Carved onto the surface of the "Cascajal block," shown in this Adobe enhanced photograph, is the oldest known writing ever discovered in the Americas. (Dr. Stephen Houston, Brown University)

Much of Dr. Richard Diehl's career has focused on the first civilization of the "New World." In 1996, he co-coordinated an Olmec exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (Rickey Yanaura, UA Photography)

One of the world's leading Olmec experts, Dr. Richard A. “Dick” Diehl published this book in 2004.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Carved across the surface of a 26-pound stone slab unearthed in Veracruz, Mexico is the oldest known writing ever discovered in the Americas, according to a paper publishing in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Science by a 7-person team of archaeologists, including Dr. Richard A. “Dick” Diehl, professor of anthropology at The University of Alabama.

The journal article outlines the scientists’ determination that the slab’s symbols are some 2,900 years old and represent writings from the Olmec civilization, a people believed to be the first civilization in Mesoamerica (which includes much of Mexico and Central America) and who Diehl, one of the paper’s co-authors, has studied for some 40 years.

The block is dated somewhere near 900 to 800 BC. “This makes it, by far, the oldest writing in the Americas,” Diehl said. “It’s the first time in a long time that a new writing system has been discovered. There may not be a lot more undiscovered writing systems around.”

The slab, known by researchers as the “Cascajal Block,” was unearthed from a gravel pit by road builders in the late 1990s. Diehl and his colleagues, including the paper’s lead American author, Dr. Stephen D. Houston of Brown University, traveled to Mexico in March expressly to examine the findings along with the two Mexican archaeologists, Carmen Rodriguez and Ponciano Ortiz, the paper’s lead authors.

Carved from the mineral serpentine, the 36cm x 21cm x 13cm block exhibits 62 distinct symbols, some of which are repeated. The symbols are dated some 400 years earlier than writing was previously believed to have appeared in the Western hemisphere.

“People have been doing Olmec archaeology since 1940 and nobody has ever found anything like this before,” Diehl says. “It indicates the Olmecs did, in fact, use writing.”

The marks on the stone are believed to have been made by two different instruments, Diehl says. “One of them is very sharp, and the other is much broader. They were probably both stone.”

The side of the block containing the writings is concave, an indication, Diehl says, that it may have served as a sort of blackboard, something which had been written on, erased, and written upon again. This writing and erasing may be responsible for the hollowed form on one side.

While some of the stone’s glyphs have been seen previously in pieces of Olmec art, others have not. “In most cases, they are not animate things,” Diehl says of the symbols. Recognizable are, however, an insect, as well as maize, or corn plants, a table top altar, and a cross, known, from previously discovered Olmec art pieces, to be important to the people and likely representing the four compass directions, Diehl says.

“It seems to be in rows from left to right,” Diehl says of the text. “In most ancient Mexican writing systems, the glyphs start at the top and go to the bottom, so you have columns rather than rows. These seem to be in rows, and you have spaces between the rows.”

Diehl says scientists may never be able to decipher the writings.

Karl Taube, kneeling, and Stephen Houston examine the block outside the home of a private landowner in Veracruz, Mexico. (Richard Diehl, University of Alabama)

The journal article comes some 39 years after Diehl, a professor in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, participated in another revolutionary Olmec discovery. In 1967, while working as a field director on a Yale University archaeological project in the jungles of San Lorenzo, Mexico, Diehl was part of a group that discovered 13 monuments, including colossal stone heads, some of which weighed approximately 10 tons.

The latest finding confirms a suspicion Diehl raises in his 2004 book, “The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization.”

“I, for many years, have thought the Olmecs must have had writing, but I never had any evidence to support that,” Diehl said. “To have the physical evidence and to have held it in my hands, schlepped it around, and carried it, examined it, and photographed it, sort of brings a little closure to some of my ideas about the Olmecs.”

In addition to Diehl and Houston, the current research team includes Rodriguez and Alfredo Delgado Calderon, both of the Centro del Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia of Mexico; Ortiz, of the Instituto de Antropologia de La Universidad Veracruzana; Michael D. Coe, of Yale University, and Karl A. Taube of the University of California-Riverside.