Dispute: A heralded linguistic deciphering of an extinct hieroglyphic script accomplished in the 1990s is under attack by two researchers.
FOR LINGUISTS, it's like hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win the World Series.
Terrence Kaufman and John Justeson struck that blast in 1993 when they cracked one of the planet's few remaining undeciphered writing systems - a hieroglyphic script from the mysterious Isthmian civilization, which occupied southern Mexico 2,000 years ago.
"It's one of the intellectual glories of the world, to be able to decipher an extinct writing system," said Brigham Young University linguist Stephen Houston.
But did their home run clear the fence? Houston and another researcher now say no. In fact, they call the translation "gobbledygook."