Some Mexican road workers uncover a strange stone block covered with hieroglyphs while building a road.  Then, nearly 10 years later, a team of archaeologists get a look at it and detemine that it is the only existing example of the writing of the Olmec people, and the oldest surviving writing in North or South America.  How cool is that?

From UA archaeologist helps ID writing as Americas' oldest (The Birmingham News):
…The slab, known by researchers as the “Cascajal Block,” was found by road builders in the late-1990s. It is carved from the mineral serpentine, a grayish-green stone. It includes 62 distinct symbols, some of which are repeated. The researchers date the symbols to about 900 B.C. The form of writing it contains was previously unknown to scholars.

[University of Alabama archaeology Professor Richard] Diehl suspects that some scholars will question whether the find is authentic, whether it contains actual writing and whether the dating is accurate. But he is confident of the paper's conclusions.

As to what the inscription means, “We have no idea,” Diehl said. “I don't know if we ever will.”

Diehl has studied the Olmec for about 40 years and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the civilization, which rose about 1500 B.C. and lasted until 400 B.C. In 1967, when Diehl was 26, he was a field director on a Yale University archaeological project in the jungles of San Lorenzo, Mexico. The group discovered 13 monuments, including colossal stone heads, some of which weighed approximately 10 tons. The inscribed stone was found about a mile from that original site, an Olmec city believed to have been the first city in the western hemisphere…