The Isthmian script is an early set of symbols found in inscriptions around the

Isthmus of Tehuantepec The Isthmus of Tehuantepec () is an isthmus in Mexico. It represents the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, it was a major overland transport route known simply as the T ...

, dating to , though with dates subject to disagreement. It is also called the La Mojarra script and the Epi-Olmec script ('post-Olmec script'). It has not been conclusively determined whether Isthmian script is a true

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

that represents a spoken language, or is a system of

proto-writing Proto-writing consists of visible marks communication, communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in History of China, China a ...

. According to a disputed partial decipherment, it is structurally similar to the

Maya script Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which ...

, and like Maya uses one set of characters to represent

morphemes A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

, and a second set to represent

syllables A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

Recovered texts

The four most extensive Isthmian texts are those found on: * The

La Mojarra Stela 1 La Mojarra Stela 1 is a Mesoamerican carved monument ( stela) dating from 156 CE (2nd century CE). It was discovered in 1986, pulled from the Acula River near La Mojarra, Veracruz, Mexico, not far from the Tres Zapotes archaeological site. The ...

* The

Tuxtla Statuette The Tuxtla Statuette is a small 6.3 inch (16 cm) rounded greenstone (archaeology), greenstone figurine, carved to resemble a squat, bullet-shaped human with a duck-like bill and wings. Most researchers believe the statuette represents a ...

* Tres Zapotes Stela C * A

Teotihuacan Teotihuacan (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'', ; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is ...

-style mask Other texts include: * A few Isthmian

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

s on four badly weathered

stela A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

e — 5, 6, 8, and probably 15 — at

Cerro de las Mesas Cerro de las Mesas, meaning "hill of the altars" in Spanish, is an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Veracruz, in the Mixtequilla area of the Papaloapan River basin. It was a prominent regional center from 600 BCE to 900 CE, and a regi ...

. * Approximately 23 glyphs on the O'Boyle "mask", a clay artifact of unknown provenance. * A small number of glyphs on a pottery-sherd from Chiapa de Corzo. This sherd has been assigned the oldest date of any Isthmian script artifact: 450–300 BCE.

Decipherment

In a 1993 paper, John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman proposed a partial decipherment of the Isthmian text found on the La Mojarra Stela, claiming that the language represented was a member of the Zoquean language family. In 1997, the same two epigraphers published a second paper on Epi-Olmec writing, in which they further claimed that a newly discovered text-section from the stela had yielded readily to the decipherment-system that they had established earlier for the longer section of text. This led to a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

for their work, in 2003. The following year, however, their interpretation of the La Mojarra text was disputed by Stephen D. Houston and

Michael D. Coe Michael Douglas Coe (May 14, 1929 – September 25, 2019) was an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigraphy, epigrapher, and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya civilization, Maya, an ...

, who had tried unsuccessfully to apply the Justeson-Kaufman decipherment-system to the Isthmian text on the back of the hitherto unknown Teotihuacan-style mask (which is of unknown provenance and is now in a private collection). Along with proposing an alternative linguistic attribution of Epi-Olmec writing as proto- Huastecan, Vonk (2020) argued that the size of the corpus compares unfavorably in comparison with the rate of repetition within the corpus, so that a ''unique decipherment'' is simply impossible given the current state of affairs. He goes on in illustrating the principal applicability of readings in random Old and New world languages (including Ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish and German) to demonstrate the coincidental nature of any such proposals. The matter is still under discussion. In ''Lost Languages'' (2008) Andrew Robinson summarises the position as follows:

Notes

References

Brigham Young University press-release
on behalf of Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen Houston and Yale University professor emeritus Michael Coe disputing the Justeson-Kaufman findings. *Diehl, Richard A. (2004) ''The Olmecs: America's First Civilization'', Thames & Hudson, London. *Houston, Stephen, and Michael Coe (2004) "Has Isthmian Writing Been Deciphered?", ''Mexicon'' XXV: 151–161. *Justeson, John S., and Terrence Kaufman (1993), "A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing" in ''Science'', Vol. 259, 19 March 1993, pp. 1703–11. *Justeson, John S., and Terrence Kaufman (1997
"A Newly Discovered Column in the Hieroglyphic Text on La Mojarra Stela 1: a Test of the Epi-Olmec Decipherment"
''Science'', Vol. 277, 11 July 1997, pp. 207–10. *Justeson, John S., and Terrence Kaufman (2001
''Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing and Texts''
. *Lo, Lawrence;

, a
Ancient Scripts.com
(accessed January 2008). *Pérez de Lara, Jorge, and John Justeso

Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI). *Robinson, Andrew (2008) ''Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts'', Thames & Hudson, . *Schuster, Angela M. H. (1997)

in ''Archaeology'', online (accessed January 2008).

External links

"Photographic Documentation of Monuments with Epi-Olmec Script/Imagery"
from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.

Tuxtla Statuette photograph

Drawing of La Mojarra Stela 1

High resolution photo of the Coe/Houston Mask
{{list of writing systems Epi-Olmec culture Mesoamerican writing systems Undeciphered writing systems Writing systems introduced in the 1st millennium BC

Recovered texts

Decipherment

See also

Notes

References

External links