Free Republic

Researchers have discovered nearly 500 ceremonial complexes in Mexico, and they are thought to have been of cosmic importance to Mesoamerican civilizations over 2,000 years ago. The hundreds of sites were discovered using publicly available LIDAR data collected by the Mexican government... ...It is thought they were constructed by diverse groups between 1,050 BC and 400 BC...and, and, based on they way they are facing, many seem to be aligned with the sunrise of a certain date....

Mother of us all, or sister? Olmecs a puzzle By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, New York Times First published: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 On a coastal flood plain etched by rivers flowing through swamps and alongside fields of maize and beans, the people archaeologists call the Olmecs lived in a society of emergent complexity. It was more than 3,000 years ago, along the Gulf of Mexico around Veracruz. The Olmecs moved a veritable mountain of earth to create a plateau above the plain, and there planted a city, the ruins of which are known today as San Lorenzo. The Olmecs are...

A slab inscribed with the oldest writing yet discovered in the New World has been discovered in the Veracruz lowlands in Mexico. The writing dates back nearly 3000 years to the height of the Olmec culture that was the first Mesoamerican civilisation, Mexican archaeologists report. Called the Cascajal slab, it had been rescued along with other artefacts from a quarry at Lomas de Tacamichapa, in 1999, where it had been destined for use in road fill. Isolated symbols have been found on a few Olmec artefacts, but the slab is the first solid evidence of a true written language, says...

Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 2,000 years ago, new evidence suggests. The discovery in the state of Veracruz of a block inscribed with symbolic shapes has astounded anthropologists. Researchers tell Science magazine that they consider it to be the oldest example of writing in the New World. The inscriptions are thought to have been made by the Olmecs, an ancient pre-Columbian people known for creating large statues of heads. The finding suggests that New World people developed writing some 400 years before their contemporaries in the Western hemisphere. ...... "I think it could...

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...