Isthmian script
Encyclopedia
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, and prior to the opening of the Panama Canal was a major shipping route known simply as the Tehuantepec Route...
from perhaps 500 BCE
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates. It is also called the La Mojarra script and the Epi-Olmec script ('post-Olmec script').
Isthmian script is structurally similar to the later Maya script
Maya script
The Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered...
, and like Maya uses one set of characters to represent logograms (or word units
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
) and a second set to represent syllables
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
.
Recovered Texts
The four most extensive Isthmian texts are those found on:- The La Mojarra Stela 1La Mojarra Stela 1La Mojarra Stela 1 is a Mesoamerican carved monument dating from the 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 by , four-ton limestone slab contains about 535 glyphs of the...
(shown at right) - The Tuxtla StatuetteTuxtla StatuetteThe Tuxtla Statuette is a small 6.3 inch rounded greenstone figurine, carved to resemble a squat, bullet-shaped human with a duck-like bill and wings. Most researchers believe the statuette represents a shaman wearing a bird mask and bird cloak...
- Tres Zapotes Stela C
- A TeotihuacanTeotihuacanTeotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...
-style mask.
Other texts include:
- A few Isthmian glyphs on four badly weathered stelae — 5, 6, 8, and probably 15 — at Cerro de las MesasCerro de las MesasCerro 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...
. - Approximately 23 glyphs on the O'Boyle "mask", a clay artifact in a private collection of unknown provenance.
- A small number of glyphs on a pottery-sherd from Chiapa de CorzoChiapa de Corzo (Mesoamerican site)Chiapa de Corzo is an archaeological site of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, located in the Central Depression of Chiapas of present-day Mexico. It rose to prominence during the Middle Formative period, becoming a regional center or capital that controlled trade along the Grijalva River. By then, its...
. 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 Mixe–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 for their work, in 2003.The following year, however, their interpretation of the La Mojarra text was disputed by Stephen D. Houston
Stephen D. Houston
Stephen Douglas Houston is an American anthropologist, archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar, who is particularly renowned for his research into the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica...
and Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe is an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigrapher and author. Primarily known for his research in the field of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies , Coe has also made extensive investigations across a variety...
, 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).
The matter is still under discussion. In Lost Languages (2008) Andrew Robinson
W. Andrew Robinson
W. Andrew Robinson is a British author and former newspaper editor.Andrew Robinson was educated at the Dragon School, Eton College where he was a King's Scholar, University College, Oxford where he read Chemistry and finally the School of Oriental and African Studies in London...
summarises the position as follows:
