Lenin Cat advice animal placed where Yuri Knorozov's cat, Asya, should be. In the mid 1900s, J. Eric S. Thompson was highly influential in Mayan studies. Yuri Knorozov figured out that Mayan hieroglyphics had a syllabic component and thus could actually be read, but Thompson and therefore almost the entire field of Mayan studies rejected his discovery for twenty years until the Brit finally croaked.