Cascajal Block: The Earliest Known Writing in the Americas?

The Cascajal Block is a slab of serpentine stone incised with 62 signs, found in 1999 near the Olmec centre of San Lorenzo in Veracruz, Mexico. Dated to around 900 BC, it has been claimed as the earliest known writing in the Americas. The text is undeciphered, and its date and nature are still debated, but it changed how scholars think about Olmec civilisation.

Discovery

In 1999 road builders digging gravel at a quarry in the village of Lomas de Tacamichapa, in the municipality of Jáltipan, Veracruz, uncovered a smooth greenish stone slab among a pile of pottery and figurine fragments. The quarry, known locally as Cascajal (“gravel pit”), gave the object its name.

Local authorities passed the find to archaeologists of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), María del Carmen Rodríguez Martínez and Ponciano Ortíz Ceballos. Together with a team of specialists in Mesoamerican writing and art, including Michael D. Coe, Richard Diehl, Stephen Houston and Karl Taube, they studied the block for several years. They announced it in the journal Science in September 2006 under the title “Oldest Writing in the New World”.

The block and its signs

The block measures about 36 by 21 by 13 cm and weighs about 11.5 kg. One flat face carries the incised signs; its slightly hollowed surface led the researchers to suggest that it may have been ground down and reused, perhaps erasing earlier texts.

The 2006 study identified 62 signs, of which 28 are distinct. Some signs appear several times, and a few pairs repeat in sequences. The signs are arranged in roughly horizontal rows. They include shapes that resemble an insect, an ear of maize, a fish, a pineapple-like object and boxes with lines, many of which echo motifs in Olmec art.

The authors argued that the signs form a true writing system, not just decorations or symbols, because they appear in a consistent order, repeat in patterns and are separated from images. Houston suggested that some repeated pairs might be poetic couplets, a feature known from later Mesoamerican texts.

Dating

The block was not found in an intact archaeological layer. The gravel mound also contained broken pottery, figurines and other objects of the San Lorenzo phase, about 1200–900 BC, which the researchers used to date the block. It is therefore usually described as being from around 900 BC.

If correct, this would make the Cascajal text several centuries older than other well-documented Mesoamerican writing, such as early Zapotec inscriptions from Oaxaca and the later Epi-Olmec and Maya scripts.

The debate

The announcement was greeted with excitement, but also with doubts. In a 2007 letter to Science, the archaeologists Karen Bruhns and Nancy Kelker argued that the block’s context was too disturbed to support a firm date, and questioned whether its features fitted what is known of Olmec art.

Other scholars have noted that the arrangement of the signs is unusual. Later Mesoamerican scripts are mostly written in vertical columns, while the Cascajal signs run in horizontal lines. No other text in the same script has been found, so there is nothing to compare it with. Without more examples, and with the Olmec language unknown, decipherment is not possible.

Supporters reply that the stone’s wear and the material found with it are consistent with an ancient date, and that a unique early text is exactly what one might expect from the first stages of writing. Many specialists accept the block as genuine and Olmec, while remaining cautious about calling it the oldest writing in the Americas.

Olmec writing in context

The Olmec civilization flourished on the Gulf Coast from about 1600 to 400 BC, with San Lorenzo as its first great centre and La Venta as its later capital. Olmec art used a rich set of symbols, and scholars had long debated whether these developed into writing.

Before Cascajal, the main candidates for early Olmec writing were a cylinder seal and plaques from San Andrés, near La Venta, dated to about 650 BC and published in 2002. Writing is well attested later in the region, in Epi-Olmec texts such as La Mojarra Stela 1, dated to AD 156, and in Oaxaca, where the Zapotec of Monte Albán carved inscriptions from the mid-1st millennium BC.

Timeline

• c. 1200–900 BC: San Lorenzo phase; the probable period when the block was made.
• 1999: Road builders find the block in a gravel quarry at Lomas de Tacamichapa.
• 1999–2006: INAH archaeologists and international specialists study the signs.
• 15 September 2006: The block is published in Science as possibly the oldest writing in the Americas.
• 2007: Critics question its context and dating in letters to Science.

Why it matters

The Cascajal Block suggests that the Olmecs may have developed writing by the start of the 1st millennium BC, independently of the Old World. Whether or not that is confirmed, it shows how much remains unknown about early Mesoamerica and how a single chance find can reopen major questions.