Cascajal Block facts for kids

The 62 glyphs of the Olmec Cascajal Block

The Cascajal Block is a tablet-sized writing slab in Mexico, made of serpentinite, which has been dated to the early first millennium BCE, incised with hitherto unknown characters that may 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."

The Cascajal Block was discovered by road builders in the late 1990s in a pile of debris in the village of Lomas de Tacamichapan in the Veracruz lowlands in the ancient Olmec heartland of coastal southeastern Mexico. The block was found amidst ceramic shards and clay figurines and from these the block is dated to the Olmec archaeological culture's San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán phase, which ended c. 900 BCE, preceding the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about 500 BCE. Archaeologists Carmen Rodriguez and Ponciano Ortiz of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico examined and registered it with government historical authorities. It weighs about 11.5 kg (25 lb) and measures 36 cm × 21 cm × 13 cm. Details of the find were published by researchers in the 15 September 2006 issue of the journal Science.

Putative Olmec writing system

The Olmec flourished in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico, ca. 1250–400 BCE. The evidence for the Cascajal writing system is based solely on the text on the Cascajal Block, but independently from the Cascajal Block and before its discovery, the existence of Olmec writing has been postulated on the basis of individual glyphs (or small groups of glyphs). Their relation with the Cascajal Block is unclear.

The block holds a total of 62 glyphs, some of which resemble plants such as maize and pineapple, or animals such as insects and fish. Many of the symbols are more abstract boxes or blobs. The symbols on the Cascajal block are unlike those of any other writing system in Mesoamerica, such as in Mayan languages or Isthmian, another extinct Mesoamerican script. The Cascajal block is also unusual because the symbols apparently run in horizontal rows and "there is no strong evidence of overall organization. The sequences appear to be conceived as independent units of information". All other known Mesoamerican scripts typically use vertical rows.

Assessment by archaeologists and other specialists

Authors of the report

• 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."
• "This is extremely important because we never recognized this writing system, until this discovery," said archaeologist Karl Taube of the University of California, Riverside, who was involved in the documentation and publication of the discovery. "We've known they have very elaborate art, and iconography, but this is the first strong indication that they had visually recorded speech."
• 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."

Skepticism about authenticity

Some archaeologists are skeptical of the tablet:

• 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 said in 2010 "I've always been a little skeptical of it." "For one, it's unique," he continued. Another critical issue, Pool adds, is that when Rodriguez and Ortiz retrieved the tablet, it was already removed from the ground, taking it out of its original archaeological context."
• Max Schvoerer, professor at Michel de Montaigne University, and founder of the Laboratoire de Physique appliquée à l'Archéologie, said "Unfortunately, the authors determined the age of the block only indirectly, by studying ceramics shards found at the site, in the absence of a well identified and dated level of occupation."

Formal criticism

The most comprehensive criticism was published in the journal Science, the publisher of the original study, on 9 March 2007. In a letter, archaeologists Karen Bruhns and Nancy Kelker raise five points of concern:

1. The block was found in a pile of bulldozer debris and cannot be reliably dated.
2. The block is unique. There is no other known example of Olmec drawing, much less writing, on a serpentine slab.
3. All other Mesoamerican writing systems are written either vertically or linearly. The glyphs on the block are arranged in neither format but instead "randomly bunch".
4. As pointed out by the original authors, some of the glyphs do appear on other Olmec artifacts, but have never been heretofore identified as writing, only as decorative motifs.
5. "What we can only describe as the 'cootie' glyph (#1/23/50) fits no known category of Mesoamerican glyph and, together with the context of the discovery, strongly suggests a practical joke".

A rebuttal to the criticism by the authors of the original study was published directly following the letter:

1. Other critical language finds, as well as the Rosetta Stone, were also found without provenance.
2. Such inscriptions are faint and may as yet be unseen on previously discovered slabs.
3. The signs are in a "purposeful" pattern.
4. "All known hieroglyphic systems in the world relate to pre-existing iconography or codified symbolism", and therefore it is not surprising that the Cascajal glyphs appear in other contexts as motifs.
5. The 'cootie' glyph can be found in "three-dimensional" form on San Lorenzo Monument 43.

See also

In Spanish: Bloque de Cascajal para niños