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Published Online January 5, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1121745

Reports

Submitted on October 24, 2005
Accepted on December 21, 2005

Early Maya Writing at San Bartolo, Guatemala

William A. Saturno 1*, David Stuart 2, Boris Beltrán 3

1 Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA.
2 Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
3 Escuela de Historia, Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala City, Guatemala.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
William A. Saturno , E-mail: wsaturno{at}unh.edu

The ruins of San Bartolo, Guatemala, contain a sample of Maya hieroglyphic writing dating to the Late Preclassic period (400 BC to 200 AD). The writing appears on preserved painted walls and plaster fragments buried within the pyramidal structure known as "Las Pinturas," which was constructed in discrete phases over several centuries. Samples of carbonized wood that are closely associated with the writing have calibrated radiocarbon dates of 200 to 300 BC. This early Maya writing implies that a developed Maya writing system was in use centuries earlier than previously thought, approximating a time when we see the earliest scripts elsewhere in Mesoamerica.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)