The founder of the Soviet school of Mayan studies, who deciphered the writing of the Maya Indians without ever having been there, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a Russian decoder who is remembered and respected in Mexico.
Yuri Valerievich Knorozov
Born November 19, 1922 in Kharkov. In 1937 he finished seven classes of the 46th railway school. With the beginning of the war, Ukraine was occupied, and Knorozov moved to Moscow, where in 1943 he already studied at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University.
At the end of the 40s, he moved to Leningrad, where he worked at the Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR, sorting through the collections damaged by the bombing, and in his free time he studied strange drawings of the ancient Maya Indians.
After reading the work of the authoritative German researcher Paul Schellhas entitled "Deciphering Mayan Writing - An Insoluble Problem." Yuri was indignant: “How is this an insoluble problem? I'll decide!".
One fine day, Yuri found among the old books that had survived the fire of war, two rare volumes: "Mayan Codes" and "Report on Affairs in Yucatan" by Diego de Landa. Based on these books, Knorozov compiled a catalog of Mayan hieroglyphs and by 1952 was able to establish the phonetic reading of some of them.
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The Mayan dissertation was a breakthrough. A Soviet scientist who had never visited Mexico did what many scientists from different countries did not achieve. Without leaving his office, he deciphered the ancient letters, based on the texts of three surviving manuscripts.
Knorozov himself said: “I am an armchair scientist. There is no need to climb the pyramids to work with texts. In fact, he really wanted to be in Mexico. But this was impossible - he was not allowed to travel abroad.
There were a lot of reasons for his not leaving. On the one hand, they said that his relatives were in the occupation, on the other hand, they said that he drank, and therefore they were not released. Perhaps his independent character played a role, they were afraid: what will he say there, what will he do there?
Thanks to Knorozov's work, we learned the names of real people who lived thousands of years ago: artists and sculptors, emperors and priests.
Knorozov managed to visit the Mayan lands - for the first time this happened at the invitation of the President of Guatemala in 1990.
When he arrived there, it was a delight that he was really there! He could not believe it, he was glad and happy.
In 1999, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov passed away.
In 2012, a monument to the great Russian scientist was unveiled in Cancun.
And in the schools of Mexico, in history lessons, the name of this great man is often remembered!