Likely carved during the Early Formative period, before 1000 BCE, the 1.4 m (5.5 ft) tall statue shows a crouching young lord.

[2] The young lord wears a huge boxy headdress, the front of which is covered with what is apparently a mask.

[6] The sculpture was first identified by surveyor Ismael Loya in 1897 and re-discovered by Frans Blom and Oliver La Farge in their expedition of 1925.

[7] Located on a platform or "level" in the saddle between the two highest peaks of volcano's crater rim,[8] the statue was found surrounded by broken offering vessels, jade offerings, and numerous other objects, dating from ancient times to the 20th century, indicating it had been an object of veneration for millennia.

In 1929, Marshall Seville, from the Museum of the American Indian in New York, associated the statue with other unattributed artifacts in various collections, based on stylistic similarities and a common iconography.