Ancient Skull Of Little Girl In Submerged Cave Is Oldest Found In North America

Photo: Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

National Geographic is reporting on a remarkable find of the skull from a teenage girl in an underwater cave. The skull bolsters the theory that Native Americans arrived here as the result of crossing a land bridge from Asia. Scientists believe that the little girl fell down the hole thousands of years ago and died, leaving a nearly complete skeleton that researchers found by accident in 2007.

Divers exploring the “Hoyo Negro” or “black hole” have nicknamed the little girl “Naia” which is a water nymph from Greek mythology. Naia was reportedly 15 or 16 when she met her demise at the bottom of Hoyo Negro some 12,000 years ago. The fact that her pelvis was broken indicates that she fell a great distance into the abyss, possibly while searching for water.

“It appears that she fell quite a distance, and struck something hard enough to fracture her pelvis,” said Applied Paleoscience anthropologist James Chatters. “You can imagine a young woman either lost in the dark in a cave … [or] she may have been looking for water, even with a group looking for water, and getting water out of the little puddle that was in the bottom of Hoyo Negro periodically, and fallen in. And no one could get her out once it happened.”

One of the divers, Alberto Nava said, “The moment we entered inside, we knew it was an incredible place. The floor disappeared under us and we could not see across to the other side.”

Naia is providing DNA evidence that is changing the way that scientists understand how the earliest Americans came to inhabit the Americas.