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The sculpture of Tres Zapotes alone among Gulf coast Olmec sculpture presents evidence that its carvers employed a hieroglyphic writing system. Tres Zapotes Stela C bears an Initial Series date with a lengthy hieroglyphic text, Stela D bears a few individual hieroglyphs and Stela A also bears remnants of a few hieroglyphs, Monument 5 also bears a hieroglyphic Sacred Round date of 6 Ik.
Despite similarities, the features of Tres Zapotes hieroglyphs distinguish them from contemporaneous Early Maya writing. The text of Stela C is the most divergent from contemporaneous Early Maya texts, perhaps because it has the greatest number of elements. The most prominent features distinguishing Stela C's text from contemporaneous Early Maya texts are unpaired columns, conjoined glyph blocks, inconsistent glyph height and elements of Maya writing used in a non-Maya manner.
Elements of Maya writing which are used in a non-Maya manner are concentrated in and around the Initial Series where at least three glyphs precede the Initial Series and the Initial Series Introductory Glyph Superfix is treated as a separate glyph. Contemporaneous Early Maya texts such as the incised inscription of Kaminaljuyu Stela 10 already employ Maya style paired columns, separated glyph blocks and consistent glyph height. Also the Early Maya style Initial Series Introductory Glyph is already conjoined with its superfix when it initiates the Initial Series of Abaj Takalik Stelae 2 and 5.
However, a few features of Stela C's text, such as the Initial Series itself, represent direct borrowings from the Maya writing system. Such borrowings are also visible in the second glyph of column A which is an angular version of T544 or T552, the introductory glyph variable which is a version of T751a, the numerical coefficients of the Initial Series which are Maya style dot-bar numerals and the day sign which is in a lozenge shaped cartouche with the vertical dot-bar coefficient to the right.
The features of Stela C's text which distinguish it from contemporaneous Early Maya texts are the same features which identify it with later texts in the Tuxtla writing system which first came to light with William Henry Holms' publication of the inscription on a nephrite statue from San Andres Tuxtla (Holms 1907). Most examples of the writing system were discovered by Matthew Stirling on Stelae A, C(Fragment 1),D and Cerro de las Mesas Stelae 4, 6, 8, 16 and the "Chapultepec" [Cerro de las Mesas] Stela (Stirling 1939, 1941, 1943). Subsequently Francisco Beverido discovered more of the writing on Fragment 2 of Stela C (Beverido 1971). Recently, Fernando Winfield-Capitain has published La Mojarra Stela 1, with the longest Tuxtla style text, and noted the existence of another Tuxtla style text on an unprovenanced mask in a private collection in the United States (Winfield-Capitain 1988).
The use and misuse of Maya style features as found in the Tuxtla script seen at Tres Zapotes and other Gulf coast sites identifies this fascinating writing system as a secondary, derivative version of Maya writing.
