Cascajal Block

Anonymous / attributed to the Olmec San Lorenzo tradition (contested) · c. 1000-900 BC (San Lorenzo-phase fill context, contested) · Cascajal (Mexico) · other

composition: contested

witness: the block itself, recovered in 1999 from secondary construction fill and first published in 2006; no comparable inscribed object has since surfaced to test the reading

Controversial: a serpentine block bearing 62 signs in horizontal rows, recovered by roadworkers from disturbed fill near San Lorenzo rather than a controlled excavation, was published by the archaeologists who studied it in 2006 as the oldest writing yet found in the Western Hemisphere on the strength of associated Olmec ceramics; other specialists dispute both whether the signs constitute true writing rather than a symbolic or numerical notation and whether a disturbed, secondary find context can secure any date at all, so this entry presents the object and its early date as contested rather than established.