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Americas' Oldest Written Words?

A team of scientists in southern Mexico recently made a discovery that amazed them more than words could say. On December 6, project leader Mary E.D. Pohl announced the finding in Science magazine: a 2,600-year-old stone cylinder, carved with symbols that seem to represent words. She believes that it shows the earliest known system of writing in the Americas. Although some experts doubt this claim, Pohl's report could change history as we know it!

Before now, scientists believed that ancient civilizations in what is now Mexico didn't have a writing system until about 300 B.C. That's when the Olmec's neighbors, the Zapotec, began writing. Pohl's findings suggest that the Olmec wrote 300 years earlier.

Pohl and her team made their discovery near the Olmec city of La Venta. The Olmec lived there from 1300 B.C. to 400 B.C. The Olmec are best known for creating large sculptures of stone heads. They also built massive pyramids and cities and created a formal government long before the Maya.

There's evidence that Olmec traditions were later adopted by other cultures, says Pohl, so why not writing too? "It makes sense that they would be the first to use a system of writing."

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