Word: barthel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...police interrogators and "confessed" that he had killed his mother. Though he later recanted, a jury believed the prosecution and convicted him of manslaughter. But almost no one who knew the quiet, timid youth felt that he was guilty. Friends and neighbors organized a defense committee. Writer Joan Barthel, who lived near by, became convinced of his innocence, told his story in New Times magazine and eventually wrote a book about the case. Money and help came from others with homes in Connecticut, including Novelist William Styron, Director Mike Nichols and Playwright Arthur Miller, who argued that Reilly...
Colorful Crew. A number of other features are far more satisfying. The front of the magazine is dominated by staccato reportage under the heading "The Insider." The terse items on politics, journalism, show business and consumer affairs are uniformly lively and informative. A full-length piece by Joan Barthel attacking the stratospheric costs of medical care is solidly done. Ruth Gruber contributes an absorbing profile of Valery Panov, the Russian dancer whom Soviet authorities are persecuting because he wants to emigrate to Israel...
...That connection established, Barthel turned to the tocapus embroidered on one notable Inca relic-a priestly garment, or uncu, now in Washington's Bliss Collection. He decided that the repetition of some of the tocapus meant that the same message was being emphasized. More important, he noticed that several signs, like Chinese pictograms, resembled real objects. That enabled him to pick out the symbols for the supreme Inca deity, Kon Ticsi Viracocha (popularly, Kon-Tiki), who is represented by the tocapu for heat (kon) and two bases of pyramids (ticsi), meaning foundation and earth. By the time Barthel finished...
...Barthel's claim provoked some scholarly skepticism, even though the onetime Wehrmacht cryptographer has shown skill at cracking ancient linguistic codes. Fifteen years ago, Barthel reported deciphering the so-called "talking boards" of Easter Island in the South Pacific. The Inca mystery was every bit as challenging. But he had invaluable help from Peruvian Archaeologist Victoria de la Jara. If there was a written language, she suspected, it must be hidden in the geometric designs (tocapus) found on priestly garments and wooden vessels...
...orita de la Jara immersed herself in Inca history and painstakingly catalogued tocapus. But she failed to find what she was looking for: an Inca equivalent of the Rosetta stone, the key that opened ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to modern understanding. Finally, she turned her researches over to Barthel. With the same shrewdness that enabled him to decipher several Allied codes during World War II, Barthel made use of an important clue in her material. Many of the Inca vessels bore pictures as well as tocapus. In fact, one common scene portrayed the act of toasting the gods. After studying numerous...