The
Cascajal Block is a tablet-sized writing slab in
Mexico, made of
serpentinite, which has been dated to the early first millennium
BCE, incised with hitherto unknown characters that may represent the
earliest writing system in the
New World. Archaeologist
Stephen D. Houston of
Brown University said that this discovery helps to "link the
Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to [the Olmec] civilization."