Ancient Americans ventured deep into caves along a stretch of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to mine a red pigment that could have had both practical and ritual uses, researchers say.
Discoveries of mining-related artefacts and digging areas by divers in three now-submerged cave systems indicate that people there removed a natural pigment called
red ochre, say archaeologist Brandi MacDonald of the University of Missouri in Columbia and her colleagues. Radiocarbon dates of burned wood from fires used to illuminate mining areas place humans at these sites between roughly 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, making it the oldest evidence of ochre mining in the Americas, the investigators report July 3 in Science Advances.
Previous finds have suggested that ancient Americans used red ochre in many ways, including as an antiseptic, sunscreen, hide-tanning agent and for body painting
and other symbolic purposes.
Remnants of ancient pigment mining uncovered by MacDonald’s team raise the possibility that some miners may have died and been left where they perished. Divers previously found at least 10 human skeletons in Yucatán caves dating to as early as around 12,000 years ago, before rising seas inundated the underground chambers.
In one cave system, an approximately 900-meter-long series of tunnels dubbed La Mina contained extensive evidence of red ochre extraction. Several narrow passages leading into La Mina contained piles of stones and broken pieces of cave growths that miners apparently us
ed as navigation guides. Other broken-off cave growths had been wielded as digging tools. Most of the 352 pits and other intentionally disturbed areas in La Mina contain remnants of ochre deposits, the researchers say. Ochre samples from La Mina were bright red and chemically suitable for making paint, they add.
