Underwater caves in Mexico preserve one of the world’s oldest ochre mines

sciencemag.org

49 points·Hooke··8 comments

HN July 4th thread Scuba diver accidentally discovers prehistoric industrial complex in Mexico [1], the original paper [2], and the spectacular underwater footage included in a CBC News video [3] via joachimma [4].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730884

[2] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eaba1219.full

[3] https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1760020035814/

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731910

Would be great if mining industry kept his hands off this place

Thank god global warming flooded it 7000 years ago.

During deglaciation since the Last Glacial Maximum, between about 20,000 to 7,000 years ago (20–7 ka), the sea level rose by a total of about 100 m, at times at extremely high rates, due to the rapid melting of the British-Irish Sea, Fennoscandian, Laurentide, Barents-Kara, Patagonian, Innuitian and parts of the Antarctic ice sheets.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise]

Setting the sea surface to -100m on https://www.floodmap.net/ shows a very different world: walking dry-shod from Ireland to Helsinki.

Very cool website. I had no idea so much of the ocean was so deep. I’d like to see a chart of sea level vs sea area.

There's an xkcd what if that made me realize how deep/shallow the oceans are in various places. https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/

Bonus - what happens to Mars if you dump all the water there: https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/

Not seeing huge demand for ochre or limestone these days...

I think it'll be okay! ;)

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