Cave Divers Swam Through A Subterranean “Portal” And Found A Long Forgotten American Land

cave divers swam through a subterranean portal and found a long forgotten american land but before we start please make sure to subscribe to m r tv and hit the bell so you never miss any upload from us also leave a like right now deep in the waters of the yucatan peninsula sam meacham and fred devos are maneuvering their way through a network of caves the pair have been under the surface for some time now having traveled a half mile or so submerged but the ordeal turns out to be worth it as finally they're faced with a tiny opening in the rock before them and what lies behind completely astonishes the intrepid divers even better meacham and devos can take their astonishing find back to the quintana roo aquafire system research center cindak as that name suggests the center researches and promotes the natural underground features of quintana roo one of three mexican states located in the yucatan peninsula and since syndac was set up two decades ago its members have undertaken thousands of dives thanks to these expeditions they've naturally been able to glean more and more knowledge about the region's caves with a greater picture of the place emerging all the time however michoan devos's dive in 2017 was perhaps the most fruitful of syndax so far you see the pair expose something incredibly important behind that opening in the rock and that fateful discovery has now provided historians with a unique perspective on the america's ancient human inhabitants meacham was actually the director of syndac in fact making the find particularly poignant for him and even three years after the event his memories of that day remain vivid speaking to national geographic in july 2020 he recalled of the opening in the rock that was the portal into this whole other side but while this particular cavern was especially fascinating it's far from the only one to be found in quintana roo in fact as more research is conducted into the region it's become clear that the cave network there is incredibly elaborate some of these underground spaces can even be found beneath thriving urban centers and tourist spots how do we know all this well it's down in part to information compiled by a group known as the quintana roo speleological survey qrss and according to qrss the region is home to slightly more than 400 submerged caves that we're aware of anyway in total this amounts to an astonishing 983 miles worth of subterranean space tens of thousands of years ago the caves in the area were also dry and accessible this meant that early humans would have been able to climb inside and investigate over the millennia however sea levels had gradually risen and ended up submerging the structures naturally putting an end to any further exploration yes around ten thousand to twelve thousand years back human beings are believed to have accessed the caves at quintana roo and they wouldn't have been alone in doing so as there's evidence that large creatures such as giant ground sloth and the saber-toothed cat once traveled through these underground spaces too today of course the caves are uninhabitable and can only be reached through openings in the rock known as sea notes but while it's now more difficult to investigate these natural features discoveries have still been made in the caves over the years among the most significant perhaps was the finding of a female skeleton in 2007 unbelievably these human remains found in a cave called hoyo negro were about 13 000 years of age researchers named the skeleton naya in reference to greek water apparitions called niads and when she died it seemed that naya was only around 15 or 16 years old and 4 foot 11 inches tall now naya's discovery is vital as she's potentially a missing link between early american settlers and today's native american community in other words naya exhibits many genetic similarities to contemporary native american people making her a distant relative of theirs james chatters who headed up a study on naya's genetics suggested as much when speaking to live science in the wake of the discovery explaining the exciting breakthrough that the young woman's remains had provided he revealed naya is a missing link filling in a gap of knowledge we had about the earliest americans and modern native americans the cave where naya was found meanwhile is known as hoyo negro and is part of a network called sac octun an underground labyrinth that snakes through the tropical lands of yucatan peninsula's east chatters elaborated hoyo negro is a more than 100 foot deep bell-shaped water-filled void about the size of a professional basketball arena deep inside a drowned cave system and diver alberto nava has detailed the moment of hoyo negros 2007 discovery he told cbs news we had no idea what we might find when we initially entered the cave which is the allure of cave diving the moment we entered the site we knew it was an incredible place the floor disappeared under us and we could not see across to the other side nava went on we pointed our lights down and to the sides all we could see was darkness we felt as if our powerful underwater lights were being destroyed by this void so we called it black hole a cosmic object that absorbs all light this name in spanish is hoyo negro and as we previously mentioned it wasn't just human beings that entered these caves thousands of years ago evidence of a wide range of sizable creatures has been found here in contemporary times and that's not even mentioning signs of flora too as chatters puts it the cave is a time capsule of climate plant animal and human life at the end of the last ice age experts have theorized though that the creatures found in this cave slipped to their deaths and remained trapped for millennia then over time glaciers around the globe began to melt sea levels rose and the cave became submerged beneath the water along of course with the remains of those unfortunate animals and the discovery of naya made it plain to see that ancient humans enter the caves of guantanamo too why exactly would they have done this well the team at syndac may have gone some way to finding the answer after meacham and devos made an amazing discovery of their own back in early 2017 michael and devos were submerged deep underwater investigating a particular cave known as lamina then after maneuvering through a tough environment of sharp protruding rocks they eventually made it to the tiny entrance of the cavern and the divers likely became the first people to travel inside lamina in roughly ten thousand years but meacham and devos certainly weren't the last people in lamina as edward rinehart a geo archaeologist and diver himself soon followed the pair detailing his own experience of the cave and the larger system within which it sits a place he compared to swiss cheese reinhardt reflected this was a bonanza speaking to the associated press in 2017 reinhardt went on to explain just how dangerous diving through lamina can be we have to be very very careful about not getting lost he stated you've got passages that kind of loop around and interconnect and then branch off and then connect into other systems some of the spaces that divers have to traverse in order to get to lamina can be extremely challenging too while a lot of passages measure up to about 80 feet wide they have ceilings that are less than six and a half feet high other entryways can span just over two feet in width reinhardt said you've really got to basically get on your back and kind of wiggle your way through carefully though reinhardt and meacham and devos before him made it inside lamina this in itself was quite the feat especially given all of the obstacles that stood in their way but what exactly did they find after they'd weave their way through this underwater maze while the cave exhibited signs that ancient humans had been inside long ago tools made of rock littered the site while there was also evidence of fires having been lit there but why had people descended into these caves had they been looking for drinking water or had they perhaps been laying their dead to rest roberto juncko had a potential answer to this conundrum he is the head of mexico's archaeological regulatory organization the underwater archaeology office of the national institute of anthropology and history ina and in july 2020 he put forward arguably the most plausible theory to national geographic junko said now we have really really strong evidence that at least one of the reasons humans went down there was for the mining of ochre junko and his colleagues had good evidence for this belief too as an apparent site of labor had been discovered in amazing condition in lamina and all of the tools and pits for fires at the underwater site suggested that ancient peoples had indeed come there to mine for red ochre back then this pigment was used all over the globe in cave artworks religious practices and as an ingredient of sunscreen the relics at the lamina site certainly impressed brandy mcdonald who is the lead author of a paper about the yucatan peninsula mines speaking to national geographic she said i spent a lot of time imagining the different ways that people in the past have gone about collecting mineral pigments but being able to see it like this in such an interesting state of preservation it just blew me away talking to the same publication meacham also recalled the moment that he and devos first noted all of the man-made features in the cave fred and i immediately just started pointing at all of this stuff he remembered it's not natural and there's nothing that could have done this other than humans these new finds also made more sense of previous discoveries meacham said of previous expeditions we've noticed these strange out-of-place things generally speaking this often meant that rocks were found in places where you wouldn't otherwise expect them to be but now that lamina has all but been confirmed as an ochre mining site researchers can comfortably draw conclusions about other underwater caves in the area and it seems likely that two others were used for the same purposes carbon dating techniques also tell us that all three sites were functional from around ten thousand to twelve thousand years ago it seems probable too that there are more mining sites out there in quintana roo as edward rinehart put it to national geographic it's not just a one-off sort of thing there was an active program to prospect find and extract ochre there will no doubt be more locations and since lamina's discovery a whole host of additional expeditions have yielded samples for scientists to pour over intrepid explorers to the site have also taken photos and footage of the surroundings which will come in useful for creating a 3d rendering of the cave that aside the items found inside lamina paint a picture of ancient peoples with quite sophisticated levels of knowledge charcoal discovered in the mine for example appears to have been selected for its capacity to burn for a long time and we can even see how these humans went about tackling the extraction operation basically it seems that the people removed ochre in lines exhausting a given section until there was no pigment left before moving on to a new segment and as the university of new hampshire's barry rock told national geographic they understood some basic geological principles that weren't really codified or formalized until the mid-1600s but why were these ancient humans going to the trouble of retrieving ochre from lamina well it should be known that they were far from the only folks to have done so as far back as 100 000 years ago people in south africa were using the pigment there's also evidence of its use in france thirty thousand years ago while in spain a nineteen thousand year old female body was also found coated in ochre the pigment has been used for more functional reasons over the years too as a sort of glue for binding twos together for instance it even appears that ochre was a handy repellant against irksome insects yet it's still unclear how the people working in lamina were making use of the substance nevertheless we may know something else about lamina namely that the mexican cave may have been a site of religious significance that theory has been put forward by the university of california merced holly moyes who is an expert on the use of caves for spiritual reasons speaking to national geographic moyes said caves produce all kinds of good and evil they're probably the most sacred natural feature and interestingly the maya civilization of mesoamerica who notably saw caves as spiritual places also made use of ochre moyes added it's something about that red color so although we don't yet understand what the ochre at lamina was used for the discovery has undoubtedly been a stunning one and roberto juncko of the inah is certainly enthusiastic about the possibilities in store he said to national geographic we're super excited here in mexico to be working on this project this is truly one of those moments where there's a big change in the game but divers in south america came across something even more alluring beneath the waves a ship had long been resting on the bottom of the seabed seemingly gone forever along with all of her treasures and judging by the photos that they had snapped researchers were close to making the discovery of a lifetime a research team just off the coast of colombia is awaiting confirmation of a monumental discovery and as the images finally come back from a camera nearly 2000 feet below the surface of the caribbean sea the group finally know that they've found something special yes the holy grail of sunken treasure ships lies beneath them one that hasn't been seen for 300 years welcome to the final resting place of the san jose a few months earlier however the same team consisting of experts from the woods whole oceanographic institute and maritime archaeology consultants had examined the area and come up empty-handed searching for centuries-old shipwrecks isn't easy after all and despite all of the scientists high-tech equipment on that occasion the ocean had refused to give up its secrets undeterred the team then scheduled a second survey for november unfortunately this expedition turned out to be rather more successful but the researchers weren't the first treasure hunters to go looking for this particular wreck in fact more than three decades previously another group believed that it had found the location of the san jose a spanish galleon that had sunk in the 18th century and with her had gone a cargo that was worth a fortune believing that the wreck of the san jose had come to rest off colombia's coast sea search armada had contacted the country's government its 1981 request to salvage the site had been met with a somewhat unenthusiastic response from the south american nations authorities however and years of legal wrangling had followed too thus calling a halt to any further exploration of the area in fact it would be decades before anyone went near the wreck presumably owing in part to the secret nature of her location then the colombian government finally approved a state-sponsored survey of the area and this meant that the galleon as well as her cargo of riches would be seen for the first time in more than 300 years the san jose had originally sailed at a time known today as the age of discovery from the start of the 15th century to the mid-1800s european countries explored the world by ship spurred on by the desire for fresh trading partners nations such as portugal britain and france opened up the globe via its oceans however it was spain that arguably had the greatest success to begin with after all christopher columbus made his famous journey to the americas on behalf of the country and as historians know the legendary explorer made landfall in what is now the bahamas in october 1492. several months after he'd left andalusia he also later ventured to cuba and the coast of central america yet columbus discovered south and central america entirely by accident the navigator was originally destined for india you see but he came across an island called san salvador in the caribbean instead and this mistake ultimately opened up the new world to european explorers with spain soon becoming the area's dominant power in fact over the next 100 years spain took over an enormous chunk of the americas after invading peru and mexico among other places the european country extended its rule from argentina and chile to the south west of today's us and of course building this empire led to the plundering of native resources and the near extinction of many indigenous populations in addition to creating an empire the spanish also funded and successfully completed the first round the world sailing expedition in 1519 under the command of ferdinand magellan five vessels left seville to undertake this quest but more than three years later only one of these ships returned to spain the other four along with most of the crew including magellan never made it back in addition any plunder often gold exotic foods or precious stones unearthed during spain's conquest of the oceans and the americas would subsequently be taken to europe and as it happens the san jose was one of the ships on which this valuable cargo would be transported built in 1698 she sailed at the head of a fleet of 17 treasure vessels and at the turn of the 18th century these ships became all important spanish king charles ii died without an error you see and so he had willed the monarchy to a frenchman philip duke of anjou who was louis xiv's grandson yet other european empires were uncomfortable with the joint french and spain power and this prospect prompted a battle that would encompass much of the known world the conflict in question became known as the war of the spanish succession britain joined the skirmish too fighting against spain and its american territories and it was against this backdrop that the san jose fulfilled her purpose ferrying taxes and treasures from the new world attacks on the fleet weren't unusual at the time though and on one occasion at least they were very effective that moment came in june 1708 when the treasure fleet was journeying from portobello in panama to cartagena colombia laden with cargo including gold silver and emeralds the san jose was leading the way but just 30 miles from the vessel's destination a british contingent intervened and the ensuing battle had tragic consequences for both the spanish and the san jose the conflict later named wager's action lasted more than 12 hours even continuing through the night but while much of the spanish fleet ultimately survived the clash the san jose did not nevertheless the ship didn't actually go down as a result of direct action from the british instead the treasure vessel apparently exploded unexpectantly before the enemy was able to board her then after the san jose had blown up she sank with her entire load tons and tons of precious stones and metals headed for the ocean floor all but 11 of her 600 strong crew were also sent to watery graves and there they stayed undisturbed for 300 years but although the san jose's crew and cargo lay resting on the seabed for centuries they were never forgotten efforts to find the wreck popularly described among treasure hunters as the holy grail of archaeology and the treasure that she holds have continued for decades in fact and in 1981 a group of salvagers believed that they'd discovered the san jose's precise location even so the salvage company sea search armada never got the chance to go down and look for the sunken treasure since the wreck lay in colombia's territorial waters you see the organization needed permission to retrieve her but the request was denied and after that the colombian government created a law that essentially banned access to the san jose and her precious cargo this decision kicked off years of legal wrangling over rights to the wreck in fact sea search armada sued the colombian government on three separate occasions between 1989 and 2015 but in the end the site was designated state property and all the while the san jose's alleged location was kept a strict secret however in 2015 a team of scientists went looking for the san jose and her treasure and this time they had the blessing of the colombians in that year a research vessel called arc malpelo carried archaeologists out to the caribbean sea just off cartagena with a marine submersible in tow this high-tech submersible is called remus 6000 and is capable of seeing things that humans can't and the machine which is operated by a team from massachusetts wood hole oceanographic institute has an amazing history too in 2011 for example its services were called upon to find wreckage of a very different kind as part of a very high profile case on june 1st 2009 the deadliest accident in air france's history occurred off brazil's northeastern coast flight 447 which had been heading to paris from rio de janeiro had had 228 passengers and crew on board however after a series of mechanical and human errors the airbus a330 fell out of the sky and the craft was destroyed when it hit the atlantic with everyone on the plane tragically perishing as a result yet although initial salvage efforts turned up some parts of the craft its black boxes remained elusive these pieces of equipment the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are vital to understanding the last moments of a journey by air and owing to the extremely rough underwater terrain at the plains presumed crash site two years were spent in vain trying to locate the technology [Music] in 2011 though the woods hole team took remus 6000 out to the atlantic to aid in the hunt for the black boxes and in less than a week the submersible sonar technology located a significant amount of debris from flight 447 this discovery then led french authorities directly to the boxes so the submersible has some form when it comes to locating wreckage in hard to reach areas and with that in mind it's perhaps no surprise that the colombian government invited the woods hole team to help hunt for the san jose in fact as woods holes team leader mike purcell said in a press release remus 6000 is the ideal tool for the job since it's capable of conducting long duration missions over wide areas that said woods hole's initial sweep of the area in june 2015 turned into a disappointment not only were the team unable to find anything in relation to the san jose but they also ran out of time during their mission and as a consequence parts of the searched location weren't surveyed at all regardless though this setback didn't put the experts off indeed the research team actually went back to those columbian waters five months later and their determination started to pay dividends in a 2018 press release purcell explained during that expedition we got the first indications of the find from side scan sonar images of the wreck what's more though sonar results showed a debris field that convinced the woods hole team into believing that they'd found the san jose herself or at the very least another incredible discovery purcell revealed from those images we could see strong sonar signals returns so we sent remus back down for a closer look and to collect camera images to get that better view the researchers sent remus 6000 down to almost 2000 feet below the surface with a submersible ultimately coming to rest close to the debris field and the images that the craft sent back were simply astonishing pots weapons and even hundreds of teacups littered the ocean floor yet it was a collection of cannons that really caught the experts eyes i just sat there and smiled woods hole engineer jeff kaley told cbs news of the images he had been alone when the pictures came in i'm not a marine archaeologist but i know what a cannon looks like he went on so in that moment i was the only person in the world who knew we'd found the shipwreck at this point then the woods hole researchers were convinced that they'd found the san jose nonetheless even closer images of the wreck were needed before they could make a final confirmation you see the team knew that the ship's cannons feature intricately engraved details and sure enough when remus 600 got nearer to the wreck it took snaps that showed dolphins had been carved into the weapons proof of these features were all the team needed then to corroborate that they had discovered the site of the long-lost san jose purcell explained with the new images we were able to see new details in the wreckage and the resolution was good enough to make out the decorative carving on the cannons from there the woods hole teams lead roger dooley confirmed the incredible find yes three centuries after the ship had sunk human eyes had once again glimpsed the san jose but while the breakthrough was heralded at the time details about the wrecks artifacts and exactly how they'd been found weren't made public until three years later so why all the secrecy well the scarcity of details about the wreck even now has its roots in a couple of issues the first is the legal wrangling that started up again after the announcement of the discovery upon the find the sea search armada repeated its claim to any loot since it had it claimed originally found the wreck in addition spain which had once owned the galleon in those countries whose wealth she contained may also have a right to claim the valuable artifacts but the second and perhaps most important cause of the information vacuum is the treasure itself and if the cargo indeed comprises untold riches as the log book of san jose's sister ship indicates whoever owns the rack would instantly become obscenely wealthy you see estimates of the value of the sunken silver gold and emeralds top out at a whopping 17 billion dollars yes you read that correctly 17 billion the location of such a precious hall is a secret well worth keeping then indeed as one lawyer told national geographic in 2018 sober people just lose their minds when it comes to treasure but while the ownership wranglings continue the wreck of the san jose is unfortunately off limits to anyone wishing to get their hands on the loot still as the legal arguments can't go on forever what could happen once all said and done well for one the colombian government has pledged to build a new research facility and accompanying museum for the preservation and display of any recovered artifacts that said some believe that raising the san jose and her contents could lead to significant loss in 2018 for instance unesco publicly asked the colombian government to leave the san jose and her cargo exactly where they are this is partly due to the agency's insistence that any commercial gain from the wreck will threaten the cultural significance of the site and there's yet another reason to keep the location pristine as so many of the san jose's crew members died during a battle the wreckage is considered a war grave in 2015 stanford university archaeologist justin leedwanger told cbs news it makes salvage very touchy because one is not supposed to intervene in war graves can you pluck treasures from the sea without disturbing a war grave i doubt you can so while the arguments over the san jose and her bounty continue the wreck herself remains at the bottom of the ocean but one day we just may see the riches to which 18th century spanish royalty once laid claim and then finally we'll know what 17 billion dollars worth of treasure really looks like [Music] you