Foreign Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
3,000-Year-Old Poem Discovered in Mexico
LONDON — A block of stone inscribed with patterned images suggestive of rhyming couplets was hailed yesterday as the oldest known example of writing in the New World. The stone was found in the late 1990s in a pile of debris used for road building in Veracruz, Mexico, near the former capital of the Olmec civilization. It bears inscriptions that date back some three millennia, close to the age of the earliest Egyptian writing and to cuneiform developed in ancient Mesopotamia. That makes the inscriptions around 400 years older than previous finds in the Mesoamerica region, which runs from central Mexico to the northwestern Costa Rica. Several paired sequences of signs have led researchers to believe the text contains poetic couplets, which would be the earliest known examples of this form of expression seen so far in Mesoamerica. “It’s a jaw-dropping find,” Stephen Houston of Brown University said. “This block shows a whole new dimension to Olmec society. It’s a tantalizing discovery.”
— The Daily Telegraph
Saddam’s Judge: ‘You Were Not a Dictator’
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The chief judge in Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial told the ex-president yesterday that “you were not a dictator,” sparking Kurdish demands that he be replaced. The judge already had rejected prosecution demands that he step down for allegedly favoring the defense. Judge Abdullah al-Amiri made the comment after Saddam challenged testimony by a Kurdish farmer who said the ex-president told him to “shut up” when he begged for the release of nine relatives.”Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein [if] Saddam Hussein was a dictator and was against the Kurdish people?” Saddam asked. The judge replied: “You were not a dictator.”
— Associated Press
Poland To Send 900 More Troops to Afghanistan
WARSAW, Poland — Poland will send at least 900 troops to bolster the NATO mission in Afghanistan, its defense minister said in comments broadcast yesterday. “As of February next year, over 1,000 Polish soldiers are going to be serving in Afghanistan,” Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists in Washington.
— Associated Press
