Thomas Gann
Encyclopedia
Thomas William Francis Gann (13 May 1867 – 24 February 1938) was a medical doctor by profession, but is best remembered for his work as an amateur archaeologist exploring ruins of the Maya civilization
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

.

Thomas Gann was born in Murrish, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 and trained in medicine in Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

In 1894 he was appoinrted district medical officer for British Honduras
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...

, where he would spend most of the next quarter century. He soon developed a keen interest in the colony's Maya ruins, which up to then had been little documented.

He also traveled into Yucatán
Yucatán
Yucatán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Yucatán is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 106 municipalities and its capital city is Mérida....

, exploring ruins there.

Gann discovered a number of sites, including Lubaantun
Lubaantun
Lubaantun is a pre-Columbian ruined city of the Maya civilization in southern Belize, Central America...

, Ichpaatun and Tzibanche. He published the first detailed descriptions of such ruins as Xunantunich
Xunantunich
Xunantunich is a Maya archaeological site in western Belize, about 80 miles west of Belize City , in the Cayo District. Xunantunich is located atop a ridge above the Mopan River, within sight of the Guatemala border...

 and Lamanai
Lamanai
Lamanai is a Mesoamerican archaeological site, and was once a considerably sized city of the Maya civilization, located in the north of Belize, in Orange Walk District...

. He made important early exploration at such sites as Santa Rita, Louisville, Belize
Louisville, Belize
Louisville is a village in the Corozal District of the nation of Belize, located at . According to the 2000 census, it had a population of 655 people....

, and Coba
Coba
Coba is a large ruined city of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization, located in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is located about 90 km east of the Maya site of Chichen Itza, about 40 km west of the Caribbean Sea, and 44 km northwest of the site of Tulum, with which it is...

. At Tulum he documented buildings overlooked by previous explorers, including a rare find of a temple with the Pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

 idol
Idolatry
Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...

 still intact inside.

He wrote several books about his travels and explorations.

Thomas Gann retired as British Honduras's medical officer in 1923.

Mid-way through his career, in 1908 Gann became the honorary lecturer in Central American Antiquities at the new Institute of Archaeology of the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

(not long after he had taken the Diploma there in Tropical Medicine). Liverpool subscribers funded several of his fieldwork seasons up to 1912, but the connection failed to thrive after the First World War. Many published sources follow Thompson, in the (British) Dictionary of National Biography, in being seriously mistaken about Gann’s Liverpool connection, wrongly dating it to the period when it was inactive or had lapsed.
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