Cascajal Block
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Cascajal Block
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 he Olmeccivilization."Earliest writing in New World discovered
, in ''In The News'', 15 September 2006
The Cascajal Block was discovered by road builders in the late 1990s in a pile of debris in the village of Lomas de Tacamichapan in the

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Olmec Hieroglyphs
Olmec hieroglyphs (alternatively Olmec glyphs, Olmec writing, or Olmec script) designate a possible system of writing or proto-writing developed within the Olmec culture. The Olmecs were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing during the formative period (1500 BCE to 400 BCE) in the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The subsequent Epi-Olmec culture (300 BCE to 250 CE), was a successor culture to the Olmec and featured a full-fledged writing system, the Isthmian (or Epi-Olmec) script. The existence of a writing system in Middle and Late Olmec periods has been a matter of long-standing debate. Direct evidence includes the appearance of individual (potential) glyphs as well as the singleton Cascajal Block that bears a potential text. Indirect evidence includes similarities in calendar and writing systems between subsequent Mesoamerican cultures, for which the Olmecs are sometimes considered a mother culture. Period ...
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University Of Texas At Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 graduate students and 3,133 teaching faculty as of Fall 2021, it is also the largest institution in the system. It is ranked among the top universities in the world by major college and university rankings, and admission to its programs is considered highly selective. UT Austin is considered one of the United States's Public Ivies. The university is a major center for academic research, with research expenditures totaling $679.8 million for fiscal year 2018. It joined the Association of American Universities in 1929. The university houses seven museums and seventeen libraries, including the LBJ Presidential Library and the Blanton Museum of Art, and operates various auxiliary research facilities, such as the J. J. Pickle Researc ...
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David Stuart (Mayanist)
David S. Stuart (born 1965) is an archaeologist and epigrapher specializing in the study of ancient Mesoamerica, the area now called Mexico and Central America. His work has studied all aspects of the ancient Maya civilization. He is widely recognized for his breakthroughs in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs and interpreting Maya art and iconography, starting at an early age. He is the youngest person ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, at age 18. He currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and his current research includes study of Maya, Aztec and ancient Mesoamerican images and texts. Early life He is the son of the archaeologist George E. Stuart and the writer, artist and illustrator Gene Strickland Stuart, both of whom wrote extensively for the National Geographic Society. He spent much of his childhood accompanying his parents on archaeological digs and expeditions in Mexico and Guatemala. There he developed a deep interest in Maya culture, especially their ar ...
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Florida State University
Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the state of Florida. Florida State University comprises 16 separate colleges and more than 110 centers, facilities, labs and institutes that offer more than 360 programs of study, including professional school programs. In 2021, the university enrolled 45,493 students from all 50 states and 130 countries. Florida State is home to Florida's only national laboratory, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and is the birthplace of the commercially viable anti-cancer drug Taxol. Florida State University also operates the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida and one of the largest museum/university complexes in the nation. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). ...
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University Of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, moved to Durham in 1893, and adopted its current name in 1923. The university's Durham campus comprises six colleges. A seventh college, the University of New Hampshire at Manchester, occupies the university's campus in Manchester. The University of New Hampshire School of Law is in Concord, the state's capital. The university is part of the University System of New Hampshire and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". , its combined campuses made UNH the largest state university system in the state of New Hampshire, with over 15,000 students. It was also the most expensive state-sponsored school in the United States for in-state students. History The Morrill Act of 1862 granted federal l ...
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William Saturno
William Andrew "Bill" Saturno (born Albany, New York) is an American archaeologist and Mayanist scholar who has made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. Saturno is a former director of the ''Proyecto San Bartolo-Xultun'' at the Instito de Antropologia e Historia in Guatemala, a former national space research scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and a research associate at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Saturno has previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Boston University and MIT and as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire. Saturno is best known for his discovery in 2001 of one of the oldest extant murals in the Maya region, at the site of San Bartolo in northeastern Guatemala. He said this discovery was his favorite and most challenging experience of his career, and that "being the first person to see he muralsafter more than 2,000 years, uncovering them bit by bit, with each ...
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University Of Alabama
The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the public universities in Alabama as well as the University of Alabama System. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". The university offers programs of study in 13 academic divisions leading to bachelor's, master's, education specialist, and doctoral degrees. The only publicly supported law school in the state is at UA. Other academic programs unavailable elsewhere in Alabama include doctoral programs in anthropology, communication and information sciences, metallurgical engineering, music, Romance languages, and social work. As one of the first public universities established in the early 19th century southwestern frontier of the United States, the University of Alabama has left a cultural impr ...
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University Of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban district of Riverside with a branch campus of in Palm Desert, California, Palm Desert. In 1907, the predecessor to UCR was founded as the UC Citrus Experiment Station, Riverside which pioneered research in biological pest control and the use of plant hormone, growth regulators responsible for extending the citrus growing season in California from four to nine months. Some of the world's most important research collections on University of California, Riverside Citrus Variety Collection, citrus diversity and Entomology Research Museum, entomology, as well as Eaton collection, science fiction and UCR/California Museum of Photography, photography, are located at Riverside. UCR's undergraduate UCR College ...
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Karl Taube
Karl Andreas Taube (born September 14, 1957)  is an American Mesoamericanist, Mayanist, iconographer and ethnohistorian, known for his publications and research into the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. he holds a position as Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside.Board of Regents, UC (2006) In 2008 he was named the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences distinguished lecturer. Family Background Karl Taube's father, Canadian-born Henry Taube (d. 2005), whose parents were ethnic Germans, was the recipient of the 1983 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Education Taube commenced his undergraduate education at Stanford, relocating to Berkeley where he completed a B.A. in Anthropology in 1980. His graduate studies were undertaken in Anthropology at Yale, where he completed his Masters degree in 1983 and was awarded his Doctorate in 1988. At Yale, ...
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Isthmian Script
The Isthmian script is a very early Mesoamerican writing system in use in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from perhaps 500 BCE to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates. It is also called the La Mojarra script and the Epi-Olmec script ('post-Olmec script'). Isthmian script is structurally similar to the Maya script, and like Maya uses one set of characters to represent logograms (or word units) and a second set to represent syllables. Recovered texts The four most extensive Isthmian texts are those found on: * The La Mojarra Stela 1 * The Tuxtla Statuette * Tres Zapotes Stela C * A Teotihuacan-style mask Other texts include: * A few Isthmian glyphs on four badly weathered stelae — 5, 6, 8, and probably 15 — at Cerro de las Mesas. * Approximately 23 glyphs on the O'Boyle "mask", a clay artifact of unknown provenance. * A small number of glyphs on a pottery-sherd from Chiapa de Corzo. This sherd has been assigned the oldest date of any Isthmia ...
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Mayan Languages
The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as the adjectival form. form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name,Achiʼ is counted as a variant of Kʼicheʼ by the Guatemalan government. and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory. The Mayan language family is one of the best-documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages descend from the Proto-Mayan language, thought to have been spoken at least 5,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method. The proto-Mayan langua ...
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