North America's Oldest Skeleton Discovery: 13,000-Year-Old Body of 'Naia' Discovered in Mexico

International Business Times ^ | May 15, 2014 19:00 GMT | Lydia Smith

[Candor7]

One of the oldest human skeletons in North America has been discovered by a team of international scientists in an underwater Yucatán Peninsula cave............... ......................

The girl's skeleton is exceptionally complete because of the environment in which she died -- she ended up in the right water and in a quiet place without any soil. Her pristine preservation enabled our team to extract enough DNA to determine her shared genetic code with modern Native Americans," she added.

The skeleton, which is now covered in water, is estimated to be between 12,000 and 13,000 years old, suggesting Naia lived in the late Pleistocene or last ice age.................

[Candor7]

Oh snap! One more date that Laz missed. He will not be amused.

[Candor7]

I wonder what she would say if we could awaken her?

[jmcenanly]

“Who pushed me?”

[exDemMom]

In order to assess the age of the skeleton, the team analysed tooth enamel and seeds dropped by bats using radiocarbon dating and calcite deposits found on the bones using the uranium-thorium method.

Oh, my. I never realized that bats were so intelligent that they could use radiocarbon dating!

(Ugh, didn't an editor look at this first?)

[afraidfortherepublic]

Ping

[melsec]

I wonder was she in some sort of land deal with a democrat?

[Lazamataz]

I wonder what she would say if we could awaken her?

"What's Laz's phone number?"

...then a pause....

"What's a phone?"

[kenmcg]

Keep Bill Clinton away from her!

[jch10]

OOps!

[TexasGunLover]

I wonder what she would say if we could awaken her?

Not much we'd understand, at 12,000-13,000 years ago written language was still a few thousand years away. Speech had been going on since 70k to 60k years ago, but would differ from what we could understand today.

[Fred Nerks]

Poor girl, you wouldn’t want her to wake up in Mexico, would you?

[Candor7]

LOL. Thats the best one so far.

[Candor7]

Poor girl, you wouldn’t want her to wake up in Mexico, would you?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Oh my no! She would be wondering why the mastadons are missing and why every one is screaming “chimmichangas!”

[Fred Nerks]

...I have no idea what chimmichangas might be, but imagine her wondering why everyone spoke Spanish...and worshipped a statue of a foreign looking woman carrying a baby.

[Candor7]

[Chimmichangas are the Mexican equivalent of Chinese spring rolls, filled with chichen and spices the corn flour/wheat flour wrappers are deep fried , and served with a large dollop of hot sauce and grated cheese with sour creme for dipping.]

The concept of such time travel is fascinating to us, the former reference points are out the window, but 13,000 years ago must have been a very interesting place. Perhaps she would have been in awe of the idea of the immaculate conception etc. But likely she would have been tough as nails, and quite capable of breaking a human beings’s neck so quickly that there would be little defence against it.