San Lorenzo, center of the ancient Mesoamerican Olmec culture, is famous for its massive stone statuary and distinctive ceramic figurines. Archaeologists disagree, however, about why Olmec-style ceramics have also been found at sites very distant from the Olmec heartland. Proponents of the mother-culture interpretation point to the statuary as indicative of unprecedented social organization and interpret the distribution of the ceramics as evidence of Olmec influence on less complex societies. According to the sister-cultures interpretation, however, these Olmec-style objects are simply a visual expression of religious beliefs shared by numerous Mesoamerican cultures whose contact with one another increased over time. The Olmec were neither solely responsible for the creation and spread of the style nor more advanced than the cultures they contacted.