A cave-diving archaeologist on Mexico’s Caribbean coast has discovered a prehistoric human skeleton in a tunnel network that was submerged 8,000 years ago at the conclusion of the last ice period.
The fractured head and broken skeleton were discovered in a cave close to where the Mexican government intends to construct a high-speed tourist railway through the jungle, according to archaeologist Octavio del Rio and fellow diver Peter Broger.
Del Rio, referring to the time when the caverns were flooded by rising sea levels, stated that the skeleton must be older than 8,000 years due to the distance from the cave entrance and the inability of getting there without current diving equipment.
‘There it is. We don’t know if the body was deposited there or if that was where this person died,’ said Del Rio. He said that the skeleton was located about 8 meters (26 feet) underwater, about a half-kilometer (one third of a mile) into the cave system.
The sinkhole caves known as ‘cenotes’ on the nation’s Caribbean coast are where some of the earliest human remains in North America have been found, and experts warn some of those caves are threatened by the Mexican government’s Maya Train tourism project.
Del Rio, who has previously collaborated on projects with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, claimed to have informed the organisation about the discovery. When asked if it planned to visit the location, the institute did not react right away.
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