Eric Thompson (archaeologist)

Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson (born December 31, 1898 in London , † September 9, 1975 in Cambridge ) was a British anthropologist and is considered one of the pioneers of Mayan research. The so-called Thompson correlation is named after him - a correlation between the Mayan calendar of classical time and the Gregorian calendar .

When it came to deciphering Mayan writing , Thompson was long considered an opponent of Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Juri Knorosow , who laid the foundations for dating and deciphering Mayan writing. Since he called Knorosow's research results as Marxist propaganda , Thompson discredited Knorosow's work by using weaknesses in this work to dismiss the entire work as false. As a result, Knorosov's discoveries were not accepted by the majority in the West. After Thompson's death, however, Knorosov's assumptions gradually gained acceptance and formed the basis for further deciphering of the Maya writing system.

In 1959 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy .

Publications (selection)

• 1962: A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman , Oklahoma , USA
• 1958: as Editor: Thomas Gages Travels in the New World , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, LCCN 58-6856
• 1954: The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma
  • German: The Maya: The Greeks America , Heyne, Munich 1975 ISBN 3-453-00637-2
• 1950: Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Introduction , Washington
  • 1960 reissued in The Civilizations of the American Indians, # 56 , University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Okl.
• 1939: Excavations at San José , British Honduras , Washington
• 1933: Mexico before Cortés , New York
• 1931: Archaeological Investigations in the Southern Cayo District , British Honduras , Chicago
• 1930: Ethnology of the Mayas of Southern and Central British Honduras , Field Museum of Natural History , Publication 274, Anthropological series, v. 117, no.2, Chicago

literature

• Editor: Norman Hammond : Social Process in Maya Prehistory. Studies in Honor of Sir Eric Thompson , Academic Press, London / New York / San Francisco 1977 ISBN 0-12-322050-5 , LCCN 77-71821
• Gordon R. Willey: John Eric Sidney Thompson, 1898-1975 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 65 , 1980, pp. 783-798 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Web links

• Literature by and about Eric Thompson in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Eric Thompson (archaeologist) in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
• EMuseum, Minnesota State University: John Eric Sidney Thompson ( February 24, 2008 memento on the Internet Archive )