Cascajal Block

Olmec hieroglyphs is a term used to describe an inscribed text found on the Cascajal block at an Olmec site in 2006. The research was published in the Sept. 15 2006 issue of the journal Science.

Discovery

File:Cascajal-block.jpg

The Cascajal Block

The text is found on a foolscap-sized slab which dates to the early first millennium BCE and has been called the Cascajal Block. Archaeologist Stephen D. Houston of Brown University said that this discovery helps to "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization." The Cascajal Block was discovered by road builders in the late 1990s in a pile of debris in the village of Lomas de Tacamichapa in the Veracruz lowlands. It weighs about 11.5 kg and measures 36 cm × 21 cm × 13 cm. There are 62 characters in the text, some of which are repeated up to four times.

Dating

The Cascajal Block was found amidst ceramic shards and clay figurines; from these the block is dated to the San Lorenzo phase which ended c. 900 BCE. This means that the writing on the block is some 400 years older than any other writing known in the Western hemisphere.

Assessment by archaeologists

• This is the first strong indication that Olmec had visually recorded speech. "We never recognized this writing system, until this discovery ," said anthropologist Karl Taube of the University of California Riverside.
• For Richard Diehl of the University of Alabama, the discovery announced in the journal Science amounted to rock-solid proof that the Olmecs had a form of writing. Diehl has believed "all along" that the Olmecs possessed the ability to write and discovery of the stone "corroborates my gut feelings."
• Stephen D. Houston, who also worked on the study, said the text if decoded will decipher "earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilization." "Some of the pictographic signs were frequently repeated, particularly ones that looked like an insect or a lizard." Houston suspected that "these might be signs alerting the reader to the use of words that sound alike but have different meanings — as in the difference between "I" and "eye" in English." He concluded, "the linear sequencing, the regularity of signs, the clear patterns of ordering, they tell me this is writing. But we don't know what it says."

• William Saturno not involved in the study agreed with Houston that the horizontally arranged inscription shows patterns that are the hallmarks of true writing, including syntax and language-specific word order. "That's full-blown, legitimate text - written symbols taking the place of spoken words," said Saturno, a University of New Hampshire anthropologist and expert in Mesoamerican writing.

• Lisa LeCount, an associate professor of archaeology at Auburn University, theorized that, if it is a crown, it might have been carved into the stone to establish leadership. "The stone could have been used as a tool by an emerging king to validate his exalted position and to legitimize his right to the throne. Only the elite in that society would have known how to read and write." LeCount said there should be no question that the Olmecs represented the "mother culture" and predated the Mayans, whose writings and buildings remain to this day.
• David Stuart, a University of Texas at Austin expert in Mesoamerican writing, was not connected with the discovery, but reviewed the study for Science. He said "To me, this find really does bring us back to this idea that at least writing and a lot of the things we associate with Mesoamerican culture really did have their origin in this region."
• Mary Pohl at Florida State University is an expert on the Olmec. She said "One sign looks actually like a corn cob with silk coming out the top. Other signs are unique, and never before seen, like one of an insect…These objects - and thus probably the writing - had a special value in rituals…We see that the writing is very closely connected with ritual and the early religious beliefs, because they are taking the ritual carvings and putting them into glyphs and making writing out of them. And all of this is occurring in the context of the emergence of early kings and the development of a centralized power and stratified society."
• Many archaeologists are sceptical about the tablet's importance :

• For David Grove, an archaeologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the research, the tablet "looked like a fake to me because the symbols are laid out in horizontal rows," unlike the region's other writing systems, he said.
• Archaeologist Christopher Pool of the University of Kentucky in Lexington has known about the tablet for a couple years. "I've always been a little skeptical of it," Pool said. "For one, it's unique," he continued. Another critical issue, Pool adds, is that when Rodriguez and Ortiz got the tablet, it was already removed from the ground, taking it out of its original archaeological context.
• Max Schvoerer, highly professor at the Bordeaux-III University, founder of the Institute of physics applied to the archeomaterials, said "the authors of the discovery thought the age of the block indirectly, by studying ceramics shards found at its sides. And this, in the absence of a level of occupation well identified and dated."

See also

• Olmec
• Maya script
• Maya Writing system
• Mesoamerican chronology
• San Lorenzo

External links

The 62 glyphs of the Cascajal Block

• Earliest New World Writing Discovered by Christopher Joyce for NPR
• Unknown Writing System Uncovered On Ancient Olmec Tablet from Science a GoGo
• Stone Slab Bears Earliest Writing in Americas by Andrew Bridges for AP
• Oldest writing in the New World discovered in Veracruz, Mexico from EurekAlert
• 3,000-year-old script on stone found in Mexico by John Noble Wilford for the New York Times
• Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere by John Noble Wilford for the New York Times