Augustus Le Plongeon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Augustus Le Plongeon

Augustus Le Plongeon (born May 4, 1825 in Jersey , † December 13, 1908 in Brooklyn , New York ) was a photographer and amateur archaeologist .

The Maya , in particular the ruined city of Chichén Itzá , where he undertook the first systematic excavations and carried out archaeological pioneering work, were the focus of his research . He interpreted the unearthed sculpture of a half-lying figure as a person in his hypothetical reconstruction of the history of the Maya and named it Chac Mo'ol (pronounced with English vowel values ​​as Chac Mul, this has since been forgotten). As a strict diffusionist he tried to prove that the Maya (or their "missionaries", whom Le Plongeon referred to as Naacal ) created the cultures of ancient Egypt on their way across South Asia and Atlantis . His eccentric and fantastic theories were mostly not taken seriously even in his day. His photographs of archaeological sites, on the other hand, are considered an essential source for studying pre-Columbian Central America . A. Le Plongeon's wife Alice (1851-1910) represented her husband's ideas in lectures and publications.

Reports from contemporary witnesses

Lyon Sprague de Camp described Le Plongeon as a melancholy-looking French physicist with a beard that reached to his belly button. His wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon (1851-1910) was a British photographer, explorer, archaeologist and author. She described Sprague as a pretty American woman who was much younger than Le Plongeon.

Furthermore, he would have mastered the Mayan language and suffer from the arbitrariness of Mexican authorities during his excavations. In 1939 the photographer and amateur archaeologist also received criticism from Robert B. Stacy-Judd, who also believed in an intercontinental relationship between the ancient Maya and Asia and Europe. He criticizes Le Plongeon's derivation of the term: “As usual, he takes undue liberties with regard to the original word in order to justify a version according to his taste. 'Ak' and 'Ka' are Mayan words, but the addition of the letter 'D' (there is no 'D' in the Mayan language) is why Le Plongeon changed it to 'T'. [These] or any other additions or modifications obviously - possibly completely - change the original meaning of the word. In these circumstances it seems unwise to place too much trust in Le Plongeon's translation. "

Works

  • Augustus Le Plongeon: Queen Móo and the Egyptian sphinx . New York 1896. New edition: Steiner Publ., Blauvelt, NY 1973, ISBN 0-8334-1729-0 .
  • Augustus Le Plongeon: The Origin of the Egyptians . Introduction: Manly P. Hall. Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, 1983, ISBN 0-89314-418-5 .
  • Augustus Le Plongeon: Sacred mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago. Their relation to the sacred mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea and India. Free masonry in times anterior to the temple of Solomon. R. Macoy, New York 1886. New edition: Wizards Bookshelf, Minneapolis 1973.
  • Auguste Le Plongeon: Vestiges of the Mayas, or, Facts tending to prove that communications and intimate relations must have existed, in very remote times, between the inhabitants of Mayab and those of Asia and Africa . J. Polhemus, New York 1881.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source: Lawrence G. Desmond, Ph.D., EXAVATION OF THE PLATFORM OF VENUS, CHICHÉN ITZÁ, YUCATÁN, MÉXICO: THE PIONEERING FIELD WORK OF ALICE DIXON LE PLONGEON AND AUGUSTUS LE PLONGEON (accessed: July 11, 2012)
  2. ^ Augustus Le Plongeon: Queen Móo and the Egyptian Sphinx . Kegan Paul, 1896, OCLC 500311423 , p. xxiii-xxiv ( online at HathiTrust.org , Cornell University Library PDF 14.5 MB [accessed May 2, 2011]).
  3. ↑ Alice Dixon Le Plongeon - Atlantis Research. Retrieved March 28, 2018 .
  4. ^ Augustus Le Plongeon - Atlantis research. Retrieved March 28, 2018 .

literature

  • Lawrence G. Desmond: Augustus Le Plongeon. A fall from archaeological grace , in: Alice B. Kehoe and Mary Beth Emmerichs (Eds.), Assembling the Past. Studies in the Professionalization of Archeology , University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1999, 81-90. ISBN 0-8263-1939-4 (engl.)
  • Lawrence G. Desmond / Phyllis Mauch Messenger: A dream of Maya, Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon in nineteenth-century Yucatan . University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1988. ISBN 0-8263-1000-1 (English).
  • R. Tripp Evans: Romancing the Maya: Mexican antiquity in the American imagination . University of Texas Press, Austin 2004. ISBN 0-292-70247-7
personal data
SURNAME Le Plongeon, Augustus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plongeon, Augustus Le
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British photographer and amateur archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey , England
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1908
Place of death Brooklyn , New York