The Olmecs built a mighty civilization in Mesoamerica while the Aztecs and Mayas were not even a gleam in the eyes of their gods. Now a stone from the Mexican state of Veracruz is giving us an idea how sophisticated these people were. Discovered in 1999 by two Mexican archaeologists, this block of serpentine, about the size of two thick encyclopedia volumes, contains the oldest known writing from the Western Hemisphere. The stone is over 3,000 years old, some 400 years older than any previous New World writing examples. The inscription on the stone includes 26 distinct symbols, although it's not clear yet what the unknown Olmec scribe meant to communicate.
American archaeologist Stephen Houston commented, "This reveals the Olmecs, in many ways the first civilization in a vast part of the ancient Americas, were literate, which we did not know for sure before, and hints that they were capable of the same large-scale organization assisted by writing like you saw in early Mesopotamia or Egypt."
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