The Cascajal Block: earliest writing in the Americas
- Date
- c. 900 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Gulf Coast, Mexico (Veracruz)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
The Cascajal Block is a serpentine slab incised with 62 glyph-like signs, recovered from a gravel quarry in the Olmec heartland near San Lorenzo, Veracruz, and dated by associated ceramics and figurine fragments to about 900 BCE.
Reported in the journal Science in 2006, it is widely regarded as the earliest known writing in the Americas, predating other Mesoamerican scripts by several centuries. The symbols, some resembling maize, insects, fish or abstract forms, are arranged in horizontal sequences with repeated and patterned elements, features consistent with a true writing system rather than purely pictorial art. Because the signs do not match any later Mesoamerican script and the text has not been deciphered, the block's exact linguistic content remains unknown. Some scholars also caution that the object was not excavated in a controlled archaeological context, leaving its precise dating open to debate. Even so, the Cascajal Block points to the Olmec as pioneers of literate expression in the New World and underlines their formative role in developing the calendar, iconography and recording traditions that later Mesoamerican civilisations, including the Maya, would inherit and elaborate.
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Empires active in c. 900 BCE
- Neo-Assyrian Empire911 BCE – 609 BCE
- Zhou Dynasty1046 BCE – 256 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
- Phoenician City-States1200 BCE – 539 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Standardisation of the Phoenician alphabetc. 1050 BCE
- Compilation of MUL.APIN and Babylonian astronomyc. 1000 BCE
- Iron Smelting Develops in the Nok Culture of West Africac. 800 BCE
- Casting of the Houmuwu Ding, Peak of Shang Bronze Artc. 1200 BCE
- The Bronze-to-Iron transition and the early Iron Agec. 1200 BCE
- Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, earliest known treatise on traumac. 1600 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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