• DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0183345
• Corpus ID: 2689533

The earliest settlers of Mesoamerica date back to the late Pleistocene

@article{Stinnesbeck2017TheES,
  title={The earliest settlers of Mesoamerica date back to the late Pleistocene},
  author={Wolfgang Stinnesbeck and Julia Becker and F{\'a}bio Adriano Hering and Eberhard Frey and Arturo H. Gonz{\'a}lez Gonz{\'a}lez and Jens Fohlmeister and Sarah R. Stinnesbeck and Norbert Frank and Alejandro Terrazas Mata and Martha Elena Benavente and Jer{\'o}nimo Avil{\'e}s Olgu{\'i}n and Eugenio Aceves N{\'u}{\~n}ez and Patrick Zell and Michael Deininger},
  journal={PLoS ONE},
  year={2017},
  volume={12}
}

• W. Stinnesbeck, Julia Becker, +11 authors M. Deininger
• Published 30 August 2017
• Geography
• PLoS ONE

Preceramic human skeletal remains preserved in submerged caves near Tulum in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, reveal conflicting results regarding 14C dating. Here we use U-series techniques for dating a stalagmite overgrowing the pelvis of a human skeleton discovered in the submerged Chan Hol cave. The oldest closed system U/Th age comes from around 21 mm above the pelvis defining the terminus ante quem for the pelvis to 11311±370 y BP. However, the skeleton might be considerable older, probably as old as 13 ky BP as indicated by the speleothem stable isotope data. The Chan Hol individual confirms a late Pleistocene settling of Mesoamerica and represents one of the oldest human osteological remains in America.