Thomas Barthel
Thomas Barthel | |
---|---|
Born | 4 January 1923 |
Died | 3 April 1997 | (aged 74)
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Hamburg |
Academic work | |
Era | 1959–1988 |
Institutions | University of Tübingen |
Thomas Sylvester Barthel (4 January 1923 – 3 April 1997)
Life and career
Barthel grew up in Berlin and graduated from secondary school in 1940. During the
In order to document rongorongo, Barthel visited most of the museums which housed the tablets, of which he made pencil rubbings. With this data he compiled the first corpus of the script, which he published as Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift in 1958. He was the first scholar to correctly identify anything in the texts: He showed that two lines in the Mamari tablet encode calendrical information.
In 1959 Barthel became Associate Professor of Ethnology at the University of Tübingen, and from 1964 to 1988 he was Professor of Ethnology.[1] His primary research was in the folklore of the Americas. He bequeathed his rongorongo data to the CEIPP (Centre d'Études de l'Îles de Pâques et de la Polynésie), which is engaged in verifying and expanding on his work.
Barthel was also active in the mid-twentieth century attempts to decipher the
Along with
Personal life
Barthel was married three times and had four children.[1]
Published works
- 1958a. Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift. Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter.
- 1958b. "The 'Talking Boards' of Easter Island." Scientific American, 198:61-68
- 1971. Pre-contact Writing in Oceania. In: Current Trends in Linguistics 8:1165-1186. Den Haag, Paris: Mouton.
- 1978. The Eighth Land: The Polynesian Discovery & Settlement of Easter Island. Honolulu: the University Press of Hawaii.
- 1990. "Wege durch die Nacht (Rongorongo-Studien auf dem Santiagostab)", in Esen-Baur, Heide-Margaret (ed.), State and Perspectives of Scientific Research in Easter Island Culture. Courier Forschungsinstitute Senckeberg 125. Frankfurt am Mein: Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, 73–112. ISBN 3-510-61140-3
Notes
- ^ a b c d Fischer, Steven Roger. "In Memoriam: Thomas S. Barthel" (PDF). Rapa Nui Journal. Retrieved 3 April 2023.
- ^ Coe (1992, p.153); Kettunen (1998)
- ^ Rice (2004, p.47)
- ^ Coe (1992, p.153)
- ^ For a full account of the Maya script decipherment, see Coe (1992), Coe & van Stone (2005).
- ^ In an interview given to the Finnish Mayanist Harri Kettunen in 1998, Knorozov describes Barthel as his "old foe". See Kettunen (1998).
References
- OCLC 26605966.
- OCLC 60532227.
- Kettunen, Harri J. (1998). "Relación de las cosas de San Petersburgo: An interview with Dr. Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, Part II". Revista Xaman. 5/1998. Helsinki: Ibero-American Center, Helsinki University. Archived from the original(online publication) on March 31, 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-15.
- OCLC 54753496.