in place to oversee the building of these structures as well as instruct the laborers and ensure that all the necessary resources were available. Discovery and excavation Teopantecuanitlan was discovered by Martinez Donjuán in 1983, after reports of looting at this Guerrero site. She was assisted in this effort by, among others, Christine Niederberger. Niederberger focused in particular on the residential areas known as the Lomerios zone, or as Tlacozotitlán. The Teopantecuanitlan site is open to the public Tuesdays through Sundays from 10:00 to 17:00 hours. Olmec connections Olmec influence is seen in many of the monuments of Teopantecuanitlan. In addition to the four prominent monuments discussed above, Olmec style or Olmec-influenced artifacts have been found throughout the site. There are several theories regarding how such Olmec motifs and designs — perhaps even deities — came to be at a site hundreds of miles/kilometers from the Olmec heartland. Martinez Donjuán believes that the roots of the Olmec culture lie in Teopantecuanitlan, and a splinter group left Teopantecuanitlan to colonize what we call the Olmec "heartland". a revival of Miguel Covarrubias's hypothesis, first formulated in 1946. The state of Guerrero seems to have played important role in the early history of Olmec culture. Olmec-style artifacts tend to appear earlier in some parts of Guerrero than in the Veracruz-Tabasco area. In particular, the objects from the Amuco-Abelino site in Guerrero reveal dates as early as 1530 BC. Noted archaeologist Michael D. Coe has said that this "position is contradicted by the environmental constraints" imposed by the semi-arid Guerrero highlands. Niederberger finds Olmec influence only in the monumental architecture, with the rest of the culture derived from indigenous sources. Footnotes References Coe, Michael (1994), Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs, 4th edition, Thames & Hudson, NY. Diehl, Richard A. (2004) The Olmecs: America's First Civilization, Thames & Hudson, NY. Evans, Susan Toby (2004) Ancient Mexico & Central America: Archaeology and Cultural History, New York: Thames & Hudson. Reilly, F. K., (2000), "Tlacozotitlán (Guerrero, Mexico)" in Evans, Susan, Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America, Taylor & Francis. Malmström, V. H., "A Survey of Teopantecuanitlán, Guerrero, Mexico". Martinez Donjuan, Guadalupe (2000), "Teopantecuanitlan", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, Carraso, David, ed., Oxford University Press. Martinez Donjuan, Guadalupe (1986), "Teopantecuanitlan", in Arqueologia y Etnohistoria del Estado de Guerrero, Roberto Cervantes-Delgado, ed., Instituto de Antropologia e Historia of Mexico, pp 55–80. External links The