Cascajal Block

The 62 glyphs of the Olmec Cascajal Block

The Cascajal Block is a tablet-sized slab serpentinite dated to the early first millennium BCE, incised with previously unknown characters that have been claimed to represent the earliest writing system in the New World. 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 [the Olmec] civilization."[1]

  1. ^ Earliest writing in New World discovered Archived September 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, in In The News, 15 September 2006