Ukraine’s unexpected ties to Mayan language
It’s a long way from Kharkiv to the Yucatán Peninsula. But Ukrainian Yuriii Knozorov became the first Mayanist in the world to discover a correct method to begin deciphering Mayan script.
Editor’s Note: We report on unique and different topics than other media outlets, using human interest stories as a north star. We don’t just want to teach you something new, we want to do it by introducing you to a character far away that you’ve never met before.
Support our approach? Believe our motto, that empathy and autocracy can’t mix? Upgrade today.
The year is 1955.
Kharkiv scientist Yurii Knorozov is on his way to the Institute of Ethnography at his university to defend his PhD thesis.
He doesn’t know if it will end with his degree, or with his arrest.
It wasn’t a typical PhD topic: more than 6,500 miles from the famous ruins of Chichen Itza, he was going to propose a totally new method of deciphering Mayan hieroglyphs.
Knorozov’s findings, which showed how complex their language had been, were controversial because it directly contradicted Marxist founding father Friedrich Engels, who had written of the “barbarism” of people from the region. To go against Marx's thesis meant to become “an enemy of people.”
In his office, side-by-side with his beloved cat Asya, Yurii became the first Mayanist in the world to find a correct method by which Mayan writing can begin to be deciphered, and also compiled the first catalogue of Mayan language signs.
In far off Ukraine, he managed to triumph where centuries of unsuccessful research, from hundreds of scientists around the world, had failed – despite many of them having access to former Mayan lands.
Knorozov was given the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences after 3.5 minutes of his presentation and became a sensation not only in the scientific world across the globe, but also in countries of Mexico, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador and Nicaragua – the successors of the ancient civilization.
Having taken the lead in deciphering Mayan writing, Knorozov gave impetus to further Ukrainian research into this civilization, leading it to Ukraine’s unexpected position as one of the notable countries for Mayan research in the world.
Today, Knorozov's legacy is limited to a small number of dedicated Mayanists. His story is a complex web of history and identity, where there are no neat categories to place in him.
His grand achievement has led both Russia and Ukraine to claim the Kharkiv-region-born scholar as their own – although he might have identified more as Mexican than either!
The Mayan civilization existed from about 2000 BC until the end of the 17th century, when they were the last independent state conquered by Spain. In addition to a unique writing system, they were among the first to use the concept of zero.
Astronomy also flourished – the Maya created their own calendar, tracked celestial bodies such as Venus, and predicted eclipses. The Mayan calendar was deciphered back in the 19th century, Maksym Styuflyaev, one of the remaining Ukrainian Mayan historians, told The Counteroffensive.
Back then, historians could only read the Mayan’s astronomical records. Originally, they thought that this calendar system predicted the world would end in 2012.
However, after Knorozov's discovery, it became clear that the Mayan calendar was cyclical. In fact, according to the Maya, in 2012, the great cycle which began in 3114 BC, ended. That is, one cycle in the Mayan calendar is 5,125 years.
In the 1940s, Yurii Knorozov saw the article “Deciphering the Mayan Writing System is an Insoluble Problem” by historian Paul Schellhas, he accepted the challenge and said: “What is created by one mind cannot but be unraveled by another.” A few years later, he managed to prove it.
He discovered that each symbol in the ancient Mayan language could represent a letter, word or syllable. This way some words could be written in various ways, which made the writing system really flexible.
Knorozov was considered “unreliable” in the USSR, and the Soviet authorities did not allow him to travel abroad. Yurii managed to fulfill his dream and visit the birthplace of the Mayan civilization only in 1990, when he was 68 years old.
“I am an armchair scholar. There is no need to climb pyramids to work with texts,” he said.
Nowadays, Ukrainian Mayan studies flourish thanks to four senior scholars, said one of them: Yuriy Polyukhovych, ambassador to Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. He deciphered his first Mayan hieroglyph before he was 20 years old.
Polyukhovych was the first to realise that the sign “alai,” is translated to “here.” The Mayans often signed various objects in this way: “Here is a glass for cocoa,” but no one had been able to decipher the sign and understand how it sounds.
Yuriy compared Mayan texts written in Latin in the 16th and 17th centuries with the original texts and realized what this hieroglyph meant.
Maksym Styuflyaev, meanwhile, is interested in the historical and political aspects of the Mayan state: religious life, the development of their state, Mayan rulers. In this aspect, many facts remain undisclosed, even the names of many rulers.
Marie Stadnik is an expert in the art of the ancient Maya – she makes digital reconstructions of Mayan paintings that help to recreate the monuments in a virtual form.
There is also Viktor Talakh, a specialist in the culture, languages, and writing of the peoples of pre-Columbian America, including the Maya. The scholar has even translated Aztec lyrics.
“That's why we complement each other so well, someone knows their topic better than anyone else. And we work as a team," says Yuriy Polyukhovych.
Nowadays, it is possible to read about 55-60% of the discovered Mayan signs, says Yuriy Polyukhovych. Some texts can be understood 100%, but there are also unique signs that are used only in certain contexts, which complicates the task.
Currently, there are no museums in Ukraine where people can learn more about the Mayan civilization, and their country’s history in helping uncover it. Before the war, the leading four Mayanists planned to organize an exhibition for Ukraine, but the full-scale Russian invasion shattered these plans.
Despite the fact that Knozorov was born and raised in the Ukrainian Kharkiv region, the Russians are trying to appropriate his achievements, just as they have done with hundreds of other prominent people in Ukraine.
It’s true that Knozorov did spend much of his life in Moscow. He was born in a village near Kharkiv, 1922 and lived in the region until 1943. At 17, he entered the History Department of Kharkiv University. However, the German occupation of Eastern Ukraine in WW2 interrupted his plans to study, and he later transferred to Moscow University. He spent the rest of his career in Moscow and Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg.
The Russians have monuments to Knozorov – there is a statue of him with Asya in Saint Petersburg in the graveyard where he is buried. Last year, in the same town, a plaque was unveiled on a building where he used to work.
However, according to scholar Maksym Styuflyaev, the fact of Knorozov's activity in Russia doesn’t make him a Russian scientist, as he conducted his activities within the unified state of the USSR at that time. Naturally, he was drawn to the center of scientific research, which was Moscow at the time.
“Ah, my native Ukraine, my native language, how I missed it,” Knorozov used to say when his countrymen visited him in Russia, according to Yuriy Poliukhovych, who researched his biography.
During Stalin's regime and World War II, Knorozov and his family stayed in German-occupied territory, his former student shared. This immediately put him at a disadvantage before the Soviet authorities. When he was invited to research abroad, he was unable to leave because of the ban.
The Cold War also affected his work. For some time, due to hostility to the USSR, his discoveries in the field of Mayan writing were ignored by some Western scholars because of their distrust of the Soviet Union.
While he is little-known in modern Ukraine, Yurii Knorozov remains a cult figure in Latin America. Mexico awarded Knorozov the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 1995, which the government of the country bestows on foreigners for exceptional services.
However, Ukraine’s government has only made small efforts to celebrate hia genius. In 2016, at the height of Ukraine's decommunization policy, when monuments to Russian imperial figures were being demolished and streets were being renamed after Ukrainian prominent people, a street in Kharkiv was named after Knorozov.
Another street in his hometown of Pivdenne, Kharkiv, where he once lived, was named after him. Kharkiv University and his childhood home have a plaque with his photo and name.
But there is no research center that continues his work. This fact makes it more difficult to argue that Knorozov is a Ukrainian scientist, and leaves space for the Russians to claim him.
In 2012, a monument to the scientist was put in Cancun, Mexico, depicting him with his cat Asya. The monument was given to them by Russia.
In 2018 in the city of Merida, Mexico, another monument was put up. Symbolically, the monument was established near the Great Museum of the Mayan World.
There is no information on whether Knorozov himself identified more as Ukrainian or Russian, or even Soviet.
However, he felt deep connection and admiration to the Mayans and places where their state prospered long centuries ago.
“I am always a Mexican in my heart,” the scientist said at the ceremony where he was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle.
This quote was added to one of his statues in Mexico.
In it, as usual, he is carrying his beloved cat Asya.
Want to support our human interest reporting? Show your appreciation by hitting our tip jar. Funds go towards helping get cold weather gear and batteries for our team.
NEWS OF THE DAY:
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands. But we are seeing worrying signs in the military and political spheres…
RUSSIA ADVANCES QUICKLY: Russian forces are now taking over territory at the fastest rate since the 2022 invasion, Reuters reports, having taken over an area half the size of London over the last month.
BIDEN ASKS FOR MORE UKRAINE AID: The White House is calling for Congress to spend another $24 billion for Ukraine in order to increase military support. $8 billion for Ukraine, another $16 billion to replenish the U.S. weapons stockpile, RBC-Ukraine reports.
MUSK OPPOSES: "This is not ok," the billionaire wrote. Musk has played a central role in boosting Trump during the 2024 campaign, and stands to play a critical part of the new administration.
UKRAINE MOD PROBES DEFECTIVE MORTARS: At least 100,000 Ukrainian-made 120mm mortar shells have been removed from the frontlines after soldiers complained of malfunctions, including failure to explode; getting caught in the mortar tube; or falling off target. Poor-quality powder charges or improper storage are considered among the likely reasons, reports The Guardian.
GERMANY: RUSSIA WANTS CAPABILITIES FOR NEW WAR IN 2029: Major General Christian Freuding, a senior official at Germany's Ministry of Defense, says that his country sees signals that the Russian military is seeking capabilities so that it could conduct new aggression against its neighbors by 2029.“Russian armed forces are aiming to achieve military capabilities that could enable them to conduct any kind of new aggression against NATO territory,” he said, according to European Pravda.
CAT OF CONFLICT:
Today’s Cat of Conflict is Asya. The scholar is believed to have tried to add it to his works and mention the cat as a co-author. Editors didn’t find it too funny and cropped Asya out of the picture and didn’t write her name, which irritated Yurii. The photo is from Nakypilo.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Tim
As usual, The Counteroffensive has provided a fascinating insight into Ukraine - thank you Tim Mak & team.
As Stacy says: “Fascinating story of scholarship”. The story also shows how Ukraine must fight against Russian claims of Ukrainian accomplishments. Russian attempts to usurp Ukrainian heritage are pathetic.