A Diver Found 8,000-Year-Old Human Remains Deep Inside an Underwater Cave
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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- A fragmented skeleton now thought to be about 8,000 years old surfaced in one of Mexico’s cenotes (sinkhole caves).
- 8,000 is only the minimum estimated age—based on when the cave was flooded (at the end of the last Ice Age), the bones could be even older.
- Archaeologists are rushing to find what they can, as the building of the Maya Train system threatens cenotes and other submerged ecosystems.
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Relics of the past are not always buried under sounds of hard, dry diret. Sunken temples such as Taposiris Magna and artifacts from ancient coastal civilizations have shown that plenty of history has instead been submerged. And when cave diving along the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, archaeologist Octavio del Río and professional cave diver Peter Broger discovered human remains that had not seen dry land since the last Ice Age.
Between the resort towns of Tulum and Playa del Carman, what tourists usually don’t see is the thousands of freshwater sinkhole caves known as cenotes. They formed from the collapse of limestone bedrock, and were once believe to be sacred portals to the underworld by the ancient Mayans, who believed gods and spirits dwelled in their depths.
The waters pockmarking and surrounding the Yucatán are known for hiding ancient remains, some of which have been dated to as far back as 13,000 years ago and wereburied in caves that were, at one point, above ground. That is, until their ceilings collapsed at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, thanks to melting ice that caused floods from rising sea levels.
Broger had come across the shattered skull and bone fragments before eventually contacting del Río—who frequently collaborates with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History—to investigate. Because cave diving can be perilous, they needed specialized equipment to swim through 656 feet (200 meters) of passageways before they found the remains partially covered in sediment 26 feet (8 meters) below the surface. Further investigation determined that the intentional placement of the body on a pile of sediment was likely part of a ritual funerary practice. del Río explained that this is the eleventh skeleton that has appeared in the region in the last three decades, which is as long as he has been exploring the cenotes.
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“We don’t know if the body was deposited there or if that was where this person died,” del Río recently told the Associated Press. “There is a lot more study[ing] that has to be done in order to interpret [the burial] […] [including] dating, some photographic studies and some collection.”
The skeleton was determined to be at least 8,000 years old (though there is a possibility it’s much older), as that was the last time the caves were above ground, before they began to flood and form cenotes. It was also too far from the entrance of the cave to have been placed there by later Paleoamericans, who would have walked the Earth long before any sort of underwater survival equipment—let alone anything designed for cave diving—existed. Around the time this individual was alive, the Yucatán Peninsula was a semi-arid savannah devoid of any rivers or lakes. Water and shade were scarce, so some researchers think that ancient peoples found relief from the blistering Sun in caves, which were fed by fresh water gushing from underground.
What kind of ritual could have been carried out during the funeral remains a mystery. Another skeleton, estimated at about 10,000 to 12,000 years old and laid to rest in what became another cenote, was surrounded by evidence of bonfires. This possibly means that funerary practices involved illuminating the otherwise dark cave, though it is still unknown whether this was religious or practical. The oldest known skeleton to surface among the cenotes is known as Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon—at 13,721 years old, she’s the oldest known human fossil in the Americas so far.
Unfortunately, according to reporting done by the Associated press, Mexican cenotes are now being threatened by the Maya Train System, which outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador intended to connect Tulum and other tourist destinations to more remote jungles and archaeological sites. This effort has the potential to disrupt the system of cenotes—not to mention other subterranean ecosystems.
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“These ecosystems are very, very fragile,” Emiliano Monroy-Ríos, a geologist at Northwestern University, told the Associated Press in another interview. “They are building upon a land […] full of caves and cavities of different sizes and at different depths.”
The pressure is now on archaeologists to find everything they can before mass tourism takes over. Some cenotes may no longer be safe for exploration because of falling stalactites or water polluted by iron seeping from rust on steel pillars. Hopefully, before this occurs, more discoveries like the unnamed skeleton will speak from beyond the grave and make it clear just how many wonders are still lying undiscovered.
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