Undersea Cave Yields One of Oldest Skeletons in Americas

[Judi Lynn]

Undersea Cave Yields One of Oldest Skeletons in Americas
Ritually placed in once dry cavern, Mexico skeleton offers clues to first Americans.
Ker Than
Published September 14, 2010

Apparently laid to rest more than 10,000 years ago in a fiery ritual, one of the oldest skeletons in the Americas has been retrieved from an undersea cave along Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, researchers say.

Dating to a time when the now lush region was a near desert, the "Young Man of Chan Hol" may help uncover how the first Americans arrived—and who they were.

About 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Cancún, the cave system of Chan Hol—Maya for "little hole"—is like a deep gouge into the Caribbean coast.

In 2006, after entering the cave's opening, about 30 feet (10 meters) underwater, German cave divers swam more than 1,800 feet (550 meters) through dark tunnels spiked with rock formations. There they accidentally uncovered the Ice Age human's remains and notified archaeologists based in the surrounding state, Quintana Roo.

More:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100915-oldest-skeleton-underwater-cave-science/

[geek tragedy]

1. The ancient Maya attributed great spiritual significance to caves. nt

[Jackpine Radical]

2. This person lived and died

several thousand years before the beginnings of Mayan culture.

[geek tragedy]

11. We don't know where the Mayan's beliefs originated.

Supposedly the Olmecs. But it's still a mystery, thanks in no small part to the cultural genocide the Spanish committed.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. I think the Aztecs got to the Olmecs

long before the Spanish showed up.

Which is by no means any sort of defense of the Spanish.

[geek tragedy]

17. Sorry, didn't make my self clear.

We don't know a lot about the cultural origins of the Maya in part because the Spanish destroyed almost every single last piece of written Mayan history and religion--only a handful of scrolls from an entire civilization survived.

[Jackpine Radical]

18. You're certainly right about that.

Book burning is surely nothing new. I wonder where the species might have gotten to by now if we didn't go through these periodic episodes of insanity. Or, in the case of the Church, millenia of insanity.

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[dipsydoodle]

4. And because these remains were found outside of the USA

chances are they won't be locked away never to be seen again as was the case with the Nordic remains unearthed when a river bank was cut away by a flood.

[Wilber_Stool]

5. Do you have a link for that?............n/t

[dipsydoodle]

6. There's a book I need to find

which has the location where that occured. Be easy to search then. Issues arose because the local native tribe wanted to claim as their own and bury them. It was facial reconstruction of the skull which indicated Nordic origin. From memory the remains were 5000 or so years old. I'll have a root around tomorrow. We even had a TV documentary on the subject some years ago here in the UK on the subject.

[Wilber_Stool]

8. I know about that one.

It was in Washington state on the ocean. I forget what he was called, but it will come to me with time.
Aah ha. Kenowit man.

[aquart]

7. Kennewick man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man

[dipsydoodle]

16. That's the one I had in mind.

Ta for that.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. That racist "Nordic" theory was always unsubstantiated.

[Jackpine Radical]

14. Not nordic, but maybe proto-caucasian.

Like the Ainu. That has always been my bet--that K. Man was a member of some Asian proto-caucasoid population.

[starroute]

10. Those remains weren't "Nordic" -- just not like present-day Native Americans

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter54/text-Kennewick/text-Kennewick.htm

What upset a great many settled opinions was the discovery that one of the oldest archaeological human finds ever made in the US turned out to be morphologically quite "un-American" (i.e. "un-Amerind").

While it is reasonably clear what Kennewick Man is not , it is not at all clear yet what he is. Precise measurements of the skull made by J.F. Powell and J.C. Rose in 1999 under the auspices of the US Department of the Interior suggest a Polynesian (64%) or Ainu (24%) ancestry.

The article linked in the OP says:

The skeletons found in the Quintana Roo caves could force scientists to rethink their ideas about the initial population of the Americas, Gonzalez said.

For example, the skulls of both the Young Man of Chan Hol and the Woman of Naharon have anatomical features that suggest their owners were descended from people of South Asia and Indonesia—not from northern Asia, like North America's other known early migrants.

So both Kennewick Man and these latest Mexican finds suggest an Indonesian/Polynesian origin for the very earliest Americans, rather than Siberian -- but definitely not Nordic.

There is, of course, both genetic and archaeological evidence that the Clovis culture of the Americans may be derived from the Solutrean of Europe -- but that's a whole different story.

[Bobbieo]

12. I'm not surprised about the South Pacfic -Asian theories. We have an

Indian tribe, here, in Southern AZ - The Cocopahs who still strongly remsemble the South Pacific Islanders. I was an anthro minor in college and long argued that many tribes in the Americas came here by boat or some form of sea travel from all over the world as well as crossing via the Siberian land bridge.

[applegrove]

15. Cool!

[fl_dem]

19. I just finished Plains of Passage

book 4 of Jean Auel's Earths Children (Clan of the Cave Bear) series. I know its fiction but it fascinates me none the less!