[HN Gopher] In Mexico's underwater caves, a glimpse of artifacts...
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In Mexico's underwater caves, a glimpse of artifacts, fossils and
human remains
Author : pseudolus
Score : 43 points
Date : 2024-10-02 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| petesergeant wrote:
| How do you make cave diving scarier? Skulls. Turns out the answer
| is half-buried human skulls.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Been living in the Yucatan the last couple of years. The Mayans
| believe that cenotes are gateways to the underworld, so it's
| kinda on point. When people are having bad luck (injuries etc)
| and there is one nearby, they will pray and make offerings to
| the spirits that inhabit them. And if that doesn't work they
| will fire guns into them to scare them away.
| sparrish wrote:
| Such amazing photography of those underwater caves.
| lxe wrote:
| That photography... wow!
| pnw wrote:
| More here: https://www.martinbroen.com/#/cave-exploration/
| hansoolo wrote:
| That's completely insane and... Beautiful!
| throwup238 wrote:
| Anyone visiting the Yucatan peninsula should take a day to go
| swimming in a cenote. It's a magical experience even without
| diving into the underwater caves (they have some scary signs with
| warnings about that).
|
| _> There's a symbiotic relationship between the passionate and
| technical cave explorers who investigate every hole in a cave in
| their free time (and just for fun) and those in the scientific
| community who want to study these prehistoric materials but
| cannot reach where they're hidden in the underwater darkness._
|
| The lack of cavers in general is becoming a bigger and bigger
| problem in archaeology and paleoanthropology. Since a lot of
| archaic human species were quite a bit smaller, they managed to
| make very elaborate caves their home that are hard for the
| average adult to navigate. Underwater archaeology is still in its
| infancy so the training isn't explicitly part of anyone's
| education.
|
| Last year there was a story [1] on the front page about research
| into _Homo naledi_ in the Rising Star Cave [2] that was only made
| possible because they were able to find six petite
| paleoanthropologists cavers who were able to fit through a
| "vertically oriented 'chimney' or 'chute' measuring 12 m (39 ft)
| long with an average width of 20 cm (7.9 in)" to the Dinaledi
| room in the back of the cave. They found 1,500 human bones there
| and still have a lot left to excavate.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36344397
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Star_Cave
| Bufgaric wrote:
| Diving in the cenotes is pretty damn awesome though! You just
| have to make sure to dive the ones that have been explored and
| have designated routes. My third and fourth dives after getting
| my open water certification were in cenotes around Playa Del
| Carmen and that experience was just mind blowing. Would love to
| do it again.
| aegypti wrote:
| _A well-known example is the figure of a woman at the entrance of
| Cenote Dos Ojos; while it was not sculpted as such, it is a
| carefully selected speleothem that resembles the silhouette of a
| woman and was intentionally exhibited on a pedestal to decorate
| the cave entrance, evidence of paleoart from more than 8,000
| years ago that anyone can visit._
|
| Are there any images of this?
| api wrote:
| Caves like these always make me think of what might be beneath
| the surface of Mars, Europa, or many other bodies in the solar
| system with sub-surface oceans.
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(page generated 2024-10-02 23:00 UTC)