[Aztlan] Earliest Olmec Writing

[Karon Winzenz]

Dear Listeros,

I was all excited about this new discovery, possibly the oldest and most definitive evidence of Olmec texts, until I realized that is was part of a paper by Carmen Rodriguez Martinez and Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos given at the SAA conference last March. David Grove, a session discussant, expressed his doubts about the authenticity of the tablet saying that the signs seemed to be straight out of Joralemon's A Study of Olmec Iconography, Dumbarton Oaks, 1971. He also stated that the horizontal orientation of the text was suspect. As I recall, someone else may have read this paper, so the original authors may have not been there to respond to his concerns. The symposium was #86, "The Olmec and the Early Formative Neighbors". Did anyone else attend this?

Karon Winzenz
winzenzk at msn.com<mailto:winzenzk at msn.com>