The roots of writing in the New World have been traced back to a time earlier than researchers thought — as far back as 2,650 years, when the ancient Olmec civilization flourished on Mexico’s Gulf ...

Olmec stone mask (made around 2,500 years ago) found in Mexico I'm holding a face in my hand, and it's very definitely a face, and not a head. It's made in polished green stone, and it's hollowed out ...

Aerial remote-sensing of a large region of Mexico has revealed hundreds of ancient Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, including a large one at an important site for the ancient Olmec culture that is ...

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered two Olmec reliefs chiseled into large, circular stones that are thought to depict local rulers performing ritual contortion. The twin pieces were found in ...

This Olmec mask was worn around the neck as a pendant. It may have provided the wearer with a new identity as an ancestor or deity - perhaps as the Olmec rain god. The distinctive toothless, ...

Archaeologists working on the Gulf coast of Mexico say a 3,000-year-old stone tablet there bears the oldest writing in the Western Hemisphere and the first text unambiguously linked to the Olmec ...

The de Young Museum's "Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico," which opens today, gets a thrilling, uncluttered presentation. At the entrance to the exhibition hangs a photo mural of ...

Scientists say they have found evidence in Mexico that an ancient people developed a writing system more than 2,500 years ago. They say that inscriptions on a cylinder-shaped seal and fragments of a ...

Symbols carved on to a recently discovered seal and plaque represent the earliest evidence of writing in the New World, a find that challenges previous ideas about who invented writing in the Americas ...

An unexpected architectural tradition linked many Olmec and Maya societies of Mesoamerica, an ancient cultural area that ran from central Mexico to Central America. Starting as early as around 3,400 ...

Oct 25 (Reuters) - Aerial remote-sensing of a large region of Mexico has revealed hundreds of ancient Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, including a large one at an important site for the ancient Olmec ...