An American is not a decree: How a Russian scientist deciphered the Mayan writing
Mayan writing has become one of the most difficult mysteries for scientists of past centuries. So, from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, even the world’s leading scientists could not understand the meaning of the “pictures” that the American Indians left on stones, pots, walls and other surfaces.
The closest to the solution was the Frenchman Leon de Rosny. Meanwhile, he could not find the treasured key. In turn, the German researcher Paul Schellhas, completely in despair, wrote an article where he expressed confidence that it was simply impossible to decipher the Mayan writings.
It was this essay that caught the eye of Yuri Knorozov, a student at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, who stated that everything created by the human mind will ultimately be solved by him. From that moment the work began, which ultimately made Yuri Valentinovich famous throughout the world.
It is worth noting that, together with Knorozov, the head of the American school of Mayan studies, Eric Thompson, was engaged in deciphering the symbols left by the Indians. True, the expert from the USA made a mistake and got confused in his research, without achieving a result. At the same time, Thompson forbade everyone else to engage in further decryption, calling this task impossible.
Fortunately, the American was not a decree for the Russian Knorozov.
I am an armchair scientist. To work with texts, there is no need to jump through the pyramids
- Yuri Valentinovich once said.
Knorozov’s work dragged on for many years. By the time the first publication of his works came out in 1952, the future scientist had defended his diploma in shamanism at Moscow State University and was about to enter graduate school.
True, Knorozov could not get into graduate school then, neither at the Institute of Ethnography, nor at Moscow State University. He was not taken, since he and his family were in enemy-occupied territories during the Great Patriotic War.
After defending his diploma, Knorozov was sent to work at the Leningrad Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. It was here, having settled in a small museum room, that Yuri Valentinovich came to a solution that had not been given to leading scientists over the past hundred years.
By the way, justice has triumphed. Three years after the publication of his scientific work, Knorozov was organized to defend his dissertation and was immediately awarded a doctorate, and in the scientific world he began to be revered as a genius and the hope of the country.
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