The result is one of the most unusual aspects of the Hoyo Negro story: the girl at the bottom of the cave is still there.

The skull that faced upward when the divers first saw it in 2007 is still on the floor of the chamber, forty meters below the water’s surface, in the dark.

The bones of the gomphotheres and the giant ground sloths are still scattered around her.

The chamber is still massive and still dark.

The cave water is still cold and still chemically stable enough to continue preserving what the past twelve thousand years have preserved.

She is both found and unfound, in a way.