Although we might be unable to decode the poetics of a message, insights may still be revealed regarding the relationship between senders and receivers, offering a glimpse of the ‘puppeteers’. The society that produced, used and buried the Bolinas figurines around 400 BC in western El Salvador most likely maintained a relatively flat social hierarchy, while being able to act together to create monumental architecture.

Their world was large enough to encompass distant coastal sites of today’s south-western Guatemala, and Pacific coast Costa Rica to the east.

The contacts with Mesoamerica were direct, allowing for sharing of ideas, solutions, practices and mental templates, while the relations with the east may have been maintained through a chain of intermediaries, and limited to exchange of objects, not necessarily accompanied by the meaning intended by the creators.