News Anthropology

Scripted Stone: Ancient block may bear Americas’ oldest writing

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Road builders in southern Mexico discovered a script-covered block of stone among the rubble in a gravel quarry in 1999. A research team has now announced that the marks on the slab represent the oldest writing yet discovered in the Americas.

WRITER’S BLOCK. Signs such as these (inset), inscribed on a slab from southern Mexico, may represent the earliest known writing in the Americas.