Background
Philipp J. J. Valentini was born to a German mother and Italian father in Berlin, Germany in 1828. His father was probably a tutor at the royal court of Prussia.
Philipp J. J. Valentini was born to a German mother and Italian father in Berlin, Germany in 1828. His father was probably a tutor at the royal court of Prussia.
He attended the Gymnasium of Torgau and later the University of Berlin before he left Germany for Costa Rica where he founded the seaport Puerto Limón under government auspices in 1854. In 1858 he returned to Germany to obtain a PhD at the University of Jena, writing his dissertation about the early history of Costa Rica.
He worked extensively on diciphering the Mexican calendar stone. From 1861 to 1871 Valentini went back once again to Costa Rica to work as a coffee planter, but travelled extensively in Central America. After 1871 he went to New York where he spent the rest of his life until his death in March 1899.
A new, and an old Map of Yucatan in "Magazine of American History" () Hamilton.
Philipp Valentini married to Feliciana Muñoz in 1855. Two years later, in 1857, she died.