Evidence of historic migration

Chamari Senanayake

Based on archaeological, anthropological, DNA and evidence of Linguistics, many believe that some prehistoric people from Asia have populated the Americas over 10,000 years ago. Although this is part of an ongoing debate and further scientific study, Geneticists have variously estimated that peoples of Asia and the Americas were part of the same population from 21,000 to 42,000 years.

Four years ago, a pair of German cave divers who were exploring unique flooded sandstone sinkholes, known as cenotes, common to the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, found the remains of a prehistoric child in an underwater cave in Mexico. Recently they removed the bones for analysis. The skeletal remains are of a boy, and, are more than 10,000 years old and are among the oldest human bones found in the Americas.

Scientist’s main hope is that this well-preserved corpse will offer clues to ancient human migration. The young boy and was found with his legs bent to his left side and his arms extended to either side of his body, and this position has interested scientists. Scientists has spent three years studying the remains where they lay before deciding it was safe to bring the skeleton to the surface for further study.

Anthropologists from the National Automonous University of Mexico think that the body was placed in the cave as part of a funeral ceremony performed around 10,000 years ago when the sea level was around 488 feet lower than it is today. The cave today is very dark and beneath 27 feet below the surface of the sea.

Experts recovered 60 percent of the skeleton, including bones from both arms and legs, vertebrae, ribs, the skull and several teeth, all fantastically preserved. Divers have also found the partial skeletons of three other people, inside other flooded caves.

Scientists believe that the latest discover ‘strengthens the hypothesis that the American continent was populated starting with several migrations coming from Asia’. In an announcement, the university said that the burial sites ‘reveal migrations coming from southeastern Asia before those known up to now as Clovis groups, which are said to have crossed from northern Asia, also via the Bering Strait, at the end of the Ice Age.’

Some scientists believe that the Clovis people crossed into America from Asia around 14,000 years ago and gradually made their way down, over many generations to settle in northern Mexico. Others believe that the first people in America actually crossed from the Pacific on boats, possibly even earlier than the Clovis.

The finds at the caves in Quintana Roo appear to predate earlier Clovis finds from similar areas in Mexico.

The institute is co-ordinating a study of early human migration to eastern Mexico that aims to deepen understanding of the movement of people across the Bering Strait at the end of the last Ice Age. However, they marvel at the way the 10,000-year-old bones preserved underwater waiting to be found to tell its tale.