Cyrus Thomas

Cyrus Thomas

Cyrus Thomas (born July 27, 1825 in Kingsport , † June 27, 1910 in Washington, DC ) was an American Old American with German and Irish ancestors who researched the Mayan culture and developed a syllable register for a phonetic approach to deciphering the Maya script presented. He is also in the field of Entomology (Entomology) emerged.

life and work

biography

Cyrus Thomas, during his journey through the American West.

Thomas studied law . In 1851 he was admitted to the bar, a profession he practiced until 1865. In the same year he began his tenure as a clergyman of the Evangelical Lutheran Church . In 1869 he took part in the expedition of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden , who organized a scientific group to explore the Rocky Mountains , and worked as an entomologist during the expedition . In 1873, Thomas was appointed Professor of Science at Southern Illinois University . In 1879 he was also named an Entomologist for the State of Illinois .

meaning

Thomas was a pioneer in deciphering Mayan script. As early as 1882 he demonstrated that the Mayan hieroglyphs , which are composed of affixes and main characters, are read from left to right and in vertical columns of two. He also introduced the syllable index , in which he assumed that the Maya script worked with syllables and logograms similar to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. According to Thomas, every syllable consisted of a combination of consonant and vowel. Thomas' syllable index was only confirmed, supplemented and completed in the 1950s by the Russian ethnologist Yuri Walentinowitsch Knorosow . Knorosow counted about 800 Maya characters. He analyzed Mayan script as a combination of logograms (one character for the entire word) and phonetic characters (a word made up of several phonetic characters / syllables). Stuart completed Thomas' syllable index with the substitution : A sound / a syllable could be represented by many similar characters, all of which represented the same sound / syllable.

Publications

• Aids to the study of the Maya codices. In: Annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884–85. Volume 6. Government Printing Office, Washington 1888, pp. 253-372.
• The Maya year. Washington 1894.
• The Rev. John: and a few philanthropists. John Lovell & Son, Montreal 1903.
• The History of North America. Volume 2: The Indians of North America in Historic Times. G. Barrie, Philadelphia 1903.
• The History of North America. Volume 19: Prehistoric North America. G. Barrie, Philadelphia 1905.

literature

• Archeology of Prehistoric Native America. To Encyclopedia. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, p. 835.
• John L. Capinera: Encyclopedia of Entomology. Volume 4, Springer, Dordrecht 2008, p. 3760 ( online )
• Kenneth L. Feder: Encyclopedia of Dubious Archeology. From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2010, p. 255.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marlene Deahl Merrill: Yellowstone and the Great West Journal, Letters and Images from the 1871 Hayden expedition , University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 1999, ISBN 0-8032-3148-2 , pp 31-32.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} SLUB Dresden → Collections → Manuscripts → Maya Manuscript → Codex Dresdensis → Script Comments on Maya script. Website of the State and University Library Dresden . Retrieved February 23, 2015.
3. ↑ Sven Gronemayer The Maya writing system. ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Proseminar paper of the Proseminar Writing Systems America . University of Bonn. Ethnology seminar. Retrieved February 23, 2015 
4. ^ Gabriele Töpferwein: About Mayas Quetzal Leipzig. Online magazine. October 2008 edition. Accessed February 23, 2015
5. ^ Breaking the Maya Code . Interview with David Stuart. Retrieved February 23, 2015