Wolfgang Gockel
Wolfgang Gockel ( born November 21, 1945 in Rönsahl; † 3 March 2005 in Helsinki ) was a German archaeologist. His studies on the decipherment of Maya writing are unanimously rejected by the professionals.
Life
After finishing school in Bochum, he began a locksmith teaching he gave up quickly to go to sea. After his qualification as an able seaman, he worked from 1963 to 1969 on ships. At this time his interest in archeology was awakened.
Gockel served in the Armed Forces 1969-1975, where he was a helicopter pilot. In 1975, he was a high school and began an archaeological study in Cologne, Bonn and Göttingen with a focus on the Middle East, Assyriology and classical archeology. He finished his studies in 1979 with a thesis on " time style, workshop and landscape style in sculpture Mesopotamia and Elam of the Early Sumerian time to Frühdynastikum ".
During his studies in Anthropology of the Americas ( Pre-Columbian Ethnology ) at the former Department of Ethnology at the University of Bonn from 1975 to 1977 he was first confronted with the Maya writing.
After graduating Gockel worked as a tour guide and freelance archaeologist during excavation and on special projects for museums and private collectors. While working on a project at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in the spring of 1987 Gockel spent the evenings with the mysteries of the Maya writing. He developed a new approach and tried this approach to deciphering the inscriptions from the ruins of the Mayan city of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico apply.
Gockel's work, which was ready for publication in the fall of 1988, a sensation produced - partly because he had partially because its results radically different from those of other scientists, and decided to publish his work first in the German weekly Stern, what the other German news sources viewed with some skepticism. The Süddeutsche Zeitung was referring more positive position.
The scientific publication was evaluated in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American, negative (see also Opinion of Gockel and one of the referees who reviewed the Star publication). A scheduled conference in the Roman and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, should confront his critics at the Gockel, did not take place.
Gockel Palenque book was translated into Spanish and published in Mexico in 1995. The Spanish edition and some manuscript drafts of unpublished work was only later made available online ( see below the external links). In addition to his work on the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphs Gockel published several works on Latin America and the Middle East.
Publications (selection )
- The story of a Mayan dynasty. Deciphering Mayan hieroglyphs classic example of the Inscriptions of Palenque, 1988, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Saverne.
- Historia de una Dinastía Maya. El desciframiento de los mayas de acuerdo con las jeroglíficos inscriptiones de Palenque, 1995, Mexico, DF: Editorial Diana, available on line at: www.gockelmayatheory.com
- Syrie, Lebanon, 1988, Munich: Nelles Verlag. [ English and French translation available ].
- Mexico. The central highlands and Yucatán from the sites of the Maya and Aztecs to Baroque churches and convents, 1998, Cologne: DuMont ( 3ed, 2005).
- Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, Maya cities and colonial architecture in Central America, 1999, Cologne: DuMont.
- Iraq: Sumerian temple of Babylon palaces and holy sites of Islam in Mesopotamia, 2001, Cologne: DuMont.