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What did Yuri Knorozov demonstrate about the Maya script in 1952?
Knorozov's key insight was to treat the Maya glyphs represented in de Landa's alphabet not as an alphabet, but rather as a syllabary. He was perhaps not the first to propose a syllabic basis for the script, but his arguments and evidence were the most compelling to date.
What did Yuri Knorozov discover?
Knorozov then turned to the published Maya codices, identified the same signs in these manuscripts, and deciphered new syllables. He discovered that Maya writing was logo-syllabic and determined basic spelling rules.
Who decoded the Mayan language?
No less fundamental of those was Yuri Knorozov, who became the first linguist to decipher the enigmatic Maya script — the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica — in the early 1950s.
What was Yuri Knorozov hypothesis regarding hieroglyphics?
In it he argued that the glyphs written by the ancient Mayan Indians consist either of logograms (signs used to represent an entire word) or of phonetic signs; in the case of the latter, each glyph represents a consonant-vowel combination.
Who first discovered the Mayans?
First encounters: 1502 and 1511 Bartholomew Columbus boarded the canoe, and found it was a Maya trading vessel from Yucatán, carrying well-dressed Maya and a rich cargo.
Who translated the Mayan language for the Spaniards?
One of his men informed him that a young Mayan slave could speak “Mexican.” Cortés enlisted the services of Marina as a translator from Nahuatl to (and from) Mayan. Father de Aguila translated Marina's Mayan to Spanish.
Why did the Spanish destroy Mayan books?
Having determined that the precious and zealously guarded Mayan books he had been shown with great pride—precisely because of his evident empathy—contained “nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil,” he ordered all of the books to be burned “…which [the Maya] regretted to an amazing ...
How do I write my name in Mayan?
1:2414:27Writing Your Name in Mayan Glyphs - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you're going to have to use t. Plus the vowel. So instead of looking for a d i would be lookingMoreSo you're going to have to use t. Plus the vowel. So instead of looking for a d i would be looking for a t. So if you have any of these letters in your. Name.
Can we read Mayan writing?
The hieroglyphic writing of the Maya has not been completely deciphered, however, and can still only be interpreted, rather than read. To date nearly 85 percent of known Maya hieroglyphics have been decoded.
What did Yuri Knorozov realize about the glyph for West?
In 1952, Yuri Knorosov (left) postulated that the individual symbols in Maya glyphs stood for phonetic sounds, much like English letters do. Knorosov knew that Maya had too many glyphs to be a true alphabet but too few for each glyph to symbolize an entire word.
Who broke the code of the Mayan writings and when quizlet?
Förstemann decoded the astronomy tables the Maya used to determine when, for example, to wage war . He also deciphered the Maya system for measuring time, now called the Calendar Round. You just studied 10 terms!
Has the Mayan writing system died out?
Most surviving texts are found on pottery recovered from Maya tombs, or from monuments and stelae erected in sites which were abandoned or buried before the arrival of the Spanish. Knowledge of the writing system was lost, probably by the end of the 16th century.
Who is Yuri Knorozov?
November 2016 1 Harald Sack. Yuri Knorozov (1922-1999) On November 19, 1922, Soviet linguist epigrapher and ethnographer Yuri Knorozov was born. Knorozov is particularly renowned for the pivotal role his research played in the decipherment of the Maya script, the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.
Where was Yuri Knorozov born?
Yuri Knorozov was born in a village near Kharkiv in Ukraine, at that time the capital of the newly formed Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, into a family of Russian intellectuals. At school, it soon became clear that Yuri was academically bright with an inquisitive temperament; he was an accomplished violinist, wrote romantic poetry and could draw with accuracy and attention to detail. In 1940 at the age of 17, Knorozov left Kharkiv for Moscow where he commenced undergraduate studies in the newly created Department of Ethnology at Moscow State University’s faculty of History. He initially specialised in Egyptology.
How did Knorozov die?
Knorozov died in Saint Petersburg on March 31, 1999, of pneumonia in the corridors of a city hospital, just before he was due to receive the honorary Proskouriakoff Award from Harvard University. Today, about 80 percent of Maya inscriptions are readable, and the writing system is essentially deciphered. [2]
What are the glyphs for Tzu and Lu?
Hence, the glyphs for tzu and lu were pronounced tzul, which was the Mayan word for “dog.”.
What were the three Maya codices?
Somehow Knorozov managed to retrieve from the burning library a book, which remarkably enough turned out to be a rare edition containing reproductions of the three Maya codices which were then known — the Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices.
What was Knorozov's key insight?
Knorozov’s key insight was to treat the Maya glyphs represented in de Landa’s alphabet not as an alphabet, but rather as a syllabary. He was perhaps not the first to propose a syllabic basis for the script, but his arguments and evidence were the most compelling to date.
What are the Mayan hieroglyphs?
Deciphering Mayan Hieroglyphs. At first glance, Maya hieroglyphs seem like a baroque form of picture writing. The Maya used a script of animal heads, body parts, gods, and many other completely mysterious images, all arranged into blocks to make a text.
Un soldado historiador
Yuri Valentinovich Knórozov nació en la extinta Unión Soviética (en la actual Ucrania) el 19 de noviembre de 1922. Procedente de una familia de intelectuales, ingresó a la Facultad de Historia de la Universidad Estatal de Lomovosov de Moscú. Amante de Sherlock Holmes, tocaba el violín y era autodidácta en los idiomas.
El método
Inicialmente, Knórozov aprendió español y obtuvo facsímiles de los códices de Dresdén, París y Madrid. Debido a la Guerra Fría, no fue fácil para el investigador viajar a México. Así que toda su investigación se realizó desde Leningrado.
Recepción internacional de Yuri Knórozov
Lamentablemente, las investigaciones no fueron bien recibidas por la academia internacional ni por los estudios de los mayas más prominentes. Por el contrario, el estigma sobre el comunismo se dejó caer con todo su peso y fue descalificado en numerosas ocasiones por mayistas de la talla de Thompson.
Yuri comienza a trabajar en el Museo de Etnografía
Los conocidos recuerdan que en 1949, Yuri Knorozov, a quien unos amigos consiguieron un puesto en el Museo de Etnografía de los Pueblos de la URSS en Leningrado, vivía en una pequeña habitación del museo de poco más de tres metros de ancho, completamente llena de libros, y que el científico decoró personalmente dibujando en las paredes jeroglíficos de la época precolombina.
Descifrando los jeroglíficos mayas
En su trabajo argumentaba que el llamado « alfabeto de Landa « contenido en el manuscrito del obispo Diego de Landa «Relación de las cosas de Yucatán» se componía de sílabas, más que de símbolos alfabéticos.
Yuri y los gatos
Los gatos eran la pasión de Knorozov. Alrededor de 1970, sus amigos le regalaron un gato siamés, que entonces era raro en Leningrado, donde vivía por entonces. Le llamó Asya y se convirtió en la asistente principal del investigador, la llamó «su coautora».
El caso Berlín
La figura y extraña personalidad del famoso científico ha general varias leyendas.
Otras historias en torno a Yuri
Otro mito dice que Knorozov defendió su tesis doctoral durante exactamente tres minutos, tras lo cual todo el consejo lo aplaudió de pie. Este hecho es difícil de verificar, pero es cierto que Yuri Valentinovich se convirtió en doctor en ciencias, sin haber aprobado la presentación de su tesis.
Universities, war, closed doors
In 1939, he entered the historical faculty of Kharkiv State University and finished two years by the time of the Nazi German invasion in the USSR.
Maya civilization
The Maya area within Mesoamerica (outlined in red), compared to all other Mesoamerica cultures (black) within Central America and southern North America (Mexico). Source: Lynn Foster, Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World, – New York, US: Oxford University Press, 2002. Via Wikimedia Commons
How to decipher an unknown script
The Egyptian hieroglyphs were well-known visually but still incomprehensible in the early 19th century. Jean-François Champollion was able to crack the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in 1822 using the famous Rosetta Stone — a parallel bilingual text in two Egyptian scripts and Greek dated 196 BC.
A long path to recognition
Knorozov’s discovery was a breakthrough. At the time, Maya studies were at a dead end. English archeologist J. Eric Thompson, the greatest authority of the day, had rejected de Landa’s alphabetic approach. He arrived at the conclusion that the Mayan hieroglyphs represented abstract ideas and symbols, not words or letters.
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Youth and Education
World War 2 and Research in Egyptology
- The outbreak of World War II hostilities along the Eastern Front in mid-1941 interrupted Knorozov’s university studies. From 1943 to 1945 he served his term in the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War in the Red Army as an artillery spotter. At the closing stages of the war in May 1945, Knorozov and his unit supported the push of the Red Army vanguard into Berlin. It was here, so…
The de Landa Alphabet
- In 1947, Knorozov wrote his dissertation on the “de Landa alphabet“, a record produced by the 16th century Spanish Bishop Diego de Landa in which he claimed to have transliterated the Spanish alphabet into corresponding Maya hieroglyphs, based on input from Maya informants. De Landa, who during his posting to Yucatán had overseen the destruction of...
Deciphering Mayan Hieroglyphs
- At first glance, Maya hieroglyphs seem like a baroque form of picture writing. The Maya used a script of animal heads, body parts, gods, and many other completely mysterious images, all arranged into blocks to make a text. The common wisdom for many decades held that the glyphs were nothing more than a cumbersome pictographic system in which each image represented a …
Later Life
- Due to Soviet travel restrictions, it was not until 1990 that Knorozov was eventually able to leave Russia again and finally visit the ancient Maya homelands and archaeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala. The government of Mexico awarded him the Orden del Águila Azteca (Order of the Aztec Eagle), the highest decoration awarded by Mexico to non-citizens, in 1994. Knorozov died …
Información general
Yuri Valentínovich Knórozov (también transcrito como Knórosov; en ruso, Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов) (Járkov, URSS (actualmente Ucrania), 19 de noviembre de 1922 - San Petersburgo, Rusia, 30 de marzo de 1999) fue un lingüista, epigrafista, etnólogo, mayista, que tuvo un papel clave en el desciframiento del sistema de escritura de la cultura maya (véase escritura maya).
Datos biográficos
Yuri Knórozov procedía de una familia de intelectuales. En 1939, ingresó a la Facultad de Historia de la Universidad de Járkov. Luego de estallar Segunda Guerra Mundial, en octubre de 1941 Járkov fue ocupada por las tropas nazis, pero en 1943 Knórozov logró trasladarse a Moscú para continuar sus estudios en la Facultad de Historia de la Universidad Estatal Lomonósov de Moscú, a la que ya había sido admitido en 1940. Poco tiempo después fue conscripto en las fuerzas armadas sovi…
Obras
Knórozov publicó su trabajo más importante sobre la escritura maya en el artículo Письменность индейцев-майя (Písmennost Indéitsev Maiya, La escritura de los indígenas mayas), en 1963. Sus hipótesis de desciframiento fonético rápidamente se divulgaron con gran aceptación en la década de 1970, y posibilitaron la lectura de buena parte de las inscripciones de los antiguos mayas. Knórozov tomó en consideración los manuscritos del siglo XVI, llamados Relación de las cosas d…
Premios y reconocimientos
• Orden del Quetzal recibida en Guatemala, en 1991.
• Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca recibida en la embajada de México en Moscú, en 1994.
• Homenaje del Congreso Estatal de Quintana Roo, en 1995.
Bibliografía
• Malvido, Adriana (2009). La Reina Roja: el secreto de los mayas en Palenque. México: Debolsillo. ISBN 978-607-429-400-2.
• Salgado Ruelas, Silvia Mónica (2001). Análisis semiótico de la forma arbórea en el Códice de Dresde. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. ISBN 968-36-9097-1. Consultado el 19 de diciembre de 2012.