John Lloyd Stephens

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Lloyd Stephens

John Lloyd Stephens (born November 28, 1805 in Shrewsbury , Monmouth County , New Jersey , †  October 13, 1852 in New York City ) was an American explorer, amateur archaeologist , author, lawyer and diplomat . With his discoveries, he laid the foundation for modern Mayan research and helped plan a transport link from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Central American isthmus .

Life

He was the son of Benjamin Stephens and Clemence Lloyd Stephens. Stephens received his AB degree from Columbia College in 1822 and his Master of Art degree from Columbia University in 1828. In 1824 he graduated from Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut. Between 1834 and 1836 he began his travels first to Europe and then on to the Middle East.

The travel obsessed

The young lawyer developed his fascination for travel and discovery when he was touring Italy, Greece and the Middle East in 1834. From Paris he traveled through Germany, Austria, Poland and Russia. Then he traveled to Egypt, visited Petra in Jordan and the " Holy Land ". He later described these journeys in his first two books,

  • Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land (1837)
  • Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia and Poland (1838)

which were a great success, not least thanks to an enthusiastic review by Edgar Allan Poe .

Fascinated by ancient Egyptian culture and Petra , Stephens decided to become an archaeologist. He literally devoured the reports of early explorers like Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) or Juan Galindo (1802–1839) about ruined Central American cities. The book "Picturesque and archaeological journey in the province of Yucatan" by the painter and explorer Johann Friedrich Graf von Waldeck led Stephens to the conviction that there must be more undiscovered witnesses of the pre-Columbian cultures in the jungle of Central America .

The archaeologist and explorer

It was a stroke of luck for Stephens that President Martin Van Buren sent him to Guatemala City in 1839 as US ambassador to the Central American Confederation . He used a large part of his time for extensive voyages of discovery, which he made together with the architect Frederick Catherwood , who had made a name for himself with drawings of ancient ruins. Stephens met him in London in 1836 and hired him as a draftsman. On their first trip through Central America (1839–1840) they discovered numerous important cities of the classical and late Maya culture hidden in the tropical forest :

With the help of locals, they uncovered ruins completely overgrown by the jungle that had been buried under the lush tropical vegetation for almost a thousand years.

Stephens described and mapped the findings neatly while Catherwood from the temples , pyramids , ball courts and rich with reliefs decorated steles anfertigte fascinating and remarkably detailed drawings he later watercolors; they were printed as color lithographs. Catherwood's filigree drawings and Stephen's lively, sometimes very amusing report on the discoveries, everyday life of people and the adventures of this true odyssey through mountains, jungles and revolutions became a world bestseller in 1841. In addition, the work Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan gives a vividly written insight into the civil war observed by Stephens at close quarters, in which the Central American Confederation disintegrated just during Stephen's service in Central America.

Another voyage of discovery to Mayan ruins took Stephens and Catherwood to Yucatán in 1841 , where they rediscovered Tulúm , among other things . Stephens wrote another book about this trip.

The link between two seas

During his trip to Central America in 1840, Stephens worked intensively on the possibility of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific with a canal through Nicaragua . He explored the estuary of the Río San Juan on the border with Costa Rica , created building sketches and wrote detailed documentation for the US government on the potential of the Nicaragua Canal , which, however, was never built.

After completing his Yucatán trip, Stephens became director of the Ocean Steam Navigating Company and deputy director of the Panama Railway Company in 1847. In this role he played a central role in the construction planning and financing of a railway line through Panama - the first commercially viable connection between the Atlantic and Pacific in the Isthmus of Panama . As director of the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, he traveled to Germany to meet Alexander von Humboldt in Berlin. He later described this meeting as "An hour with Humboldt," which was published in Living Age Magazine .

Before the railway line could be completed, he died in 1852 at the age of 47 during a home vacation in New York of " Chagres fever" ( malaria ).

Works

Stephens wrote several fascinating and easy-to-read books about his voyages of discovery:

In German:

  • John Lloyd Stephens: The Discovery of the Ancient Mayan Sites . Edition Erdmann, Stuttgart, 1993, ISBN 3-522-61550-6 .
  • John Lloyd Stephens: Travel experiences in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan . Verlag der Pioneers, Berlin, 2014, ISBN 978-3-941924-04-8 .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stephens, John Lloyd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American explorer, amateur archaeologist, author, lawyer, and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Shrewsbury , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1852
Place of death New York City