Board of Advisors
Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac
Is a spiritual guide from Momostenango, Guatemala. Momostenango means “Home of the Altars” and has maintained the sacred calander traditions for about 1,000 years. He has traveled nationally and internationally to talk about the sacred calandar traditions. He speaks regularly at home and abroad about the Maya Traditions.
John Major Jenkins
John is a pioneer of the modern 2012 movement. The author of nine previous books on the subject, he has worked to clarify misconceptions and is credited with showing how a rare “galactic alignment” underlies the 2012 cycle-ending date, and is a concept deeply embedded within Maya traditions. John has taught as a visiting scholar in the U.S. and abroad.
Lee Jones
Lee worked field seasons of one to two weeks each year since 1983 with Maya scholars and professionals, including Peter Mathews, Merle Greene Robertson, Ian Graham, Karl Mayer and Stephan Merk. His duties were exploring for unknown and lost sites as well as site mapping. Over the decades, he has visited more than two hundred Maya sites in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. He has also published five articles in the Institute of Maya Studies.
Garth Norman
Mr. Norman has over 40 years of professional archaeological research experience and cultural resource contract work in the Intermountain West and in Mesoamerica. He has authored over 250 professional papers and contract reports. Director of Archaeoogical Research Consultants since 1982. Author of numerous archaeological research papers and reports. He is the leading Mesoamerican scholar in iconographic research of Izapan culture.
Marita Prandoni
Marita Prandoni has an ardent curiosity for Mayan cultural identity and the linguistic, archeological and strong connection to place that has made the Maya so resilient. She has visited the Guatemala highlands and pre-classic Mayan ruins. Marita writes a blog for EcoHearth.com. She tutors Spanish, French, and German in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she lives with her husband Peter and their daughter, Noël.
Peter Prandoni
Peter Prandoni first visited Guatemala in 2004 for an archeological tour, arranged by Georgeann Johnson and John Major Jenkins. He has since read several books on Maya culture, cosmology and archeology. Peter works in restoration ecology in New Mexico riparian areas and forests, where he replaces invasive species with native vegetation and decommissions logging roads, bringing rivers and forests back to health.
Mark Van Stone, Ph.D., G.F.
Professor of Art History, Southwestern College
A lifelong autodidact, Dr. Van Stone received his Bachelor’s degree in Physics, then spent twenty years as a professional calligrapher and independent scholar of world paleography, finally earning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988. Along the way, he worked as a drummer, radio disk jockey and interviewer, and as a Claymation® animator (for Will Vinton Studios).
He later entered the University of Texas graduate school to study Maya Hieroglyphs with legendary decipherer Linda Schele in 1994. One of Linda’s many gifts was ability to discern and cultivate the most useful talents in her students, and she trained Mark in the exacting art of drawing archeological inscriptions. This final gift bore fruit in the book “Reading the Maya Glyphs”, co-authored with reknowned archeologist Michael Coe. Mark is now Professor of Art History at Southwestern College, and has just completed his second book, “2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya”. His dual background in science and art provides a unique understanding of Maya calligraphy, and to the development of every writing system as a visual art.
Google his name for more.
