A rare and exciting find has been made in the Central American country of Nicaragua. The find is in the form of the skeleton of a woman, which has been dated at 3,900 BCE, making it the oldest human find, so far, in the whole of Central America. This may be due to the fact that skeletal remains in tropical climates tend to deteriorate rapidly.
     This body, however, had been buried in a shell mound, otherwise known as a Kitchen Midden, which comprised mainly of the shells of edible molluscs. This had the effect of lowering the acidity of the soil around the body, thus assisting with the preservation.
     Shell mounds started to appear in the late Mesolithic Era, when coastal diets changed as the larger Pleistocene animals started to disappear. This helped in confirming the antiquity of the remains. The woman was probably aged between 25 and 40 and was approximately 1.5 metres tall, which was about average for Central America at that time.
     What was striking, however, was the size of her forearms. It has been conjectured that this was a product of a life spent mainly rowing, or similar, which probably means that fishing formed a major part of her diet. However, lead researcher Mirjana Roksandic (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Winnipeg in Canada) is quoted as saying "Without further study of the site it will not be possible to ascertain who they were and why the burial was placed there and what is the significance of this particular individual".

Edited from Live Science (2 January 2019)