It is the remains of a 20-year-old woman known as the Crystal Maiden. Her headlamp illuminates a human skeleton lying on its back, its mouth jarred open, its ribs covered in glittering calcite. “There she is,” she says, as though greeting an old friend. We climb a ladder to a small chamber tucked away high above the cave floor. Scattered among them are small obsidian tools, stone figurines and mirrors made of pyrite. Spread over the ground are hundreds of ancient orange and black ceramic pots, some as large as beach balls. Underwater, tiny fish nibble at our legs.Ī quarter-mile deep in the cave, Moyes hoists herself onto a slippery ledge and leads me into a large chamber. In the vast and echoing hall, our headlamp beams are like pinpoints in the pitch-black darkness. She is 5 feet 4 inches tall, and the water reaches up to her chin, leaving a ripple in her wake as she moves deeper into the chamber. Beneath this light shower, I wade up the river with University of California, Merced, archaeologist Holley Moyes. Water falls lightly from the tips of stalactites into the river flowing through the cave. Inside Actun Tunichil Muknal, a giant limestone cave in the jungle of western Belize, it has been raining for thousands of years.
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