A prehistoric human skeleton has been unearthed within an intricate underwater cave system off Mexico’s Caribbean coast, an area submerged since the close of the last ice age some 8,000 years ago.
This significant discovery marks the eleventh such skeleton found in the region's caves over the past three decades, according to cave-diving archaeologist Octavio del Río. Working in collaboration with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mr del Río highlighted the area between Tulum and Playa del Carmen as a crucial site for uncovering some of North America’s oldest human remains, with previous finds dating back approximately 13,000 years.
Mr del Río informed The Associated Press this week that the skeleton was located in a flooded cave, roughly eight metres below the surface, after divers navigated about 200 metres through the subterranean passages. The archaeological team recovered the remains in late 2025, and analysis is now underway.
He emphasised the challenging conditions of the find: "With the distance (from the cave entrance) and the depth… it could not have gotten there at any other time than when the cave was dry, at least 8,000 years ago." Access to these caves remains restricted to highly skilled divers equipped with specialist gear.
The skeleton was on a dune of sediments in a narrower part of an interior chamber, which “suggests that it was a funereal deposit where the body was placed intentionally, perhaps as part of a ritual practice,” Del Río said.
A map of Tulum in Mexico:
Even after three decades of making such discoveries, Del Río said his pulse quickened. “You can shout even under water,” he said smiling.
Del Río said you start picturing the cave, imagining how this person came to be there, thinking about the context.
Luis Alberto Martos, director of archaeological studies at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, said the new find will help to understand how these people arrived at Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, which then was a plain with cliffs, not jungle and beaches like now, and how they used the caves.
DNA data support more and more the idea that some arrived from Asia along a land bridge that today is the Bering Strait, though there are also some clues suggesting another route from South America.
“The puzzle of Yucatan prehistory is becoming better understood,” he said
The hundreds of miles of underwater rivers and cave systems below the Caribbean coast was severely impacted in recent years by construction of the Maya Train under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The government cut down swaths of jungle and drove support columns down into the caves to build the tourist train.
Del Río, who was one of that project’s most outspoken critics, said that now Mexican authorities are working to try to designate the entire zone as a national protected area.
Mexico’s Environmental Ministry confirmed to the AP that the goal is to achieve that designation in 2026.
Ecologists have been trying to protect the delicate caves for years as development and pollution increasingly threaten the underwater waterways.
Besides the area’s natural value and importance, Martos said the National Institute of Anthropology and History has argued that it should also be protected on the grounds of cultural heritage. That's because the caves have shown themselves to be “archaeological windows,” also offering up more modern finds like a small cannon and 19th-century rifles, he said.
Divers who are passionate about exploring the flooded caves continue to find fossils, researchers said, although archaeologists have not yet been able to begin recovering them.
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