Richard Thornton

This excellent documentary describes the many decades of work required in deciphering the complex Maya writing system. What I really liked about the program is that it documented the emotions and challenges of the key "players" as they took on this enormous task. The program was especially meaningful to me because I was a friend of George Stuart. We first met when he came out to our mountain farm near Asheville, NC in the mid-1980s to make photographs for a book on the Appalachian Mountains. He saw Mesoamerican artifacts in my living room and then we began to chat. Also . . . astonishingly, David Schele, Linda Schele and I were in the same tour group as we all toured Palenque for the first time. Being Southerners, we "clumped" together the rest of the day. Of course, in 2012 the University of Minnesota proved that the key ingredient of Maya Blue at Palenque was mined in Georgia. I am author of the book, Itsapa . . . The Itza Mayas in North America.