Yuri Knorozov - Later Life

Later Life

As his theories became more widely known, Knorozov was in 1956 granted leave to attend an international convention of Mesoamerican scholars in Copenhagen. This was to be his one and only venture outside the Soviet Union for quite some time, since as a Soviet academic, Knorozov was subject to the usual restrictions placed on travel outside of the Soviet Union. Over subsequent years western Mayanists needed to travel to Leningrad to meet up with him. It was not until 1990 that he was eventually able to leave Russia again and finally visit the ancient Maya homelands and archaeological sites in Mexico and Guatemala. This was at the invitation of the Guatemalan President Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo, at a time of improved diplomatic relations between the two countries. Cerezo presented him with an honorary medal, and Knorozov was able to extend his stay in the region, visiting several of the important Maya sites such as Tikal. However, shortly after Vinicio Cerezo left office, Knorozov received threats from suspected right-wing militarist groups who were antagonistic to the indigenous Mayan peoples, and was forced to go into hiding and then leave the country.

The government of Mexico awarded him the Orden del Águila Azteca (Order of the Aztec Eagle), the highest decoration awarded by Mexico to non-citizens, which was presented to him at a ceremony at the Mexican Embassy in Moscow on November 30, 1994.

Knorozov had broad interest in, and contributed to, other investigative fields such as archaeology, semiotics, human migration to the Americas and the evolution of the mind. However, it is his contributions to the field of Maya studies for which he is best remembered.

In his very last years, Knorozov is also known to have pointed to a place in the United States as the likely location of Chicomoztoc, the ancestral land from which—according to ancient documents and accounts considered mythical by a sizable number of scholars—Indian peoples now living in Mexico are said to have come.

Knorozov died in Saint Petersburg on March 31, 1999, of pneumonia in the corridors of a city hospital, just before he was due to receive the honorary Proskouriakoff Award from Harvard University.