Some people just can’t read the writing on the wall.
Dr. Mark Van Stone can, even if it is in Mayan hieroglyphics.
A brainy and bubbly professor of art history, Van Stone is the Indiana Jones of Southwestern College, just without the fedora.
Like Dr. Jones, Dr. Van Stone travels the world lecturing and providing expert testimony on the ancient Maya and their mystifying hieroglyphs. He trotted the globe in 2011 debunking the so-called 2012 Mayan Calendar Prophecy, which doomsayers claimed foretold the end of the world.
Van Stone circled the planet assuring humanity the planet would still be here in 2013.
He was right!
The celebrated Mayan hieroglyphic writing system is a sophisticated combination of pictographs directly representing objects and ideograms (or glyphs) that expressed more abstract concepts such as actions or ideas and even syllabic sounds.
Van Stone recently gave an audiovisual lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park that explored the mystery and beauty of Maya hieroglyphs. Only deciphered since about 1980, the ongoing translation of this unique writing system has revealed insight into the Maya, from the victories of kings to names of demons to personalized chocolate drinking vessels.
Fabiana Hernandez, a student in Van Stone’s Art and Cultural of Pre-Hispanic Mexico class, attended.
“I thought the topic is really interesting,” she said. “I wanted to learn more about Mexican history.”
Alanis Escalera is also in Van Stone’s class.
“I also thought the idea of taking art history to be interesting,” she said. “We learn about the Maya, the Olmec and Teotihuacan, but we also get to see how diverse it is and similar it is within all Mesoamerica, so we have that perspective.”
Van Stone did not set out to be a rock star, he wanted to study stars. He earned a degree in physics in 1973 and worked in a gamma-ray astronomy laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. He was lured away from the ancient skies to the ancient Earth, and became a calligrapher and carver.
“I was an independent self-employed teaching calligraphy,” he said. “Calligraphy literally means beautiful writing and for me the study was how and why people make writing good.”
In the world of calligraphy and type design, Van Stone established himself as an expert in paleography and the evolution of written forms. He lectured widely on the subject for the next 20 years. He eventually focused on the most complex, most beautiful and least understood script, Mayan hieroglyphs.
“I got started in the mid-‘80s,” he said. “I studied the writing of other ancient cultures before that. I was really into calligraphy and hieroglyphs.”
A lifelong autodidact, he relentlessly seized opportunities to study in the reading rooms and storerooms of libraries and museums around throughout the world. He also learned by doing, making Mayan-style artwork.
“Being passionate about your subject makes you a better teacher,” he said. “I talk about what I love and I hope I communicate that. There are always some students touched by that art and (art history) becomes their new favorite subject.”
Van Stone’s friend Michael Code was an American archaeologist and anthropologist, epigrapher and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya, and was among the foremost Mayanists of the late 20th century.
He invited Van Stone to illustrate the book “Reading the Maya Glyphs.”
“I didn’t want anybody else other than Van Stone because I wanted the best,” Code said.
In addition to his work as an academic, Van Stone is an avid artist. He designed the Maya glyphs on the SC library, the new wellness complex and most recently the Math and Science building.
“In 2002 I was hired here [and] in 2004 the president of the college asked me if I wanted to design the library extension,” he said. “A design on the left side of the library says ‘house of the god of learning.’ The god of learning is Itzamnaaj. He wears a little mirror in front of his face on a headband like an old-time doctor.”
The hieroglyphs Van Stone designed for the Wellness Center translate as ‘first health place.’
“I like the idea that someone will enjoy these buildings I did,” he said. “I designed 10 hieroglyphics descriptions on the north side of the building. One design looks like a flower and that is the number zero.”
Maya mathematicians invented zero, the absence of value, Van Stone said. This brilliant innovation is celebrated on the new Math and Science building.
“I actually designed five or 10 things that went on that building,” he said.
In 1982 Van Stone went to Japan to study netsuke, the first non-Japanese scholar to do so.
“I really love the carving,” he said. “It’s a very miniature, delicate detail that I really wanted to do.”
His dual background in science and art is essential to his unique understanding of Mayan hieroglyphics, he said, as well as the development of all writing systems. His comprehension of these glyphs gives him a rare ability to interpret the Mayan calendar in an authoritative and trustworthy manner—a great relief to humanity in 2011.
