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Science 15 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5793, pp. 1610 - 1614
DOI: 10.1126/science.1131492
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Research Articles

Oldest Writing in the New World

Ma. del Carmen Rodríguez Martínez,1 Ponciano Ortíz Ceballos,2 Michael D. Coe,3 Richard A. Diehl,4 Stephen D. Houston,5* Karl A. Taube,6 Alfredo Delgado Calderón1

A block with a hitherto unknown system of writing has been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico. Stylistic and other dating of the block places it in the early first millennium before the common era, the oldest writing in the New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal development to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica.

1 Centro del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Benito Juárez Número 425-431, Veracruz, Mexico.
2 Instituto de Antropología de La Universidad Veracruzana, Juárez Número 70, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
3 376 St. Ronan Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
4 Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama, 24E ten Hoor Hall, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA.
5 Department of Anthropology, Brown University, 128 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
6 Department of Anthropology, University of California Riverside, 334 Watkins Hall, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Stephen_Houston{at}brown.edu

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