Flooded caverns

Burial found in deep cavern register and intervention will undergo for a year.

Human bones found in a submerged cavern at Quintana Roo Mexican state represent an important contribution to investigations related to the presence of early man in America, and Mexico Southeast, informed biologist Arturo Gonzalez Gonzalez, director of the project "Pre ceramic human groups in Quintana Roo", through systematic register of evidences found submerged at flooded caves.
 
Along with Quintana Roo INAH archaeologist Carmen Rojas Sandoval, the biologist stated that the salvage of this skeleton represented an important challenge for the interdisciplinary investigation team gathered by INAH.
 
Quintana Roo Speleological Survey (QRSS) founded 3 skeletons in the same area between 2003 and 2005. This time, speleo-diver Robbie Smithers collaborates as a QRSS member.
 
Located 550 yards away from the cave entrance and submerged, the bones presented a fragile condition; “ the skeleton recently found will be meticulously registered in situ, before its removal from the flooded rocky bed; this requires many immersions and more than a year,” stated Arturo Gonzalez.
 
The skull conserves 10 teeth, which will help us date it by means of Carbon 13 tests: "we can find out how they fed, if their diet was composed mainly of sea or land animals", commented the biologist.
 
Arturo Gonzalez, who also is director of the Dessert Museum in Coahuila, explained this finding sums up o other 3 skeletons found in the Riviera Maya region; all four compound the Ice Age skeleton collection of Mexico, one of the oldest in America.
 
Dating of this anthropological material determined these persons lived 8,000 to 13,000 years ago. The age given to these skeletons is similar to the one established for the ones Tom Dillehay found in southern Chile, and to some found in Alaska and northern USA.
 
"Humankind appearing at the same time in the continent does not seem possible. We are still far from understanding humankind history in America. This new evidence makes invalid most accepted theories about how America was inhabited", expressed Arturo Gonzalez.
 
One theory suggests that humans crossed from Europe by sea, passing through Greenland to North America. Other theory affirms they crossed from northern Asia to America through strait of Bering. A third one points out Polynesian groups arrived to South America by sea.
 
Gonzalez Gonzalez and National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) MD Alejandro Terrazas declared that physical anthropology studies reveal is that skeletons are not related to Maya groups, but to Asian, specifically, from regions near India.
 
"The place where we found the skeleton determines that Ice Age humans looked for locations far away from the entrance to place their departed, which was not a common practice in America at that point. Two skeletons were found in a flexed position: this signals they were moved here by other persons, which makes them ritual burials".
 
"We must remember these caves were not flooded when humans used them by the end of Pleistocene, at least 10,000 years ago. At that time, tiny water drops formed stalactites and stalagmites inside the caves".
 
Yucatan area was different to the jungle we see, looking more as a desert prairie; people and animals looked for shelter and water in the deep segments of caverns.
 
Arturo Gonzalez concluded the Cenote projects that began 10 years ago place Mexico as a pioneer in submerged underground systems archaeological registration. The results are well known worldwide and "Nature" and "National Geographic" magazines have published articles on this regard.