El Opeño tombs, the oldest in Mesoamerica, have been dated to around 1600 BCE - a similar period as Olmec culture development.

[1] At the same time, the lack of validated information becomes evident, as well as the need of serious studies of Cem Ānáhuac history, name of the territories known to the Mexica civilization before the Mexico Spaniards invasion and conquest.

The Purépecha are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Uruapan and Pátzcuaro.

Toribio de Benavente Motolinia wrote "in any place… all know [how] to work a stone, to make a simple house, to twist a cord and a rope, and the other subtle offices that do not require instruments or much art."

It was studied and discovered by Isabel Truesdell Kelly, American archaeologist who made excavations in the area of Colima in the year 1939.

Capacha was contemporary to other important Mesoamerica cultural developments such as El Opeño, Michoacán, and the first Tlatilco phase, in the Valley of Mexico.

The geographical extent of the Capacha pottery covers the entire Pacific coast between the Mexican States of Sinaloa, in the North, and Guerrero, in the South.

[2] El Opeño consists of a funeral complex that is usually included in the Shaft tomb tradition that spread throughout much of the west of Mesoamerica on the territory of the current states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit and Michoacán.

Access to the underground burial chambers had different means; for example in Nayarit, it is common for tombs to have a very deep shaft, although those in El Opeño had ladders.

The funeral architecture with similar or divergent characteristics was practiced by the peoples who lived in a wide continental region and at different periods in the prehispanic era.

[10]"[11] This exchange was mutual; obsidian from Michoacan was also being traded east into the Basin of Mexico, the Oaxaca Valley, and the Gulf Coast by that time.