Some context: The Assyrian homeland or Assyria refers to a geographic and cultural region situated in Northern Mesopotamia that has been traditionally inhabited by Assyrian people. The areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and, more recently, northeastern Syria. Moreover, the area that had the greatest concentration of Assyrians in the world until recently, is located in the Assyrian Triangle, a region which comprises the Nineveh plains, southern Hakkari and the Barwari regions. This is where some Assyrian groups seek to create an independent nation state.
During World War I the Assyrians suffered the Assyrian Genocide which reduced their numbers by up to two thirds. Subsequent to this, they entered the war on the side of the British and Russians. After World War I, the Assyrian homeland was divided between the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, which would become the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932, and the French Mandate of Syria which would become the Syrian Arab Republic in 1944.  Assyrians faced reprisals under the Hashemite monarchy for co-operating with the British during the years after World War I, and many fled to the West. The Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, though born into the line of Patriarchs at Qochanis, was educated in Britain. For a time he sought a homeland for the Assyrians in Iraq but was forced to take refuge in Cyprus in 1933, later moving to Chicago, Illinois, and finally settling near San Francisco, California.  The Assyrian Chaldean Christian community was less numerous and vociferous at the time of the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, and did not play a major role in the British rule of the country. However, with the exodus of Assyrian Church of the East members, the Chaldean Catholic Church became the largest non-Muslim religious denomination in Iraq, and some Assyrian Catholics later rose to power in the Ba'ath Party government, the most prominent being Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. The Assyrians of Dohuk boast one of the largest churches in the region named the Mar Marsi Cathedral, and is the center of an Eparchy. Tens of thousands of Yazidi and Assyrian Christian refugees live in the city as well due to the ISIS invasion of Iraq in 2014 and the subsequent Fall of Mosul  In addition to the Assyrian population, an Aramaic speaking Jewish population existed in the region for thousands of years, living mainly in Barwari, Zakho and Alqosh. However, All of the Barwari Jews either left or were exiled to Israel shortly after its independence in 1947. The region was heavily affected by the Kurdish uprisings during the 1950s and 60s and was largely depopulated during the Al-Anfal campaign in the 1980s, although some of its population later returned and their homes were subsequently rebuilt. Assur, which is in the Saladin Governorate, was put on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in danger in 2003, at which time the site was threatened by a looming large-scale dam project that would have submerged the ancient archaeological site.
What other aspects make this region distinctive?
A: 
Some context: The Huastec  or Teenek (contraction of Te' Inik, "people from here"; also known as Huaxtec, Wastek or Huastecos), are an indigenous people of Mexico, living in the La Huasteca region including the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Panuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. There are approximately 66,000 Huastec speakers today, of which two-thirds are in San Luis Potosi and one-third in Veracruz, although their population was probably much higher, as much as half a million, when the Spanish arrived in 1529. The ancient Huastec civilization is one of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. Judging from archaeological remains, they are thought to date back to approximately the 10th century BCE, although their most productive period of civilization is usually considered to be the Postclassic era between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Empire.
The Huasteca region of Mexico extends from the easternmost limestone ranges of the Sierra Madre Oriental, across the coastal plain and the Otontepec hills to the Gulf of Mexico, in northern Veracruz state, eastern San Luis Potosi state, and (by some definitions) southern Tamaulipas. At least three indigenous languages are spoken in parts of the region today: Nahuatl (a Uto-Aztecan language), spoken especially in Veracruz, but also in San Luis Potosi; Pame (an Oto-Manguean language). spoken in the hilly borderlands of San Luis Potosi and Queretaro; and Huastec (Wastek) (a Maya language), spoken in San Luis Potosi and northernmost Veracruz, and formerly in Tamaulipas. Some would include the Totonac-speaking area, in north-central Veracruz, as part of the Huasteca. The Huastec region was known to the Aztecs (ancestors of today's Nahuatl speakers, who arrived in the Huasteca around 1450) for its fertile abundance, and includes the northernmost patches of tropical moist forest and cloud forest in the Americas.  The Huastecs arrived in the Huasteca between 1500 BCE and 900 BCE. The linguistic evidence is corroborated by archaeological discoveries. In 1954, Richard Stockton MacNeish found ceramics and figurines in the Middle Formative period, called "Pavon de Panuco" in the Panuco River sites of the Huasteca, which resemble Preclassic objects from Uaxactun, a Peten-region Maya site. A date of no earlier than 1100 BCE for the Huastecs' arrival at their present location seems most likely, since they probably had not arrived at the north-central Veracruz site of Santa Luisa until about 1200 BCE, the phase at the end of the Early Formative period known locally as the "Ojite phase." Artifacts of the period include Panuco-like basalt manos and metates. (The Huastecs remained in Santa Luisa, located east of Papantla near the Gulf coast, until supplanted or absorbed by the Totonacs around AD 1000).  One nexus of carved iconographic traditions, the "yoke-palm-axe" complex, was found from Jaina Island in coastal Campeche to the Huasteca (and in between, in Aparicio, Veracruz), in association with the pelota ballgame, decapitation, and tooth mutilation; however, this may reflect coastal trade contacts after the Huastecs were established in the Huasteca.
what made them split from the maya?
A:
Panuco River sites of the Huasteca, which resemble Preclassic objects from Uaxactun, a Peten-region Maya site.