Dr Jay's Musings

                   Nation-states blossomed on the world political landscape mostly between the 17th and 20th centuries. Kings and emperors were deposed and replaced by representative governments with executive officers selected, in theory, by a democratic process. Nations took shape as a means of defining territorial boundaries, regulating internal affairs including economies, laws, taxation, and so forth. They also assumed responsibility for international relations. For the most part, but not universally, nation-states act autonomously creating the geopolitical mosaic landscape of the modern world. I propose here that nation-states have outlived their usefulness to humanity and we need to begin working to make them history.             This controversial condemnation of our country-system of organization runs against nationalist ideas, the perversion of patriotic fervor, and concepts of Ame...

  The Museum entrance with Aurelio Diaz Flores (left), me, and Adolfo (right). The logo of my doctoral study below the museum name, Proyecto Oztuma-Cutzamala, with the ancient glyph name Oztuma featured (the Cave of the Hand, Oztomon, the cave monster with a hand on his nose)          Yesterday, a long-time and dear friend and teacher from the town of Arcelia, Tierra Caliente, Mexico, Raymundo Lopez posted on Facebook that he was teaching the history of his town in class and that my 1998 research was now part of that history.  I swelled with pride. It was a project years in development as I sought out the perfect place in Mexico to apply archaeological methods to the study of frontier formations. It culminated with some  9 months of fieldwork in one of the starkest, most grueling, most challenging, and most dangerous parts of the world I have ever worked. I lost 45 lbs by the end of my survey.  We covered an area of 2500 sq. miles of what had...

       Liberté, égalité, fraternité , the motto used to call the French people to fight for freedom and a new and enlightened government in France in 1790 resonates still today in the hearts of people, if not in the practice of their nations. Emanuel Macron's victory in the French election against Marine Le Pen with a margin of 58.5% to her 41.5%, that is  18,779,641 to 13,297,760 votes, was  a wide margin, but one so close that it should send shivers down your spine.       Why should this scare you?  Le Pen's self-identification in a 2017 BBC interview was, " The policies that I represent are the policies represented by Trump and Putin ". She embraces policies of nationalism, exclusion of immigrant populations, self-interest over the communal good of her nation, censorship of speech, and internationalism. I will be blogging later about the importance of an internationalist goal for the future, but in simplest terms, we cannot ...

Who knows who is represented by this statue? Can you say why you think so and what its significance is?   Clue for the future, this statue foreshadows an important discovery that we will announce later this year.

 OK, a long time ago in a land far away, working at my second big dig site when I was lucky enough to see this emerge from the past.  Who can explain what we are looking at besides a younger me?

       There is much to talk about and I am launching this platform to talk about much. On these pages, I want to explore the world, ancient and modern. In this day, with so much information, I hope to be able to provide informed opinions and share discoveries I have and will make from my small sphere of knowledge. At times I will be skeptical, cynical, and downright incredulous about some things circulating in the news and on social media.  I will present ideas, some controversial, others in praise of recent discoveries and advances in science.  There is simply a lot that needs to be said about the state of the world these days, and a lot that is said that needs to be challenged. I and my friends (likely those who are reading this) are in possession of esoteric, unique, and informed wisdom and thus, it seems to me that one more Blog platform that reaches out and engages people with these insights and perspectives is neither superfluous nor redundant. The c...