science · 09 September 1975 · 50 years ago
death
Died 9 Sep 1975 at age 76 (born 31 Dec 1898).
Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson was an English ethnographer who was a leading researcher of the Mayan people. Thompson devoted his life to the study of Mayan culture and was able to extensively decipher early Mayan glyphs, determining that, contrary to prevailing belief, they contained historical as well as ritualistic and religious records. Sir Eric Thompson believed that Maya society was organized around religion, specifically star-worship. He thought that the Maya lived peacefully in villages and were ruled by priests that were more concerned with making astronomical calculation than political competition for power. With the discovery during the 1980's of how to decipher the Maya language, it was learned that almost every aspect of the traditional view of the Maya was wrong.
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