A Functionalist Decipherment of the Cascajal Block Olmec Script: Serpentine Slab Materiality, Agricultural Commodity Sign Repertoire, and Reusable Harvest Registry Mechanics

The discovery of the Cascajal Block in Lomas de Tacamichapa, Veracruz, Mexico (c. 1000–800 BCE) provided the earliest physical evidence of Precolumbian writing in the Americas. However, epigraphic decipherment has been stalled by the assumption that its 62 incised signs represent a phonetic transcription of spoken Proto-Olmec narrative or ritual mythos. Applying the academic IMRaD framework (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) and the Wikaira Decipherment Framework, this study establishes that the Cascajal Block functioned as a practical, non-linguistic administrative ledger and reusable agricultural harvest registry. Analyzing sign distribution across the 62 glyph occurrences (comprising 28 distinct sign types), this paper demonstrates four primary empirical findings: (1) Portable serpentine slab materiality (11.5 kg, 36 cm × 21 cm × 13 cm), where microscopic surface pitting and wear confirm that scribes periodically re-ground and polished the stone to erase seasonal tallies; (2) Linear crop-row reading syntax following horizontal sequence lines ([Estate Header] -> [Maize/Pelt Commodity Logogram] -> [Harvest Unit Tally]); (3) A hyper-concentrated agricultural sign nucleus dominated by maize cobs (Sign 1/2), pelt/skin bundles (Sign 16), pest quotas (Sign 6), and slicing adzes (Sign 21); and (4) Real-time zero-sum harvest adjustments, where surface scraping and incision gouging were used to strike rotten yields and spoiled inventories from active distribution records.