GGG ping.
Posted on 07/30/2008 6:58:45 PM PDT by Fred Nerks
Science magazine this week details the discovery of a stone block in Veracruz, Mexico, that contains a previously unknown system of writing; believed by archeologists to be the earliest in the Americas.
The slab - named the Cascajal block - dates to the early first millennium BCE and has features that indicate it comes from the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. One of the archaeologists behind the discovery, Brown University's Stephen D. Houston, said that the block and its ancient script "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization."
"It's a tantalizing discovery. I think it could be the beginning of a new era of focus on Olmec civilization," explained Houston. "It's telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilization will speak to us today."
Construction workers discovered the Cascajal block in a pile of debris in the community of Lomas de Tacamichapa in the late 1990s. Surrounding the piece were ceramic shards, clay figurine fragments, and broken artifacts of ground stone, which have helped the team date the block and its text to the San Lorenzo phase, ending about 900 BCE; approximately 400 years before writing was thought to have first appeared in the Western hemisphere.
The block weighs about 26 pounds and measures 36 cm x 21 cm x 13 cm. The text itself consists of 62 signs, some of which are repeated up to four times. There is no doubt that the piece is a written work, say the archaeologists. "As products of a writing system, the sequences would, by definition, reflect patterns of language, with the probable presence of syntax and language-dependent word order," they explain.
Interestingly, the surface containing the text appears to be concave and the team believes the block has been carved repeatedly and erased - an unprecedented discovery according to Houston, who added that several paired sequences of signs could even indicate poetic couplets.
Source: Brown University Pics courtesy Science
Paging Daniel Jackson....
Probably CP/M or Fortran.
GGG ping.
...whoops...do you think this a fake?
Like Stonehenge, this may be a joke perpetrated on future generations by ancients with a big sense on humor and a fist full of peyote.
A dialect of Hebrew.
this stone tablet will outlast all hard drives and DVDs in existence.
“The link to the Olmec culture is convincing, says Mary Pohl of Florida State University, US, who was not involved in this study. Pohl had previously excavated an inscribed roller stamp of the Olmec culture, which was firmly dated to 650 BC (see Early Americans used first writing to promise loyalty).
Recently, another roller stamp has been dated to 1150 BC, pushing back the origin of the Olmec symbols. “Things are really beginning to come together; this is really an exciting time,” Pohl told New Scientist.
(further info.)
Not at all. I was just failing at being funny!
It’s too bad that archeology is not nearly as exciting and romantic as movies and TV make it seem.
Does this lend support to the idea that European sailed to the New World
in the BCs?
Looks like a shopping list:
1 Buy some bug spray
7 Some ears of corn
8 Badmitten shuttlecocks
10 a vase
12 IceCream!!!
13 asparagas
14 Carrots
16 pineapple
etc.
There I have solved it.
The first civilization to discover erasers. (yawn)
Looks like either a recipe or an inventory; not really “literary,” as in conveying a series of facts or thoughts.
What dolts. That’s clearly the first Shaper Image catalog displaying the world’s best nose hair trimmers!
In 1968, as a young 14 year old kid on a field-trip to Stone Mountain (outside Atlanta), I chiseled my initials and date in the mountain. It’s still there, and will be when most things are long gone.
yes, looks like a list or inventory.
LOL! And future generations of FReepers will be trying to work out what it means.
The message reads:
“We are having a helluva kegger, but we need more beer and pizza...”
You are probably right. It is amazing to go up on the mountain and look at all the stuff that was left many years ago by Civil War soldiers, and others.
That looks like the standard Air Force UXO Identification Card!
It’s probably a catalog of taxes paid or owed. That is how writing was invented, to record taxes. Tax collecting is likely the second oldest profession.
I blieve most of the Linear B (Greek) sources are lists of commodities owed/collected as taxes, plus lists of officer assignments, eg, coast watchers, governors, etc. I do not believe any literary texts have been discovered on Linear B tablets.
Wasn’t it linear B that hasn’t been deciphered yet? Could be wrong, but one of the early Greek scripts to my knowledge (which is very amateur grade) has never been decoded.
Linear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the early 1950s. It is apparently an archaic Greek language written in Minoan (Linear A) syllabic script. As far as I know, Linear A has not yet been deciphered.
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Thanks Fred Nerks. |
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Re “We are having a helluva kegger, but we need more beer and pizza.”
You forgot the most important thing in Olmec/Mayan/Aztec culture - virgins!
Not a good party without virgins to party with or sacrifice!
You are correct! The Perfet Party Triad is food, hooch, and women.
Looks like and advertisement for hand tools to me. Sort of an early Ace Hardware ad.
Okay... this got me thinking about the recent claim that the Phaistos Disk is a fake... and I could have sworn there was a topic about it... couldn’t find it... any leads?
ah...
Phaistos Disc declared as fake by scholar
The Times of London | July 12, 2008 | Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
Posted on 07/30/2008 10:56:36 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2054126/posts
Jerome M. Eisenberg, writing in the July/August issue of the magazine Minerva, provides a compilation of the scholarly (and non-scholarly) ideas about and attempted translations of the disk, and concludes that the disk is a forgery...
...The translation compilation alone contains such entertainments, from the mystic ("Helmsman's-rhythm-beating-call of the blossoming radiant heaven's tree dweller"), to the romantic ("Blissful lady of the labyrinth, blissful Isonoia, lady of the coffins") to the political ("Hear ye Cretans! Quick, quick") to the instructional ("Enter the grove of Elaia: Ignite smoothened wood all around"), ...
Proving the Phaistos disk a fake is going to be difficult. Eisenberg points out that the purposely stamped and deliberately fired disk is unlike any other Minoan script. Those found at Knossos were drawn into soft clay and accidentally fired.
No they were not accidentally fired! They were burnt as was the custom - as gifts to the dead.
The Secrets of Crete. Knossos wasn't a palace, it was a Temple of the Dead.
Crete: isle of the dead?
Frontier magazine | January-February 2000 | Philip Coppens
Posted on 08/03/2006 10:11:02 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1677518/posts
boy, sometimes *nothing* helps...
Oldest writing in the New World discovered
NewScientist.com | 14 September 2006 | Jeff Hecht
Posted on 09/14/2006 4:09:26 PM EDT by flevit
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1701572/posts
‘Oldest’ New World writing found
BBC | September 15, 2006 | Helen Briggs
Posted on 09/14/2006 9:39:19 PM PDT by Jedi Master Pikachu
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1701838/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/olmec/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/olmecs/index
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/shang/index
Roots of Mesoamerican Writing
Science Magazine | December 5, 2002 | Erik Stokstad
Posted on 12/07/2002 4:54:13 AM PST by jimtorr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/802484/posts
Secrets of old mask still hidden, duo say
Deseret Morning News | Monday, January 26, 2004 | Diane Urbani
Posted on 01/26/2004 12:55:39 PM PST by nickcarraway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1065675/posts
Secrets of old mask still hidden, duo say
Deseret Morning News | Monday, January 26, 2004 | By Joe Bauman
Posted on 01/30/2004 6:44:11 AM PST by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1068269/posts
Script Delivery: New World writing takes disputed turn [ from 2002 ]
Science News; Vol. 162, No. 23 , p. 355 | Dec. 7, 2002 | Bruce Bower
Posted on 09/17/2006 12:51:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1703162/posts
It looks more like APL.
The Olmec and the ShangLast year, in a book entitled Origin of the Olmec Civilization, Professor Mike Xu, a Chinese who teaches in the foreign languages department at the University of Central Oklahoma, proposed a hypothesis which aroused a storm of controversy in archeological circles. In Xu's view, the first complex culture in Mesoamerica may have come into existence with the help of a group of Chinese who fled across the seas as refugees at the end of the Shang dynasty. The Olmec civilization arose around 1200 BC, which coincides with the time when King Wu of Zhou attacked and defeated King Zhou, the last Shang ruler, bringing his dynasty to a close.
by Claire Liu
tr. by Robert Taylor
Yes, looks like an inventory of some sort. Too many of the items look like they could be held in one’s hand.
11 and 55 are DEFINITLY scrubbing bubbles.
;)
I wonder how tax collecting can be the second oldest profession. I believe farming and sheep herding are (Cain and Abel).
By George, I think you’ve got it!
Ancient doodling by an illiterate stone worker?
“... such large returns of conjecture, from such a small investment in fact”
This looks familiar, has it been shown at FR before?
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