Explorers Club Presents the Discovery of an Ice Age Ochre Mine Underwater in Mexico with Jill Heinerth

Jill Heinerth will host an Explorers Club presentation on exceptional cave diving and the science team responsible for the discovery of an underwater ice age ochre mine in Mexico on January 11, 2021.

Join us for a fascinating evening learning about underwater caves and ancient ocher deposit mining activity on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Researchers researching the La Mina subterranean site will share their findings on the prehistory of the area, investigating the site’s discovery and record, and using the mineral pigment ocher in Pleistocene-Holocene communities.

More than 10 collections of Paleo-American human remains have been discovered in the flooded caves of the Caribbean coastline of Mexico since the mid-1990s. Research into these remains has shown they are among the Western Hemisphere’s earliest human inhabitants. The discovery of La Mina revealed one explanation in 2017; early Americans mined ocher. (natural clay earth pigment which is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand, used in paints). Since then, a team of experts has carried out comprehensive analysis and documentation to determine the meaning of the site.