The ESCONI October 2024 General Meeting will be held on October 11th, 2024 at 8:00 via Zoom. The topic of the meeting is "Hoyo Negro: A Spectacular Natural Trap on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula". It will be presented by Jim Chatters, who has studied human history here in the Americas for many years. Here is an article about the discovery of a 13,000 year old human found in Hoyo Negro.
Hoyo Negra is a submerged late Pleistocene cave site in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
The cenotes and underwater cave systems of the Yucatan Peninsula are emerging as one of the most promising frontiers for Paleoamerican studies. Following the end of the last glacial maximum, rising sea levels flooded the region’s maze of underground passageways and preserved a diverse Late Pleistocene fossil assemblage. A female human skeleton, named "Naia," found in spatial association with the remains of now-extinct fauna in the submerged subterranean pit of Hoyo Negro presents a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary Paleoamerican and paleoenvironmental research in Quintana Roo, Mexico. At 13,000-12,000 years BP, the young woman’s skeleton represents the oldest nearly complete individual yet found in the Americas.
