Back in September 2016, explorers were mapping a Yucatan cave called Chan Hol where they discovered the ancient female, dubbed Chan Hol 3 by the experts, but due to the salty cave water, the collagen in the bones had degraded, meaning radiocarbon dating methods would not work. But calcite from stalactites had dripped onto the female’s fingers and due to the low levels of uranium and thorium in calcite, experts dated the deposits to around 9,900 years ago, meaning the skeleton is certainly older.
The skeleton had tooth cavities, indicating a high-sugar diet and we know she died at around 30 years of age. Her cause of death is unknown but from analysing the skull, she did suffer three skull injuries in her life, all of which healed. Her skull was also pitted with crater-like deformations, lesions that look like those caused by a bacterial infection, like syphilis.
She clearly had a very hard life and a very unhappy end. Experts are speculating that she may have been expelled from her group and was killed in the cave, or was left in the cave to die.
Analysing the skull in more detail and it was a round skull with a low forehead, one of two groups found in Mexico, the other having longer skulls. It implies that in Mexico thousands of years ago, there were two human groups, both having clear differences and were probably two separate cultures, yet they co-existed between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago.
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All images are taken from Google images and the below sources for educational purposes only.
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