“Because of extremely poor viewing conditions in the tropical rainforest, different parts of La Venta were discovered piecemeal, and it was decades before scholars realized that all the platforms and stone sculptures found in the vicinity were part of a single site, an ancient city that was occupied from 900-400 BCE.” Phases I- IV are dated based on radiocarbon dates from Complex A, with approximately one hundred years between each phase. Unfortunately, excavating Complex A led to the destruction of the original integrity of the site and has made it difficult to go back and re-verify the dates. This is why La Venta has a rather loose chronology that cannot be made any more definitive.