now are mostly the modern descendants
of the Maya. The peninsula is largely a low, flat, limestone
land rising to 500 feet high in the south.
To the north and west the plain continues as the Campeche
Bank, stretching under shallow water . The eastern
coast rises in low cliffs in the north and there are bays and paralleled
by islands in the south. Cozumel is the largest island. |