High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ancient Maya art refers to the material arts of the Maya civilization, an eastern and south-eastern Mesoamerican culture that took shape in the course of the later Preclassic period (500 BC to 200 AD), saw its greatest flowering during the seven centuries of the Classic period (c. 200 to 900 AD), and went through an extended Postclassic phase before the upheavals of the sixteenth century destroyed courtly culture and put an end to the Mayan artistic tradition. Many regional styles existed, not always coinciding with the changing boundaries of Mayan polities. Olmecs, Teotihuacan and Toltecs have all influenced Maya art. Traditional art forms have mainly survived in weaving and the design of peasant houses.