Olmec colossal heads by Matthew Stirling in 1938 spurred the first archaeological investigations of Olmec culture. Seventeen confirmed examples are known from four sites within the Olmec heartland on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Most colossal heads were sculpted from spherical boulders but two from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán were re-carved from massive stone thrones. An additional monument, at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala, is a throne that may have been carved from a colossal head. This is the only known example from outside the Olmec heartland. Dating the monuments remains difficult because of the movement of many from their original contexts prior to archaeological
Mayan languages or, in K'iche' Maya, "Nab'ee Maya' Tzij" ("the old Maya Language"). The Proto-Mayan language is believed to have been spoken in the Cuchumatanes highlands of central Guatemala in an area corresponding roughly to where Q'anjobalan is spoken today. The earliest proposal was that of which identified the Chiapas-Guatemalan highlands as the likely "cradle" of Mayan languages was published by the German antiquarian and scholar Karl Sapper. Terrence Kaufman and John Justeson have reconstructed more than 3000 lexical items for the proto-Mayan language. According to the prevailing classification scheme by Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman, the first division occurred around 2200