Sad to hear this. Lynne was a good colleague and scholar

Forty-seven years ago, Cindy and I were newlyweds excavating at Copan, Honduras (central Mexicanist grad students, slumming in Mayaland). During Semana Santa we took a trip to Tikal (Guatemala), and tonight our tickets from April 10, 1979 fell out of one of my books on Tikal (writing a paper).

The bird is sometimes shown on a warrior shield. Colonial documents say that the dynasty of Calixtlahuaca was called chimalli, which is the Nahuatl word for shield. They also say the Spanish friars forcibly moved the population of Calixtlahuaca into Toluca to provide labor to build a church.

Illini Breakfast Club. Go Illinois!

Wet Kino.

It was an old ASU website that was threatened with termination 10 years ago. But I think I’ve seen it copied elsewhere, and my guess is that the Post article was created with AI. I’ll try to repost it but my life is a mess right now and it may take a while. Email me if you want a copy.

The distribution of power and inclusiveness across deep time Democratic practice in the premodern world was not the exclusive domain of Greece and Rome.

Democracy isn't a modern luxury—it's a political strategy with deep roots.

In our new study for Science Advances, we analyse 40 different societies and develop a framework for measuring human governance along a collective-autocratic axis.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'll see if I can migrate this to a better place.

2,000-year-old artifact may be evidence that Romans found New World — a thousand years before Columbus Was there a New World order we didn’t know about?

Ha ha, the NY Post plagiarized parts of an unpublished report of mine on the "Roman" figurine from Calixtlahuaca, but ignored the logical conclusions and added bogus info to produce a sensationalized account.
nypost.com/2026/03/19/s...

My account is here: www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tv...

Ha. I’ve had a couple of similar incidents. Or, maybe we are correct that the episodes did not happen, they are just using our names to look cool.

When my daughter April took my class (after I tried to BS her by saying it wasn’t allowed), she gave me the absolute best student feedback of all time. No holds barred. That was boring, why should we care? That was really fascinating, you should spend more time on it. Why do you pace around so much?

This is just racketeering, #preprint and be done with it already…

Now you're talkin!

For archaeologists, the last few centuries are “recent”

Nice desert hikes with Kino last week and today

Raquel Welch - Aquarius & Let The Sunshine In YouTube video by MothraBlues

youtube.com/watch?v=APVw.... Truly awful video filmed at Teotihuacan, with Raquel Welch.

The Extinction of Truth Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit

Apropos the obvious...

substack.com/@devoevomed/...

Just accepted for the journal Global Sustainability: "Cities, Shocks, and Persistence: New Approaches to Urban Resilience in the Past."

Karl and I have different perspectives on the past, but he is an excellent scholar, a good guy, and probably an outstanding teacher.

I guess that getting a grade of A in my class doesn’t mean that you recall all the details! I’m about to retire, and it’s sad that I won’t be teaching “Aztecs, Incas and Mayas” again.

No, it’s just an eagle and snake on the Mexican flag. This does depict an omen, revealed to the Mexica by Huitzilopochtli. He told them that when they saw this, they had located the place to found their capital, Tenochtitlan.

Time to read Robertson Davies again. I’ll start with the Deptford Trilogy.

​I don’t think using large language models is unethical. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to use a nail gun as a toothbrush, even if the nail gun company runs late night television ads that say “makes a great toothbrush!”

Amazing naievete, or idiocy, or duplicity. In any case the guy is unqualified and clearly unable to negotiate with Putin.

We (@johnmcbride4lyf.bsky.social, @yutoozaki.bsky.social, @mhoeschele.bsky.social, Alex Ruf, Raphaël Powis, @musiccognition.bsky.social & I) wrote this up into a formal critique of the Science paper claiming to demonstrate beat synchronization in macaques:
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

This GOOD BOY ran onto the course during the Women’s Cross-Country Skiing Team Sprint event, crossing the finish line and being automatically recorded by OMEGA’s photofinish camera 😆

Here is some essential reading on bulllshit publishing technologies, featuring a couple quotes from me. www.wired.com/story/why-ge...