A prehistoric skeleton found deep in a flooded Mexican cave was likely placed there in a ritual
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A prehistoric skeleton was found in a complex underwater cave system An area along Mexico’s Caribbean coast that was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to a cave diving archaeologist who made the discovery along with others.
Octavio del Río, in collaboration with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, 11th skeleton found in caves Over the past three decades, some of the oldest human remains in North America have been discovered among tourist destinations like Tulum and Playa del Carmen sinkhole caves Some of the ancient skeletons known as “cenotes” date back approximately 13,000 years.
Del Río told The Associated Press this week that the skeleton was found in a flooded cave about 26 feet (8 meters) below the surface after swimming about 656 feet (200 meters) into the cave. The archaeologist found the skeleton in late 2025 and it is currently being analyzed.
But “given the distance and depth (from the cave entrance) … it cannot have reached there at any time other than when the cave was dry, at least 8,000 years ago,” he said. Even now, only expert divers with special equipment can reach and work in these caves.
The skeleton was found on a dune of sediments in a narrower part of an inner chamber, “suggesting that it was a funerary tomb where the body was placed deliberately, perhaps as part of a ritual practice,” del Río said.
Del Río said his pulse quickened even after three decades of making such discoveries. “You can even scream under water,” he said with a smile.
Del Río said you start imagining the cave, imagine how this person got there, and think about the context.
Luis Alberto Martos, director of archaeological studies at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, said the new find will help understand how these people came to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which was then a plain full of rocks and not forests and beaches as it is now, and how they used caves.
DNA data increasingly supports the idea that some of them came from Asia via a land bridge that is today the Bering Strait, but there are also some clues that suggest another route from South America.
“Yucatan’s prehistoric puzzle increasingly understood,” he said
Hundreds of kilometers of underwater rivers and cave systems beneath the Caribbean coast seriously affected by the construction of the Mayan Train in recent years under the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The government cut down forest areas and drove support pillars into caves to build tourist trains.
Del Río, one of the project’s most outspoken critics, said Mexican officials are now trying to designate the entire area as a national protected area.
Mexico’s Environment Ministry confirmed to the AP that the goal is to reach that goal by 2026.
Ecologists have been trying to protect fragile caves for years as development and pollution increasingly threaten underwater waterways.
Martos said that in addition to the natural value and importance of the region, the National Institute of Anthropology and History also advocates that the region should be protected in terms of cultural heritage. That’s because the caves themselves show themselves to be “archaeological windows,” he said, while also offering more modern finds such as a small cannon and 19th-century rifles.
Divers passionate about exploring flooded caves continue to find fossils, but archaeologists have not yet begun to recover fossils, the researchers said.
