K'iche' Maya belongs to the Mayan language family, specifically its K'iche'an branch, and is spoken historically and today in the highlands of western Guatemala, where the K'iche' kingdom was one of the most powerful Maya political states at the time of Spanish conquest in the early sixteenth century. K'iche' achieved lasting religious and literary significance through the Popol Vuh, a foundational Maya mythological and historical text recorded in K'iche' using the Latin alphabet by K'iche' nobles in the mid-sixteenth century, drawing on earlier oral tradition and, some scholars believe, a now-lost hieroglyphic source, making it one of the most important surviving indigenous American religious texts composed in an indigenous language rather than through colonial missionary mediation alone.
The Popol Vuh recounts K'iche' Maya cosmology and mythology, including the creation of the world and humanity across multiple divine attempts, the adventures of the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque against the underworld lords of Xibalba, and the K'iche' people's own dynastic and migration history, blending myth and quasi-historical narrative in a manner comparable to other foundational national mythological texts worldwide.