Neves & al., on the significance of the Lagoa Santa human remains.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

All,

Definitely worth reading. I am particularly impressed by the very cautious/realistic approach taken by the authors when discussing the biogeographical “source” of this (Casa Grande) distinctive, early Holocene population. In other words, they fell no need to rely on fortuitous, very ancient navigational capabilities and still seem to consider Beringia as the most likely passageway between somewhere in Asia and the New World. On the other hand, I think that the author's appreciation of the archaeological record -- which forms the basis of their "chronology" -- leaves something to be desired.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

Neves, Walter A., Rolando González-José, Mark Hubbe, Renato Kipnis, Astolfo G.M. Araujo, and Oldemar Blasi. 2004. Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Cerca Grande, Lagoa Santa, Central Brazil, and the origins of the first Americans. World Archaeology 36(4): 479 – 501.

Abstract:
We present the results of comparative multivariate morphological analyses based on nine skulls from Cerca Grande. The site is in the Lagoa Santa karst in Central Brazil, a key area for understanding the peopling of the Americas. The region has several archaeological sites with excellent preservation of late Pleistocene and early Holocene material culture and human skeletal remains. Stratigraphic association and direct dating of the Cerca Grande human skeletons place them definitely in the Early Holocene (c. 9000 bp uncalibrated). Principal components analysis and Mahalanobis distances reveal that these skeletons have no morphological affinities with present-day Native Americans or East Asians. These results agree with other studies and suggest that the skeletons may derive from a wave of migrants that entered the New World before the characteristic 'Mongoloid' morphology spread throughout East Asia.

Keywords:
Peopling of the Americas, Paleoamericans, Paleoindian morphology, skeletal multivariate analyses

Here is also the last paragraph of their conclusion:

To conclude, the studies of ancient human specimens so far carried out in South and North America are producing ‘an emerging consensus that different populations were involved in the early peopling of [the Americas]’ (Jantz and Owsley 2001:152). This scenario can easily be accommodated retaining Beringia as the main route into the New World, since it is already well recognized that late Pleistocene (and maybe early Holocene) Asians were very different in their cranial morphology from recent Asians, as shown by the Upper Cave and Liujiang specimens from China (Howells 1995; Kamminga and Wright 1988; Wright 1995; Neves and Pucciarelli 1998) and the Gua Gunung skeleton from Malaysia (Matsumura and Zuraina 1999). We concur with Jantz and Owsley (2001) that the appearance of the morphological pattern often termed ‘Mongoloid’ in Asia seems to be a recent phenomenon, and the expansion of people with this cranial morphology after the adoption of agriculture may have resulted in the replacement of much of the earlier variation present in that part of the world. To conclude, the studies of ancient human specimens so far carried out in South and North America are producing ‘an emerging consensus that di•erent populations were involved in the early peopling of [the Americas]’ (Jantz and Owsley 2001:152). This scenario can easily be accommodated retaining Beringia as the main route into the New World, since it is already well recognized that late Pleistocene (and maybe early Holocene) Asians were very different in their cranial morphology from recent Asians, as shown by the Upper Cave and Liujiang specimens from China (Howells 1995; Kamminga and Wright 1988; Wright 1995; Neves and Pucciarelli 1998) and the Gua Gunung skeleton from Malaysia (Matsumura and Zuraina 1999). We concur with Jantz and Owsley (2001) that the appearance of the morphological pattern often termed ‘Mongoloid’ in Asia seems to be a recent phenomenon, and the expansion of people with this cranial morphology after the adoption of agriculture may have resulted in the replacement of much of the earlier variation present in that part of the world.

[AWSX]

From  pg 481:
"The associated lithic industry supports an Early Holocene date. It is composed predominately of quartz crystal flakes, of which only a few exhibit a deliberately fabricated form or retouched edges. These include a few barbed arrow points, square stemmed arrow points, endscrapers, semi-lunar scrapers or 'spokeshaves',  triangular scrapers and ovoid scrapers."

One wonders if they truly meant arrows as in 'bow and arrow', if so, at 10,000 calybp,  it would be the earliest appearance in the Americas.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

From  pg 481:
"The associated lithic industry supports an Early Holocene date. It is composed predominately of quartz crystal flakes, of which only a few exhibit a deliberately fabricated form or retouched edges. These include a few barbed arrow points, square stemmed arrow points, endscrapers, semi-lunar scrapers or 'spokeshaves',  triangular scrapers and ovoid scrapers."

One wonders if they truly meant arrows as in 'bow and arrow', if so, at 10,000 calybp,  it would be the earliest appearance in the Americas.

You’re right. I had missed this when I first read -- obviously too quickly -- the paper. In the references provided by Neves & al., the best, visual example of what they (you) are talking about can be found in:

Prous, A. and E. Fogaça 1999. Archaeology of the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in Brazil. Quaternary International 53–4: 21–41.

Assuming that the barely readable scale found in the attached image (Fig. 3 of Prous & Fogaça 1999) corresponds to 3 cm (and I think it does) the smallest of the points -- which seems to miss a segment of its base (third row down), would be a bit over 6 cm in length. In other words, all these objects fall in the range one would expect for projectile points used for javelins or atlatl darts.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Robert Henvell]

A copy of Neves et al paper would help the scribes research.Where does one find it on the internet?

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

A copy of Neves et al paper would help the scribes research.Where does one find it on the internet?

In normal circumstances, you should be able to find it HERE! But ...

Jacques

[Robert Henvell]

  Neves et al have established that a sizeable community of
people with variable cranial morphological affinities to some Africans,Australians and Rapanui Islanders lived in the Lagoa Santa area as late as circa 7000bce.

 Some of the Olmec heads have negroid features,which has influenced a number of authors to theorize that immigrants from Africa crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the second millennium bce.There may [??] have been a relict population of people,with similar characteristics to "Luzia" in the Olmec lands or is the time hiatus probably too great for this to be a reasonable alternative??

[Daryl Habel]

  Neves et al have established that a sizeable community of
people with variable cranial morphological affinities to some Africans,Australians and Rapanui Islanders lived in the Lagoa Santa area as late as circa 7000bce.

Neves hypothesizes that this population, in which he sees affinities with African and southeast Asian cranial morphology, arrived via an Asian route at an earlier time before Mongoloid cranial morphology existed in eastern Asia.  In other words, Neves is not hypothesizing a direct African crossing to the Americas.

Some of the Olmec heads have negroid features,which has influenced a number of authors to theorize that immigrants from Africa crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the second millennium bce.

This issue has repeatedly come up on various fora over a period of many years.  In my opinion, some people have an overactive perceptive imagination, seeing resemblances that do not exist.  In any case, this question, being in the timeframe of 2000 BC, does not fall into the realm of paleoanthropological discussion allowed here.

There may [??] have been a relict population of people,with similar characteristics to "Luzia" in the Olmec lands or is the time hiatus probably too great for this to be a reasonable alternative??

Evidence?  I haven't seen it.

Only my opinion, of course,
Dar

[Robert Henvell]

  My apologies for the transgression.It should have been posted in the prehistory segment.Possibly this query will be more acceptable.Has anyone sighted cranial morphological analyses or related studies of any Palaeoindian remains with Lagoa Santa type characteristics that post date 7000bce [9Ka,cal]?

[Daryl Habel]

  My apologies for the transgression.It should have been posted in the prehistory segment.Possibly this query will be more acceptable.Has anyone sighted cranial morphological analyses or related studies of any Palaeoindian remains with Lagoa Santa type characteristics that post date 7000bce [9Ka,cal]?

You might look into:

CLICK HERE

I have a print copy of this article and some additional information on the pericu skulls.  I'll convert to a pdf and send it to you.

If there are others (post-7000 bce), and possibly there are, I don't have any information on them.

Dar

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Neves et al have established that a sizeable community of
people with variable cranial morphological affinities to some Africans,Australians and Rapanui Islanders lived in the Lagoa Santa area as late as circa 7000bce.

 Some of the Olmec heads have negroid features,which has influenced a number of authors to theorize that immigrants from Africa crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the second millennium bce.There may [??] have been a relict population of people,with similar characteristics to "Luzia" in the Olmec lands or is the time hiatus probably too great for this to be a reasonable alternative??

Well, Dar beat me to it, but since it was already written ...

If I were you, I would leave out the Olmec=African equation out of this discussion. It is a pretty messed up scene, characteristically filled with a lot of pseudo-scientific garbage. A quick Google search (e.g.:  Olmec and Africa, Olmec skeletal remains, etc.) will either allow you to understand why or, perhaps more likely, leave you thoroughly confused. You should stick with the more (scientifically) formal statements that are being made by the likes of Neves & al. and others (see below), on the likely biological “identity” and (point of) origin(s) of the earliest inhabitants of the New World.

One thing that has come out of this ongoing research, in both biological anthropology and archaeology and carried out on material from both South and North America is that, unquestionably, the traditional, very Late Pleistocene, Northern Asian Mongoloid => New World “Palaeoindian” sequence does not hold water anymore, when it come to explaining the earliest human dispersal(s) in both North and South America.

All in all,  then I agree with Dar’s earlier response … but for a minor point which has to do with your question concerning the possibility of “relict population”. It just happens that such (a now extinct group called the Pericues) has recently been reported, from Baja California, by Gonzalez-José & al. 2004 (see ref.).

The next step will be for someone to carry out a formal analysis of some well-documented Olmec cranial material and, to the misdirected pleasure of many, demonstrate that they, also, belonged to a somewhat similar “relict” population!

Gonzalez-José, Rolando, Antonio Gonzalez-Martın, Miquel Hernandez, Héctor M. Pucciarelli, Marina Sardi, Alfonso Rosales, and Silvina Van der Molen. 2004. Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California. Nature 425: 62-65.

Abstract:
A current issue on the settlement of the Americas refers to the lack of morphological affinities between early Holocene human remains (Palaeoamericans) and modern Amerindian groups, as well as the degree of contribution of the former to the gene pool of the latter1–6. A different origin for Palaeoamericans and Amerindians is invoked to explain such a phenomenon3. Under this hypothesis, the origin of Palaeoamericans must be traced back to a common ancestor for Palaeoamericans and Australians, which departed from somewhere in southern Asia and arrived in the Australian continent and the Americas around 40,000 and 12,000 years before present, respectively. Most modern Amerindians are believed to be part of a second, morphologically differentiated migration3. Here we present evidence of a modern Amerindian group from the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico, showing clearer affinities with Palaeoamerican remains than with modern Amerindians. Climatic changes during the Middle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolation from the continent, restricting the gene flowof the original group with northern populations, which resulted in the temporal continuity of the Palaeoamerican morphological pattern to the present.

Jantz, R.L. and Douglas W. Owsley. 2001. Variation Among Early North American Crania. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114:146–155.

Abstract:
The limited morphometric work on early American crania to date has treated them as a single, temporally defined group. This paper addresses the question of whether there is significant variability among ancient American crania. A sample of 11 crania (Spirit Cave, Wizards Beach, Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, Prospect, Wet Gravel male, Wet Gravel female, Medicine Crow, Turin, Lime Creek, and Swanson Lake) dating from the early to mid Holocene was available. Some have recent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates, while others are dated geologically or archaeologically. All are in excess of 4500 BP, and most are 7000 BP or older. Measurements follow the definitions of Howells [(1973) Cranial variation in man, Cambridge: Harvard University). Some crania are incomplete, but 22 measurements were common to all fossils. Cranial variation was examined by calculating the Mahalanobis distance between each pair of fossils, using a pooled within sample covariance matrix estimated from the data of Howells. The distance relationships among crania suggest the presence of at least three distinct groups: 1) a middle Archaic Plains group (Turin and Medicine Crow), 2) a Paleo/Early Archaic Great Lakes/Plains group (Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, Lime Creek), and 3) a spatially and temporally heterogeneous group that includes the Great Basin/Pacific Coast (Spirit Cave, Wizards Beach, Prospect) and Nebraska (Wet Gravel specimens and Swanson Lake).

These crania were also compared to Howells’ worldwide recent sample, which was expanded by including six additional American Indian samples. None of the fossils, except for the Wet Gravel male, shows any particular affinity to recent Native Americans; their greatest similarities are with Europe, Polynesia, or East Asia. Several crania would be atypical in any recent population for which we have data. Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, and Lime Creek are the most distinctive. They provide evidence for the presence of an early population that bears no similarity to the morphometric pattern of recent American Indians or even to crania of comparable date in other regions of the continent.

The heterogeneity among early American crania makes it inadvisable to pool them for purposes of morphometric analysis. Whether this heterogeneity results from different early migrations or one highly differentiated population cannot be established from our data. Our results are inconsistent with hypotheses of an ancestor-descendent relationship between early and late Holocene American populations. They suggest that the pattern of cranial variation is of recent origin, at least in the Plains region.

Powell, Joseph F. and Walter A. Neves. 1999. Craniofacial Morphology of the First Americans: Pattern and Process in the Peopling of the New World. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 42: 158-188.

Abstract:
The peopling of the NewWorld has been the focus of anthropological attention since the last century. Proponents of multiple migration models have claimed that patterns of variation among extant New World populations reflect ancient, discrete migrations to the Americas during the terminal Pleistocene. Although multiple migration models appear to explain patterns of both past and present craniometric variation, this interpretation rests on a number of key assumptions that require further investigation. We examined a series of Paleoindian (n 5 11) and Archaic (n 5 384) crania from North and South America, and compare these early samples to a large worldwide sample of late Holocene (n 5 6,742) remains to assess within- and among-group variability in early samples, and to determine how patterns of variation could be viewed as a reflection of both population history and population structure. Analyses included univariate and multivariate analysis of variance, principal component analysis, calculation of biological distances, and multivariate allocation methods. We also performed model-bound analyses of these data, including Relethford-Blangero analysis and calculation of FST. Our results indicate that under the assumptions of migration/founder models, the data are consistent with Paleoindians having derived from an undifferentiated Asian population that was not ancestral to modern American Indians. This view can be accommodated into existing models of multiple founders (migrations) in the New World. However, the assumptions required for such an interpretation are not realistic, and the diversity of early populations could as easily reflect population structuring processes such as genetic drift, demographic growth, and other phenomena. When the data were analyzed controlling for the effects of genetic drift (i.e., with smaller long-term effective population sizes for Paleoindians), the Paleoindian samples were no longer distinct from modern Native American populations. Other factors that need to be considered include processes involved in craniofacial change and adaptation during the past 10,000 years. Finally, patterns of variation in the North and South American Paleoindian samples are different, suggesting that the process of New World colonization is more complex than previously assumed.

Key words:
Paleoindians; craniometrics; peopling of the Americas; ancient population structure; multivariate analysis

Jacques Cinq-Mars

PS See also:

Neves, Walter Alves,  André Prous, Rolando González-José, Renato Kipnis, and Joseph Powell. 2003. Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Santana do Riacho, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World. Journal of Human Evolution 45(1): 759-782.

… previously  mentioned HERE

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Bob, Dar, and others,

Here is complementary information that should have been mentioned in my earlier post. It pertains to the chronologically and morphologically very pertinent "Peñon Woman III” (& al.). The articles listed below consists of various releases (mostly press) on finds that were first reported in 2002. You should be able to find quite a bit more (of the same!) by looking up “Peñon Woman III” on Google. To my knowledge, a more formal “definitive” report has yet to be made available.

Enjoy,

Jacques

Human skulls are 'oldest Americans'
BBC News - Tuesday, 3 December, 2002, 15:22 GMT

Tests on skulls found in Mexico suggest they are almost 13,000 years old - and shed fresh light on how humans colonised the Americas
The human skulls are the oldest tested so far from the continent, and their shape is set to inflame further a controversy over native American burial rights.

Click HERE for the full article.

Scientist: Oldest American skull found

By Jeordan Legon
CNN Wednesday, December 4, 2002 Posted: 7:56 AM EST (1256 GMT)

(CNN) -- Researchers said it may be the oldest skull ever found in the Americas: an elongated-faced woman who died about 13,000 years ago.

But perhaps more significant than the age, researchers said, is that the skull and other bones were found while a well was being dug near Mexico City International Airport. Because the remains were discovered outside the United States, scientists will be able to study the DNA and structure of the skeleton without the objection of Native American groups, who can claim and rebury ancestral remains under a 1990 U.S. law.

"Here Mexico is providing the opportunity to see what clues these bones can yield about man's arrival in the American continent," Mexican anthropologist Jose Concepcion Jimenez Lopez said.

Click HERE for full access.

Does skull prove that the first Americans came from Europe?

By Steve Connor Science Editor
03 December 2002

Scientists in Britain have identified the oldest skeleton ever found on the American continent in a discovery that raises fresh questions about the accepted theory of how the first people arrived in the New World. The skeleton's perfectly preserved skull belonged to a 26-year-old woman who died during the last ice age on the edge of a giant prehistoric lake which once formed around an area now occupied by the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City.

Scientists from Liverpool's John Moores University and Oxford's Research Laboratory of Archaeology have dated the skull to about 13,000 years old, making it 2,000 years older than the previous record for the continent's oldest human remains. However, the most intriguing aspect of the skull is that it is long and narrow and typically Caucasian in appearance, like the heads of white, western Europeans today. Modern-day native Americans, however, have short, wide skulls that are typical of their Mongoloid ancestors who are known to have crossed into America from Asia on an ice-age land bridge that had formed across the Bering Strait.

Click HERE for the full text.

The following item is presented in full because the original URL -- from the Sidney Morning Herald (smh.com.au), if I recall correctly -- keeps giving me an “error” message of sorts.

 

Did the first Americans come from Australia?
September 7, 2004.

Anthropologists stepped into a hornets' nest yesterday, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of the Americas may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia.

The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today's native Americans, who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first.

But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.

"This is very contentious," Gonzalez, a Mexican, said with a smile at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

"They [native Americans] cannot claim to have been the first people there."

She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America.

Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans.
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One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the oldest accurately dated native American skull was only about 9000 years old.

"We have extracted her DNA. It is going to be a bomb," she said, declining to give details but adding that the tests carried out so far were being replicated to make sure they were accurate.

She said there were tales from Spanish missionaries of an isolated coastal community of long-face people in Baja California of a completely different race and rituals from other communities in America at the time.

These last survivors were wiped out by diseases imported by the Spanish conquerors, Gonzalez said.

The research is one of 11 different projects in America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East being funded over a four-year period by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council.

The projects, focusing on diet, dating and dispersal of people down the millennia in the face of climate change, aim to rewrite anthropology.

"We want to make headlines from heads," said Professor Clive Gamble of Southampton university. "DNA will give us a completely new map of the world and how we peopled it."

September 7, 2004  A new anthropological study of skeletons from Mexico is helping to resolve one of the most inflammatory questions in human migration.

Site Editor Ted Nield writes: New research is showing that the modern people now referred to as Native Americans were not in fact the first people to have colonised the Americas.  Studies of ancient skull shape - soon to be reinforced by new DNA data - suggest that the first immigrants arrived towards the end of the last Ice Age from Australia/Polynesia by island-hopping clockwise around the Pacific.  Modern Native Americans probably derive from a later wave that arrived by land from central Asia.  The findings, from the first year of a new £2m, three-year NERC research project (see below), were presented to the British Association today.

There are fewer more contentious problems in human evolution than how the Americas were first colonised. Most early sites where human remains and cultures have been found date to the latest Pleistocene, which in North America reflects the expansion of the Clovis archaeological culture around 13,500 years ago. However the earliest accepted date of human settlement in the Americas comes from the other end of the continent, in Southern Chile (Monte Verde) dated to at 14,500 years ago.  This is a problem because the material culture found there is very different from that of North American Clovis sites.

Click HERE for the full text.

First Americans May Have Come From Australia
By David Epstein
DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 01 - January 2005 - Anthropology

The first time she saw it four years ago in a museum, Silvia Gonzalez knew there was something special about the skull found in Mexico City in 1959. Known as Peñon Woman III, it was long and narrow, not round and broad cheeked like the usual skulls of prehistoric Native Americans. “It looked so incredibly different,” Gonzalez says. “Physically, it was very pleasing to the eye.”

So Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist, and her colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University in England radiocarbon-dated the skull and found its beauty was more than bone deep. Surprisingly, the analysis showed Peñon Woman III is 12,755 years old, older than any known ancestor of modern Native Americans.

Click HERE.

[anthrostudies]

The next step will be for someone to carry out a formal analysis of some well-documented Olmec cranial material and, to the misdirected pleasure of many, demonstrate that they, also, belonged to a somewhat similar “relict” population!

I was surprised to see a picture on the internet of a Tzotzil Indian from Central America, who does not look Mongoloid, which is originally from a book caled Ancient Maya by Robert Sharer. I suppose that his type is likely to be close to that of the Paleolithic inhabitants of this region. I hope this picture is interesting, but I dont know exactly the relationship between the Tzotzils and the Olmec culture.

[Robert Henvell]

Thank you for posting the photograph.It certainly resembles the Olmec stone faces.Hopefully someone will conduct a cranial morpholgical study of early Olmec remains in the not too distant future.