La Venta is one of the largest and most famous sites of the Olmec civilization which flourished in Mesoamerica from around 1500 BCE to 400 BCE. The site itself dates to 1200 BCE and reached its greatest prominence by 900 BCE, before being all but abandoned by the beginning of the 4th century BCE.

Like other Olmec centers at San Lorenzo and Laguna de los Cerros, La Venta was not only a civic and religious center, but an active community that housed artisans, fishermen and farmers. The site’s easy access to rivers and the Gulf of Mexico facilitated the community’s import and export of exotic materials such as greenstones. Little remains of the settlement since unlike later Maya or Aztec cities, there was little locally abundant stone, and therefore nearly all structures were built from wood, earth or clay and palm leaves. Large basalt stones were used nearly exclusively for monuments including the colossal heads, altars and stelae.

The site is divided into northern and southern sectors by the Great Pyramid, which stands around 110 ft (33 m) tall and was one of the earliest pyramids known in Mesoamerica. Now weathered to a cone shape by erosion, it was probably originally a rectangular pyramid with stepped sides. Just to the north of the Great Pyramid is a ceremonial precinct of mounds and plazas known as Complex A, to which access was restricted to the elite by a series of basalt columns. This may have been the main mortuary complex, since a vast array of elaborate offerings have been found beneath it, including caches of buried jade and serpentine blocks, as well as mosaic pavements that were covered over after completion, evidently not meant to be seen.

Just south of the Great Pyramid lies Complex B, a large plaza with a central small platform, which was probably the main public gathering place. Numerous whole and fragmentary monuments have been discovered here, including a colossal head a few dozen meters south of the Great Pyramid.

It is of course these colossal basalt heads, believed to depict their rulers, that the Olmecs are best known for. Of the seventeen monumental heads known, four have been found at La Venta and are known officially as Monuments 1-4. They are believed to have been carved between 850- 700 BCE, measure up to 9 ft 4 in. in height and weigh several tons. The origin of the basalt has been traced to the Tuxtla Mountains, over 80 km away, leading to a great deal of speculation on how the Olmecs transported such huge blocks of stone to La Venta. Although each head is differently decorated, all display the same flat features with broad noses and thick lips, and wear headgear much like football helmets which may have been protection in war or the ballgame.

Relative to their successors like the Maya and Aztecs, little is actually known of the Olmec people themselves except that they developed the first Mesoamerican civilization. Certainly they were a sophisticated and complex society, and recent findings suggest they may have been the first civilization in the Western Hemisphere to develop a writing system. They had extensive trading networks across Mesoamerica, and the influence they had on the political, artistic and religious styles of successive cultures was considerable. The name "Olmec", which means “people of rubber” in the Nahuatl language was given by the Aztecs, and indeed perhaps the Olmecs greatest tangible legacy was the ballgame, which originated with them and was to be played by just about every subsequent Mesoamerican culture of the region.