Occasional Olmec objects found their way into regions as far away as Costa Rica through hand to hand trade, but there was no direct contact.
Nearer to the Olmec area, at sites like Copan (later an important Maya centre), Olmec objects occur and Olmec designs are sometimes used on locally made pottery. Probably their residents were trading with Olmec outposts like that at Chalchuapa.
Some Olmec practices were locally adopted, like that of depositing caches of material arranged in a pattern.
But local trade networks and cultural exchanges, like those between the lowland and highland Maya, were of far greater importance. The Izapan tradition, which developed in the Maya highlands, eventually expanded as far as the late Olmec centre of Tres Zapotes.
