Thanks DoodleBob.
Medrano comes from a Mexican-American family and speaks Spanish, so understanding the Spanish census document was no problem. Handling numbers and data came naturally to him as well, as an economics major. The challenge, as both Medrano and Urton note, seemed to demand a perfect alignment of his skills and interests. “Not every archaeology project operates in Excel,” Medrano points out.
This is absolutely spectacular. We have one of those allegedly stupid young kids (/ sarc), combining his love for puzzles and skills in Excel and languages to help solve a riddle - and he's an Econ major!
Without getting all mushy or even SJW-like, THIS is the type of story that makes me love this country all the more...nothing about politics, nothing about racism, nothing about hatred; just an American who innovated his way to making the world a littler more interesting for all of us.
Thanks DoodleBob.
Medrano and Urton are publishing an article about their findings jointly, but Medrano’s name will appear first—pretty unusual for an undergraduate student when the other author is an internationally-famous scholar with an endowed chair at Harvard. Urton was a MacArthur Fellow from 2001 to 2005.
