I'm not sure that this would be a particularly good idea. I recently read a
book on the recovery of the "Ice Man" on the Swiss/Italian border. He had been
in the glacier for thousands of years. Upon his recovery, he and his artifacts
had to be taken to a clean lab under special care because they began to
deteriorate fairly soon. Bacteria also attacked the corpse.
I've also read several books and articles about the recovery of artifacts from
the Mediterranean. They also have to be treated and sometimes kept under water
to deter deterioration.
Louise
I'm drowning and monkeys dressed like lifeguards are throwing me anvils. Dilbert
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:37:14 -0500
> From: gi...@att.net
> To: texascavers@texascavers.com
> Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Ancient Human Skeleton Removed From Mexican Cave :
>
> At the height of the last Ice Age the Berring Strait was a piece of
> land over 1000 miles wide. Sea level was over 300 feet lower than it
> is now. It is speculated that most of the human beings that migrated
> along that route didn't walk, they came by boats, hopping from cove to
> cove along the coast. Most of their villages (and tombs and artifacts)
> have not been located because they are under more than a hundred feet
> of water now. A few rare burials from that period have been found in
> caves (all the way down into South America) which were high enough to
> be above (or in the case of this reported Mexico find, just below)
> present day sea level. They push the date of early settlement of the
> Americas a good bit farther back in time, well into the Ice Age, than
> the terrestrial finds farther inland--as would be expected.
>
> If we had some sort of submersible habitat, say a gutted ship hull
> that could be inverted and sunk over these inundated archeological
> sites then filled with pressurized air like a caisson so diggers could
> live down there for a month or so at a time whilst excavating those
> sites in the relatively dryness of the habitat it would be a boon to
> our knowledge of these early coastal people who first settled in the
> Americas perhaps 30,000 years ago.
> --Ediger
>
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 2:58 AM, <jerryat...@aol.com> wrote:
> > Ancient Human Skeleton Removed From Mexican Cave
> >
> > MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The remains of a prehistoric child were removed from
> > an underwater cave in Mexico four years after divers stumbled upon the
> > well-preserved corpse that offers clues to ancient human migration.
> >
> > The skeletal remains of the boy, dubbed the Young Hol Chan, are more than
> > 10,000 years old and are among the oldest human bones found in the Americas.
> >
> > The corpse was discovered in 2006 by 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.
> >
> > Scientists spent three years studying the remains where they lay before
> > deciding it was safe to bring the skeleton to the surface for further study,
> > according to the Mexican National Institute for Anthropology and History.
> >
> > The institute is coordinating 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.
> >
> > The Young Hol Chan, named after the cenote where he was discovered, was
> > found in a darkened cave 27 feet beneath the surface.
> >
> > (Reporting by Patrick Rucker; editing by Todd Eastham)
> >
> > http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=11473831
>
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