By the time Jennifer Solis needed to pick a foreign language to study in eighth grade, she was already enthralled by the ancient cultures of Central and South America. Studying Spanish, she reasoned, would surely come in handy on her way to becoming an archaeologist, her dream career. âIf you were growing up in the early â80s, thatâs when National Geographic was going in and doing excavations in Central America of Mayan ruins. I never had my nose in a fiction book. I was always reading about some Roman empire or a lost city,â Solis said. âThis is the kind of nerd I was with that.â