Belize

Belize Belix - Belikin - Bel Itza
Flag Coat of arms
Capital	Belmopan
Largest city	Belize City
Demonym(s)	Belizean
Dominant mode of production	Capitalism
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• Monarch	Charles III
• Prime Minister	Johnny Briceño
Area
• Total	22,966 km²
Population
• 2025 estimate	424,603
Currency	Belize dollar ($) (BZD)
Calling code	+501
ISO 3166 code	BZ
Internet TLD	.bz

Belize is a capitalist country on the north-east coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, Guatemala to the west and south, as well as the Caribbean Sea to the east. It is a former British colony, and retains the British monarch as head of state.

History

Precolonization

Pre-Mayan Settlements

The first evidence of human activity within Belize dates back to 30,000 years ago, with human-made carvings on the bones of a giant sloth. The second site, called August Pine Ridge, dates to 13,000 years ago, where various stone tools were found, including fluted bifaces (spearheads), flint spearheads, and grinding mortars and pestles for food processing.

Around 4,500 BCE, we see the first known small farming villages within the region of Belize, where people domesticated corn, beans, squash, and chili peppers. They mixed hunting and foraging alongside farming. Archaeological records dating to 2200 BCE show an ancient network of canals used by pre-Mayan people as large-scale fishing traps. These canals were connected to ponds that were used to harvest fish.

Cuello is one of the last known sites before the gradual transition into Mayan culture and the Mayan period. There were circular timber houses and subsistence farming through slash-and-burn cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. They also hunted white-tailed deer, freshwater turtles, and dogs. It also contains some of the earliest known pottery in the Maya lowlands, known as Swasey pottery, often red with grooved incisions.

A mass burial of 25 people indicates that Cuello faced some form of warfare before the Mayan transition. Cuello also had social inequality, with elite burials containing adults and children buried alongside jade and shell ornaments. Archaeologists have also found a limestone stela (monument), which may have had a painted design in the past and might be a precursor to the later Mayan stone monuments/stelae.