Though most monuments from La Venta are at Villahermosa’s Parque-Museo La Venta, this ancient Olmec ceremonial site still has the fascination of being the largest and most important ‘capital’ of Mexico’s mother culture. La Venta flourished between about 800 and 400 BC on a natural plateau rising about 20m above an area of fertile, seasonally flooded lowlands. Matthew Stirling is credited with discovering, in the early 1940s, four huge Olmec heads sculpted from basalt, the largest more than 2m high.
