Friday, September 15, 2006

Olmec writing from 900 BC found

Almost done - just have to print it out - but I spotted this incredibly cool piece of news:
* Claim of Oldest New World Writing Excites Archaeologists - subscription-only, so see Writing on Olmec Slab Is Hemisphere's Oldest: Tablet of 62 characters dates to about 1000 BC. ('Oldest' New World writing found)

Mesoamerican historical linguists (Dave?) as well as historians must be getting fairly excited - the next oldest Mesoamerican writing was only about 200 BC.

Oh, and another classic example of confused BBC science reporting: "The finding suggests that New World people developed writing some 400 years before their contemporaries in the Western hemisphere." (!)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Few things get me more exciting than ancient writing.

bulbul said...

rob:
Carmen Electra, for example? :o)

How's the thesis going, Lameen?

Dave said...

Yes! Excited is it! I still have to check out the article though. Things have been running at hyper-speed lately. Thanks for posting this, though!

Lameen Souag الأمين سواق said...

Thesis finally finished a few days ago! :) Will post soon...

Anonymous said...

What's the thesis on? And congratulations!