In 2021, it would be so unfortunate to name the capital city of a Native American culture using a European language.  

I agree; I cringe when I see San Lorenzo on the map in the ancient era. But I'm not sure if there is any known historical name for the site? That's the only reason I can imagine them using this name.

It did feel weird walking my way through the ancient era and suddenly seeing very modern Spanish names. I heard people complain about it in Lucy and now I sort get why.

Olmec culture as a whole is almost entirely unknown. The writings found on several olmecs sites, while being similar and probably related with later writings such as mayans or aztecs ones, can't and probably won't ever be deciphered at all, since we have no clue about Olmec's language.

I agree the spanish cities naming can feel weird and unfortunate, but as others have said, that's the best and realistically accurate way to name those cities I'm afraid.

Narcisse wrote:

Roryn411 wrote:

I agree; I cringe when I see San Lorenzo on the map in the ancient era. But I'm not sure if there is any known historical name for the site? That's the only reason I can imagine them using this name.

Exactly. The names of the archeological site are used. As it is for some Harrapans names, or the Nok independant poeple (Nok is the name of the Nigerian village near they were discovered).

An acceptable limit to be able to play very ancient cultures which rarely appear in videogames.

IMO, it would be even more cringe to change these namings: quite simply because if a player does research on San Lorenzo he will directly find informations on the most important Olmecs site. When an invented name will be misleading for any reasearches.
And don't forget than today, in these regions, there are still a lot of native American descendants. It wouldn't be more respectful to remove the link between their ancient cultures and the  places where these native american descendants are currently living, with a misleading invented names which lead to something out of place.

If another accurate solution is found, I would happy to know it, and than it is used in the game.

This sums it up. The alternative would be not including these unique cultures because we don't have enough information on them at the moment, which is something I'm sure most wouldn't prefer.