In
1968, Linda Schele received her M.F.A at the University of Cincinnati. She also married her husband David. Her plan was to teach studio art, but a funny
thing happened on her way to her chosen profession. In 1970, her husband was asked to go to
Yucatan in Mexico and take photographs of Mayan ruins. Linda went with him, and her life turned in
an entirely different direction.
"I once was a fair to middling
painter,” she said, “who went on a Christmas trip to Mexico and came back an
art historian and a Mayanist."
She went on to become world famous
and a leading authority in her new field.
Linda’s specialty was decoding Mayan
hieroglyphics, or ‘glyphs.’ Nobody had
had much luck deciphering them. Over the
years, people had figured out the Mayan number and calendar systems, but how to
translate Mayan glyphs into English words was still a mystery. When Linda managed to decipher a good part of
a long list of Palenque kings, it brought new excitement and interest to the
task.
By the mid ‘70’s, Linda had
deciphered many more of the Mayan glyphs and was writing and publishing
papers. She went back to school and
earned a Ph.D in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. Her Dissertation “Mayan Glyphs: The Verbs,”
was considered groundbreaking and won the “Most Creative and Innovative Project
in Professional and Scholarly Publication" award, given by the
Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American
Publishers.
There she was, a newcomer in the
field, and Mayanists who had been at it much longer were looking to her for new
ideas and information, which was just fine with Linda. She believed in collaboration and in sharing knowledge
and ideas. As a graduate student in
1977, she founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop in Texas, to do just that. Today, it’s known as
the Maya Meetings at Texas.
Linda soon became the go-to-gal when anyone needed an expert on the
Maya. She appeared on Discovery, National Geographic, PBS,
BBC and A&E, and even appeared before Nasa to
give them her thoughts on the importance of understanding another world view. She brought the Mayans to life in a way no one had before.
Her accomplishments as a Mayanist
would fill pages. She taught, gave
interviews, chaired committees, wrote papers, mapped cities, mentored students,
and even acted as a tour guide at some Mayan sites. She held workshops for the public and taught
them how to read Mayan glyphs, and she worked with modern Maya people to better
understand them and their ancestors and, again, she shared her knowledge with
them to give them back a bit of their own history.
Linda was only 56 when she died in
1998 of Pancreatic cancer, so she didn’t have a lot of time, but she left an immense body of work and a
multitude of students to carry on. Perhaps someday we'll finally learn why all those Mayan cities were abandoned,
and why they were so into human sacrifice, and if that fellow in that famous
glyph is really sitting in a spaceship.
No comments:
Post a Comment