The rise of the Maya began about AD 250, and what is known to archaeologists as the Classic period of Mayan culture lasted until about AD 900. At its height Mayan civilization consisted of more than 40 cities, each with a population of from 5,000 to 50,000. Among the principal cities were Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Palenque, and Río Bec. The peak Mayan population may have reached 2,000,000 people, most of whom were settled in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala. After AD 900, however, the classical Mayan civilization declined precipitously, leaving the great cities and ceremonial centres vacant and overgrown with jungle vegetation. The causes of this decline are uncertain; some scholars have suggested that armed conflicts and the exhaustion of agricultural land were responsible. During the Post-Classic period (900-1519), cities such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Mayapán in the highlands of the Yucatán Peninsula continued to flourish for several centuries after the great lowland cities had become depopulated. By the time the Spaniards conquered the area in the early 16th century, most of the Maya were mere village-dwelling agriculturists who practiced the religious rites of their forebears.  

The major extant Mayan cities and ceremonial centres feature a variety of pyramidal temples or palaces overlaid with limestone blocks and richly ornamented with narrative, ceremonial, and astronomical reliefs and inscriptions that have ensured the stature of Mayan art as premier among Indian cultures. But the true nature of Mayan society, the meaning of its hieroglyphics, and the chronicle of its history remained unknown to scholars for centuries after the Spaniards discovered the ancient Mayan building sites.  

Systematic explorations of the Mayan sites were first undertaken in the 1830s, and a small portion of the writing system was deciphered in the early and mid-20th century. These discoveries shed some light on Mayan religion, which was based on a pantheon of nature gods, including those of the sun, the moon, rain, and corn. A priestly class was responsible for an elaborate cycle of rituals and ceremonies. Closely related to Mayan religion, indeed inextricable from it, was the impressive development of mathematics and astronomy. In mathematics, positional notation and the use of the zero represented a pinnacle of intellectual achievement. Mayan astronomy underlay a complex calendrical system involving an accurately determined solar year (18 months of 20 days, plus an unlucky 5-day period), a sacred year of 260 days (13 cycles of 20 named days), and a variety of longer cycles culminating in the Long Count, based on a zero date in 3114 BC. Mayan astronomers compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus and were able to predict solar eclipses.  

Based on these discoveries, scholars in the mid-20th century mistakenly thought that Mayan society was composed of a priestly class of peaceful stargazers and calendar keepers supported by a devout peasantry. The Maya were thought to be utterly absorbed in their religious and cultural pursuits, in favourable contrast to the more warlike and sanguinary Indian empires of central Mexico. But the progressive decipherment of nearly all of the Mayan hieroglyphic writing has provided a truer if less elevating picture of Mayan society and culture. Many of the hieroglyphs depict the histories of the Mayan dynastic rulers, who waged war on rival Mayan cities and took their aristocrats captive. These captives were then tortured, mutilated, and sacrificed to the Mayan gods. Indeed, torture and human sacrifice were fundamental religious rituals of Mayan society; they were thought to guarantee fertility, demonstrate piety, and propitiate the gods, and if such practices were neglected, cosmic disorder and chaos were thought to result. The drawing of human blood was thought to nourish the gods and was thus necessary to achieve contact with them; hence the Mayan rulers, as the intermediaries between the Mayan people and the gods, had to undergo ritual bloodletting and self-torture.  

The present-day Mayan peoples can be divided on linguistic and geographic grounds into the following groups: the Yucatec Maya, inhabiting the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula and extending into northern Belize and northeastern Guatemala; the Lacandones, very few in number, occupying a territory in southern Mexico between the Usumacinta River and the Guatemalan border, with small numbers in Guatemala and Belize; the Quichéan peoples of the eastern and central highlands of Guatemala (Kekchí, Picomohi, Pocomam, Uspantec, Quiché, Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultec, and Sipacapa); the Mamean peoples of the western Guatemalan highlands (Mam, Teco, Aguacatec, and Ixil); the Kanjobalan peoples of Huehuetenango in the same region and adjacent parts of Mexico (Motozintlec, Tuzantec, Jacaltec, Acatec, Tojolabal, and Chuj); the Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples of Chiapas in southern Mexico; the Cholan peoples, including the Chontal and Chol speakers in northern Chiapas and Tabasco and the linguistically related Chortí of the extreme eastern part of Guatemala; and the Huastec of northern Veracruz and adjoining San Luís Potosí in eastern-central Mexico. The chief division in Mayan cultural type is between highland and lowland cultures. Yucatec, Lacandón, and Chontal-Chol are lowland groups. The Huastec are a linguistically and geographically isolated group who never were Mayan culturally, and the other Mayan peoples live in highlands across Guatemala.  

The modern Maya are basically agricultural, raising crops of corn, beans, and squash. They live in communities organized around central villages, which may be permanently occupied but more commonly are community centres with public buildings and houses that generally stand vacant; the people of the community live on farm homesteads except during fiestas and markets. Cultivation is with the hoe and, where the soil is tough, the digging stick. The Yucatec usually keep pigs and chickens and, rarely, oxen that are used for farming. Industries are few, and crafts are oriented toward domestic needs. Usually some cash crop or item of local manufacture is produced for sale outside the region in order to provide cash for items not otherwise obtainable.  

Dress is largely traditional, particularly for women; men are more likely to wear modern ready-made clothing. Domestic spinning and weaving, once common, is becoming rare, and most clothing is made of factory-woven cloth.  

Almost all Maya are nominal Roman Catholics, but their Christianity is generally overlaid upon the native pagan religion. Its cosmology is typically Mayan, and Christian figures are commonly identified with Mayan deities. Public religion is basically Christian, with masses and saint's-day celebrations; but the native pre-Columbian religion is observed in domestic rites.