Dzongkha is a Tibeto-Burman language that is the official and national language of Bhutan. It is written using the Tibetan script.
Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya political title attested from epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the tzolkʼin, the Maya divinatory calendar, on which a ruler's kʼatun-ending rituals would fall.
Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, or Eight Deer for brevity, was a powerful Mixtec ruler in 11th-century Oaxaca referred to in the 15th-century deerskin manuscript Codex Zouche-Nuttall, and other Mixtec manuscripts. His surname is alternatively translated Tiger-Claw and Ocelot-Claw. John Pohl has dated his life spanning from 1063 until his assassination in 1115.
Arthur Andrew Demarest is an American anthropologist and archaeologist, known for his studies of the Maya civilization.
Merle Greene Robertson was an American artist, art historian, archaeologist, lecturer and Mayanist researcher, renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art, iconography, and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America. She is most famous for her rubbings of Maya carved stelae, sculpture, and carved stone, particularly at the Maya sites of Tikal and Palenque.
Running-fight games are board games that essentially combine the method of race games and the goal of elimination-based games such as chess or draughts. Like race games, pieces are moved along linear tracks based on the fall of dice or other lots; but like chess, the object is to capture opponent pieces.
Ross Hassig is an American historical anthropologist specializing in Mesoamerican studies, particularly the Aztec culture. His focus is often on the description of practical infrastructure in Mesoamerican societies. He is the author of several influential books, among them: Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico; Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control; and Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico.
Henry Bigger Nicholson who published under the name H.B. Nicholson, was a scholar of the Aztecs. His major scholarly monograph is Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs (2001).
Munro Sterling Edmonson was an American linguist and anthropologist, renowned for his contributions to the study of Mesoamerican languages and Mesoamerican cultural heritage. At the time of his death in 2002, Edmonson was Professor (Emeritus) in Anthropology at Tulane University, New Orleans.
Richard A. Diehl is an American archaeologist, anthropologist, academic, and scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. He has made extensive contributions to the study of the Olmecs' civilization, which flourished in the Gulf Coast of Mexico region during the pre-classic period in Mesoamerica.
Yahui is a supernatural figure that takes on various mixtures of animal and human forms within the culture and belief systems of the Mixtec—indigenous Mixtecan-speaking people of La Mixteca in central-southeastern Mexico. It is an important and recurring motif in Mixtec iconography, thought and culture, especially during the pre-Columbian era. As a supernatural figure, the yahui appears in Postclassic Mixtec codices as an entity wearing a serpent or reptilian tail and headdress and the carapace of a turtle.
Galina Gavrilovna Yershova, or Ershova is a Russian academic historian, linguist, and epigrapher, who specialises in the study of the ancient civilisations, cultures, and languages of the New World. As an Americanist scholar, her area of expertise is in the field of Mesoamerican studies, and in particular that of the pre-Columbian Maya civilisation, its historical literature, and its writing system. Yershova is a former student and protégé of the Russian linguist and epigrapher Yuri Knorozov, renowned for his central contributions towards the decipherment of the Maya script.
Arthur G. Miller is an American art historian, archaeologist and academic. A specialist in pre-Columbian art of Latin America and in particular of Mesoamerica, until his retirement in 2005 Miller was a distinguished faculty member and professor in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Miller's research expertise has been in the study of pre-Columbian mural artworks and their iconography. He has published numerous academic papers and books on the mural art of Mesoamerican cultures, such as Classic-era Teotihuacan of central Mexico, Zapotec tombs and sites in Oaxaca, and Maya sites along the eastern coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Vernon Lee Scarborough is an American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, known for his research and publications on settlement, land use and water management practices of archaic and Pre-industrial society.
H.W.A. (Henk) Blezer is a Dutch Tibetologist, Indologist, and scholar of Buddhist studies.
Helen Perlstein Pollard is an American academic ethnohistorian and archaeologist, known for her publications and research on pre-Columbian cultures in the west-central Mexico region.
Peter Mathews is an Australian archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist.
The Dzala language, also called Dzalakha, Dzalamat, or Yangtsebikha, is an East Bodish language spoken in eastern Bhutan, in the Lhuntse and Trashiyangtse Districts.
Dr. Jan Jansen of Leiden University, Netherlands, is a historian and anthropologist specialising in the oral history of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Mali.
