Several subsequent excavations followed through the 1960s, funded by generous grants from the National Geographic Society. On their return in 1967, Drucker and Heizer saw that, as others had already claimed, the vegetation previously covering the mound, as well as their own assumptions, had led to them previously publishing a completely wrong account of its shape. It was in fact a round fluted cone with ten ridges and depressions around it, rather than the sloping rectangle, leading to a flat platform that they had assumed. Possibly the shape was intended to match or represent the mountains nearby. They also obtained better carbon samples in order to achieve one of the key goals of the excavation of La Venta—proving that the Olmec were a distinct and separate culture that pre-dates the first Maya settlements.