Olmec colossal heads the monuments with ropes. Two heads from San Lorenzo have traces of niches that are characteristic of monumental Olmec thrones and so were definitely reworked from earlier monuments. Seventeen confirmed examples are known. 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 outside of the Olmec heartland on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Possible fragments of additional colossal heads have been recovered at San Lorenzo and at San Fernando in Tabasco. Crude colossal stone heads are also known in the Southern Maya area
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