Olmec heartland Olmec Metropolitan Zone. The major heartland sites are: Smaller sites include: Important heartland finds not associated with any archaeological site include: Olmec heartland The Olmec heartland is the southern portion of Mexico's Gulf Coast region between the Tuxtla mountains and the Olmec archaeological site of La Venta, extending roughly 80 km (50 mi) inland from the Gulf of Mexico coastline at its deepest. It is today, as it was during the height of the Olmec civilization, a tropical lowland forest environment, crossed by meandering rivers. Most researchers consider the Olmec heartland to be the home of the Olmec culture which
Proto-Mayan language from proto-Mayan to the modern languages are used as the basis of the classification of the Mayan languages. Each sound change may be shared by a number of languages; a grey background indicates no change. The palatalized plosives and are not carried down into any of the modern families. Instead they are reflected differently in different branches allowing a reconstruction of these phonemes as palatalized plosives. In the western branch (Chujean-Q'anjob'alan and Cholan) they are reflected as and . In Mamean they are reflected as and and in Yukatek and K'ichean as and . The Proto-Mayan liquid is reflected as