Posted on 04/11/2007 3:40:41 PM PDT by blam
Archaeologists find 3 prehistoric bodies in SE Mexico
www.chinaview.cn 2007-04-11 11:39:34
MEXICO CITY, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Mexican archaeologists found remains of two women and a man that can be traced to more than 10,000 years ago in the Mayan area of Tulum, Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute said in a statement on Tuesday.
The remains were being examined by laboratories in Britain, the United States and Mexico, all of which had said the remains were people between 10,000 and 14,500 years ago, said Carmen Rojas, an archaeologist quoted in the statement.
"This makes southeastern Mexico one of the few areas with a proven prehistoric presence in America," said Rojas.
The remains were found in the Las Palmas, El Templo and Naharoncaves, in an area previously thought to be uninhabited. They are not Mayas because they do not have the classic Mayan skull deformation.
The woman found in Naharon cave, 368 meters from its entrance and 22.6 meters underground, was 1.41 meters' tall, weighed around 53 kg and was between 20 and 30 years old when she died. The woman found in Las Palmas cave was between 44 and 50 when she died.
The body found in El Templo cave was a man aged between 25 and 30. His body was the least well preserved because it had been eroded and most of its organic material was gone.
Archaeologists have worked since 2002 to exhume the bodies from underwater caverns, said the statement.
In the past the region was dry but the caves were flooded due in the last thaw of the Pleistocene ice age, it said.
Archaeological finds showed the region was probably used as a refuge and a graveyard, said the Institute. The archaeologists also found campfire remains.
Maya who?
Why do you diminish a serious thread with such an inane comment?
Tulum ... Tulum .......... Tulum, Tulum, Tulum.
Sort of rhymes don't cha think?
That global warming white stuff is still falling here in Michigan. More is forecast for tomorrow.
See my profile page for a link to the USS Enterprise version.
But I wish there were more details, like the ages of the individual skeletons and how those ages were established. And maybe the names and affiliations of the archaeologists so we could search for additional information.
(Science writers should really study some science; and China?!? How did they get this article? Maybe that's why so many pertinent details are lacking!)
We'll get more details later.
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We stayed at the hotel in Coba there too. It was deserted. I think we were the only guests. I can’t remember the price but it was cheap. I can still remember the dust in the dining room on all the set up tables, complete with china. At the pond in front of the hotel we watched a spotted rail for a couple of hours. We watched for a long time because we wanted to be able to indentify him when we got home. About a month after we got home I saw a bird magazine that mentioned seeing the rare spotted rail in Coba, complete with photos. We also loved the other birds we saw there, especially a beautiful green motmot with a long tail, he landed in a tree just a few feet in front of us as we walked the trail and just sat there, completely unafraid.
Wow neat.
“They are not Mayas because they do not have the classic Mayan skull deformation.”
I’d interpret this sentence to mean that there is no evidence of Mayan culture. This doesn’t seem to say anything about whether these might be biological ancestors.
Did you see the large termite nests built up in the trees? I thought they were distinctive and unusual.
The oldest Mongoloid skeleton ever found is only 10k years old (Oppenheimer)...there couldn't have been Mayan yet, at this early date. I was thinking maybe these guys. (Whoever they are?)
"The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas."
"Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.
Never noticed any, we were more interested in the birds, plants and pyramids.
I agree about Coba. When I 1st went 20+ years ago, it was nothing but trails through the jungle. The buildings, pyramids, stelae were all overgrown and unexcavated. You felt like Indiana Jones...........
I saw a lot of these. Many much larger.
Yup...that was my experience.
“the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology.”
That's Australia, China and North Africa The “Australian” morphology seems to have been widespread at the end of the Pleistocene.
I think its a mistake to assume that people should be physically similar to very distant ancestors
“Powell has already noted (Powell 1995; Powell and Neves n.d.; Steele and Powell 1992, 1994) that the geographic groupings or races seen among modern peoples are at best fuzzy and at worst non-existent when examining late Pleistocene and early Holocene populations world-wide. “
Morphology can change drastically in isolated popluations. This has been demonstrated many times with island species. I don’t see why people would be any different.
Because a sense of humor is a terrible thing to lose.
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