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| Isthmian script | |
|---|---|
 Detail showing three columns ofglyphs fromLa Mojarra Stela 1. The two right columns are Isthmian glyphs. The left column gives aMesoamerican Long Count calendar date of 8.5.16.9.7, or 156 CE. | |
| Script type | Undeciphered (assumed to belogosyllabic) |
Period | c. 500 BCE – 500 CE |
| Direction | Top-to-bottom  |
| Languages | Epi-Olmec (ISO639-3:xep) |
TheIsthmian script is an early set of symbols found in inscriptions around theIsthmus of Tehuantepec, dating toc. 500 BCE – 500 CE, though with dates subject to disagreement. It is also called theLa Mojarra script and theEpi-Olmec script ('post-Olmec script').
It has not been conclusively determined whether Isthmian script is a truewriting system that represents a spoken language, or is a system ofproto-writing. According to a disputed partial decipherment, it is structurally similar to theMaya script, and like Maya uses one set of characters to representmorphemes, and a second set to representsyllables.
The four most extensive Isthmian texts are those found on:
Other texts include:
| Epi-Olmec | |
|---|---|
| (controversial) | |
| Native to | Mexico |
| Region | La Mojarra |
| Era | c. 500 BCE – 500 CE |
| Isthmian script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xep |
| Glottolog | None |
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 theZoquean language family.[3] 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.[4] This led to aGuggenheim Fellowship for their work, in 2003.
The following year, however, their interpretation of the La Mojarra text was disputed byStephen D. Houston andMichael D. Coe, 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).[5]
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 aunique 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.[6]
The matter is still under discussion. InLost Languages (2008)Andrew Robinson summarises the position as follows:
Overall, then, the case for the Justeson/Kaufman 'decipherment' of Isthmian is decidedly unproven and currently rests on shaky foundations ... What it needs, more urgently than some other 'decipherments' given its evident linguistic sophistication, is the discovery of a new text or texts as substantial as the one found at La Mojarra in 1986.[7]
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