Funerary mask of Yuknoom Ch’een II, photographed by Bernard DUPONT. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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On this day in the year 600, by our calendar, Yuknoom the Great was born. That we have a name, dates, and biography of this Maya ruler—that we know enough about him to call him “the Great”—and that we can do the same for dozens of others: these things should be matters for astonishment and constant celebration, an accomplishment at least as remarkable as the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Akkadian cuneiform. Yet it seems not to have penetrated popular culture at all. There is still a curious divide even among the learned: Old World cultures make history, but New World cultures create only anthropology. On his birthday, therefore, Dr. Boli would like to give Yuknoom the Great the gift of acknowledging that he was an individual, a real person who did things, and therefore belongs in the realm of Clio.