The skeleton was found inside a cave system that flooded at the end of the last ice age, the archaeologist who found the remains told the Associated Press.
MEXICO CITY – A prehistoric human skeleton has been found in a cave system that was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to a cave-diving archaeologist on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
“There it is. We don’t know if the body was deposited there or if that was where this person died,” Del Rio said. He said the skeleton was located about 26 feet underwater, about one third of a mile into the cave system. But Del Rio said Tuesday that institute archaeologist Carmen Rojas told him that the site was registered and would be investigated by the institute’s Quintana Roo state branch Holocene Archaeology Project.
Del Rio has been exploring the region for three decades, and in 2002, he participated in the discovery and cataloguing of remains known as The Woman of Naharon, who died around the same time, or perhaps earlier, than Naia – the nearly complete skeleton of a young woman who died around 13,000 years ago. It was discovered in a nearby cave system in 2007.
Caves along part of the coast already have been damaged by construction above them, with cement pilings used to support the weight above.