Chen was so taken with the Olmec sculpture that he ventured beyond scholarly caution. Red suggests higher status, Chen said. Perhaps the figure was the master of the group, a venerated ancestral spirit. The two dark blue figures to the right might represent the top noblemen, more important than the two others, carved out of pale green serpentine. But his reading of the text is the clincher.
Writing systems are too arbitrary and complex.
They cannot be independently reinvented. Whether Chen's colleagues ultimately hail him or hang him, his theory yields a tale worthy of Joseph Conrad. In a recent excavation in the Shang capital of Anyang, archaeologists have found a buried library of turtle shells covered with characters. And at the entrance lay the skeleton of the librarian, stabbed in the back and clutching some writings to his breast. The Olmec sculpture was buried under white sand topped with alternate layers of brown and reddish-brown sand.