An Overview of the Hoyo Negro Project and Its Findings

Summary

Hoyo Negro is an immense, underwater collapse chamber deep within the Sac Aktun Cave system, Quintana Roo, Mexico. On its floor lie data-rich calcite raft deposits, bat guano piles, scatters of wood and charcoal, skeletons of large animals, and the remains of one teen-age human female. These sediments and fossils lie in total darkness, >40 meters below sea level, creating major technical challenges for their study and recovery. Investigations by a team of divers and scientists from Mexico, the US, and Canada, which began in 2011 using in situ study and minimal sampling, have begun to unlock this trove of potential information about the terminal Pleistocene paleoecology and human occupation of the Yucatan Peninsula. Thus far we have mapped the site in detail, identified as many as five extinct species of megafauna (two perhaps new to science), conducted geochemical studies of the calcite raft deposits to elucidate patterns of climatic change, determined the age range of the site, and begun studies of the human remains. Overall, the site dates from ca 8000 to >40,000 BP. Naia, as the girl has been named, is as much as 12,900 years old and her mitochondrial DNA places her origin firmly in Beringia.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Hoyo Negro Project: Recent Investigations of a Submerged Paleoamerican Cave Site in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Keywords

Spatial Coverage