Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Skull in Underwater Cave May Be Earliest Trace of First Americans

After trekking through the jungle, carrying multiple scuba cylinders, and traveling thousands of feet inside the Aktun-Hu cave system, PET/GUE Member Alex Alvarez discovered a human skull. Photo by Daniel Riordan-Araujo
Explorers have discovered what might be the oldest evidence of humans in the Americas.

Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava are members of PET (Projecto Espeleológico de Tulum), an organization that specializes in the exploration and survey of underwater caves on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Alex, Franco and Beto have surveyed tens of thousands of feet of mazelike cave passages in the state of Quintana Roo. The team's relatively recent explorations of a large pit named Hoyo Negro (Black Hole, in Spanish), deep within a flooded cave, resulted in their breathtaking and once-in-a-lifetime discovery of the remains of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull at the very bottom of the black abyss.

LINK

Via: National Geographic

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