Linguist Who Solved the Mayan Alphabet with His Cat: Yuri Knorozov

He especially interpreted the symbols of the Mayans in a completely different way and managed to make a name for himself even years after his death. Another thing that attracts attention is that Yuri, The reason was that he did all this with his cat Asya.

Well Yuri Knorozov What a discovery he made And where exactly was her cat, Asya, in this?

First, let’s look at Yuri’s life story.

Unable to adapt to school and disrupting the peace in the classroom, Yuri’s education life began with his suspension from school. When he was 5 years old, he suffered a serious injury that almost blinded him. Also, when it comes to high school, It turned out that he was an accomplished violinist. He was very skilled at drawing and was adept at writing romantic poems.

In 1940, when he was 17, he left his hometown Kharkiv and started his undergraduate education at Moscow State University, Department of Ethnology. He specialized in Egyptian linguistics. In fact, it was clear at that time that he would achieve successful work.

Yuri’s work plans, World War II. It was interrupted, albeit briefly, with the outbreak of World War II.

Although he was not initially drafted into the military because his health was deemed unfit, he was later forced to join the German army support units. But Yuri Knorozov, He traveled from village to village teaching and managed to escape from this task.

Shortly thereafter, he went to Moscow with his family and continued his studies in Egyptian linguistics there. During his studies, he came across a book by chance and through this book He became interested in the Mayan alphabet.

Devoting himself entirely to science, Yuri continued his research and studies on hieroglyphs as well as ancient languages ​​and writing systems.

When I was 30 years old, an article that would later prove to be a seminal work in this field. wrote. The basis of this article was that ancient writings, such as Egyptian and cuneiform, actually had a significant phonetic component.

That is, many symbols, rather than simply representing words and concepts, sound elements of the language in which it is written also stated. In addition, the symbols also had alphabetic or syllabic elements.

In fact, there were these inferences about Egyptian hieroglyphs, but The Mayan alphabet was not thought to have such features. In short, Yuri’s studies in comparative linguistics led him to the conclusion that Mayan writing should not be different from any other.

Yuri’s basic insight was to treat the Mayan symbols not as an alphabet but as a syllable.

He was perhaps not the only person to propose a syllabic perspective, but his arguments and evidence were the most compelling to date. In 1963, Yuri Knorozov further developed the decryption technique in his monograph “Writing of the Maya Indians” and in his work “Mayan Hieroglyph Manuscripts”, He published translations of Mayan manuscripts.

Let’s talk about Yuri’s cat Asya.

Yuri Knorozov, the linguist who deciphered the Mayan alphabet, became my namesake during all his work. Her cat Asya is her great inspiration He stated that he was, and not only that, he even considered his cat as the co-author of his work.

When all the publishing houses that wanted to publish his works asked Yuri for a representative photograph of him, the linguist He sent a picture of himself with his cat Asya. The publishers said that he only wanted his photo, otherwise he would have to crop the cat, and Yuri was quite resentful of this.

So how could a cat help a linguist?

According to a Russian source; While Asya is teaching her kitten to hunt, Knorozov sees Asya talking to the kitten and making various sounds to communicate, and he gains a moment of insight. Again The sounds that Asya makes also increase the linguist’s level of focus.

On the other hand, although publishing houses want to exclude Asya, Yuri Knorozov and his cat Asya; In Mexican silver coins, again Two monuments in two different parts of Mexico and appear together at Yuri’s grave.

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