Study by 72 researchers from eight countries concludes that the Lagoa Santa people are descendants of Clovis culture migrants from North America Distinctly African features attributed to Luzia were wrong (images: André Strauss and Caroline Wilkinson) Distinctly African features attributed to Luzia were wrong By Peter Moon  |  Agência FAPESP – The history of the peopling of the Americas has just been interpreted afresh The largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted on the basis of fossil DNA extracted from ancient human remains found on the continent has confirmed the existence of a single ancestral population for all Amerindian ethnic groups Over 17,000 years ago this original contingent crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska and began peopling the New World Fossil DNA shows an affinity between this migratory current and the populations of Siberia and northern China Contrary to the traditional theory it had no link to Africa or Australasia The new study also reveals that once they had settled in North America the descendants of this ancestral migratory flow diversified into two lineages some 16,000 years ago The members of one lineage crossed the Isthmus of Panama and peopled South America in three distinct consecutive waves The first wave occurred between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago The second took place at most 9,000 years ago There are fossil DNA records from both migrations throughout South America The third wave is much more recent but its influence is limited as it occurred 4,200 years ago An article on the study has just been published in the journal Cell a group of 72 researchers from eight countries affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany the lineage that made the north-south journey between 16,000 and 15,000 years ago belonged to the Clovis culture named for a group of archeological sites excavated in the western US and dating from 13,500-11,000 years ago The Clovis culture was so named when flint spearheads were found in the 1930s at a dig in Clovis Clovis sites have been identified throughout the US In North America the Clovis people hunted Pleistocene megafauna such as giant sloth and mammoth With the decline of the megafauna and its extinction 11,000 years ago bands of hunter-gatherers had traveled south to explore new hunting grounds as evidenced by 9,400-year-old human fossil DNA found in Belize and analyzed in the new study Clovis hunter-gatherers crossed the Isthmus of Panama and spread into South America as evidenced by genetic records from burial sites in Brazil and Chile revealed now This genetic evidence corroborates well-known archeological finds such as the Monte Verde site in southern Chile where humans butchered mastodons 14,800 years ago the only burial site associated with Clovis tools is in Montana where the remains of a baby boy (Anzick-1) were found and dated to 12,600 years ago DNA extracted from these bones has links to DNA from skeletons of people who lived between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago in caves near Lagoa Santa the Lagoa Santa people were partial descendants of Clovis migrants from North America “From the genetic standpoint, the Lagoa Santa people are descendants of the first Amerindians,” said archeologist André Menezes Strauss who coordinated the Brazilian part of the study Strauss is affiliated with the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) the members of this first lineage of South Americans left no identifiable descendants among today’s Amerindians,” he said “Some 9,000 years ago their DNA disappears completely from the fossil samples and is replaced by DNA from the first migratory wave All living Amerindians are descendants of this first wave We don’t yet know why the genetic stock of the Lagoa Santa people disappeared.”  One possible reason for the disappearance of DNA from the second migration is that it was diluted in the DNA of the Amerindians who are descendants of the first wave and cannot be identified by existing methods of genetic analysis According to Tábita Hünemeier a geneticist at the University of São Paulo’s Bioscience Institute (IB-USP) who took part in the research “one of the main results of the study was the identification of Luzia’s people as genetically related to the Clovis culture which dismantles the idea of two biological components and the possibility that there were two migrations to the Americas one with African traits and the other with Asian traits” “Luzia’s people must have resulted from a migratory wave originating in Beringia,” she said referring to the now-submerged Bering land bridge that joined Siberia to Alaska during the glaciations “The molecular data suggests population substitution in South America since 9,000 years ago Luzia’s people disappeared and were replaced by the Amerindians alive today although both had a common origin in Beringia,” Hünemeier said The Brazilian researchers’ contribution to the study was fundamental Among the 49 individuals from which fossil DNA was taken seven skeletons dated to between 10,100 and 9,100 years ago came from Lapa do Santo The seven skeletons, alongside dozens of others, were found and exhumed in successive archeological campaigns at the site, led initially by Walter Alves Neves, a physical anthropologist at IB-USP, and since 2011 by Strauss. The archeological campaigns led by Neves between 2002 and 2008 were funded by FAPESP Altogether the new study investigated fossil DNA from 49 individuals found at 15 archeological sites in Argentina (two sites 11 individuals dated to between 8,900 and 6,600 years ago) three individuals dated to between 9,400 and 7,300 years ago) 15 individuals dated to between 10,100 and 1,000 years ago) five individuals dated to between 11,100 and 540 years ago) and Peru (seven sites 15 individuals dated to between 10,100 and 730 years ago) The Brazilian skeletons come from the archeological sites Lapa do Santo (seven individuals dated to about 9,600 years ago) Jabuticabeira II in Santa Catarina State (a sambaqui or shell midden with five individuals dated to about 2,000 years ago) as well as from two river middens in the Ribeira Valley São Paulo State: Laranjal (two individuals dated to about 6,700 years ago) and Moraes (one individual dated to about 5,800 years ago) Paulo Antônio Dantas de Blasis, an archeologist affiliated with MAE-USP, led the dig at Jabuticabeira II, which was also supported by FAPESP through a Thematic Project The digs at the river midden sites in São Paulo State were led by Levy Figuti, also an archeologist at MAE-USP, and were also supported by FAPESP “The Moraes skeleton (5,800 years old) and the Laranjal skeleton (6,700 years old) are among the most ancient from the South and Southeast of Brazil,” Figuti said “These locations are strategically unique because they’re between the highlands of the Atlantic plateau and the coastal plain contributing significantly to our understanding of how the Southeast of Brazil was peopled.”  These skeletons were found between 2000 and 2005 From the start they presented a complex mixture of coastal and inland cultural traits and the results of their analysis generally varied except in the case of one skeleton diagnosed as Paleoindian (analysis of its DNA is not yet complete) “The study that’s just been published represents a major step forward in archeological research exponentially increasing what we knew until only a few years ago about the archeogenetics of the peopling of the Americas,” Figuti said Hünemeier has also recently made a significant contribution to the reconstruction of human history in South America using paleogenomics Not all the human remains found at some of the most ancient archeological sites in Central and South America belonged to genetic descendants of the Clovis culture The inhabitants of several sites did not have Clovis-associated DNA “This shows that besides its genetic contribution the second migration wave to South America may also have brought with it technological principles that would be expressed in the famous fishtail points that are found in many parts of South America,” Strauss said How many human migrations from Asia came to the Americas at the end of the Ice Age more than 16,000 years ago was hitherto unknown formulated in the 1980s by Neves and other researchers was that the first wave had African traits or traits similar to those of the Australian Aboriginals The well-known forensic facial reconstruction of Luzia was performed in accordance with this theory Luzia is the name given to the fossil skull of a woman who lived in the Lagoa Santa region 12,500 years ago and is sometimes referred to as the “first Brazilian” The bust of Luzia with African features was built on the basis of the skull’s morphology by British anatomical artist Richard Neave in the 1990s skull shape isn’t a reliable marker of ancestrality or geographic origin Genetics is the best basis for this type of inference,” Strauss explained “The genetic results of the new study show categorically that there was no significant connection between the Lagoa Santa people and groups from Africa or Australia So the hypothesis that Luzia’s people derived from a migratory wave prior to the ancestors of today’s Amerindians has been disproved the DNA shows that Luzia’s people were entirely Amerindian.”  A new bust has replaced Luzia in the Brazilian scientific pantheon a forensic anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and a disciple of Neave has produced a facial reconstruction of one of the individuals exhumed at Lapa do Santo The reconstruction was based on a retrodeformed digital model of the skull “Accustomed as we are to the traditional facial reconstruction of Luzia with strongly African features this new facial reconstruction reflects the physiognomy of the first inhabitants of Brazil far more accurately displaying the generalized and indistinct features from which the great Amerindian diversity was established over thousands of years,” Strauss said also presents the first genetic data on Brazilian coastal sambaquis “These monumental shell mounds were built some 2,000 years ago by populous societies that lived on the coast of Brazil Analysis of fossil DNA from shell mound burials in Santa Catarina and São Paulo shows these groups were genetically akin to the Amerindians alive today in the South of Brazil DNA extraction from fossils is technically very challenging especially if the material was found at a site with a tropical climate For almost two decades extreme fragmentation and significant contamination prevented different research groups from successfully extracting genetic material from the bones found at Lagoa Santa This has now been done thanks to methodological advances developed by the Max Planck Institute “Construction of Brazil’s first archeogenetic laboratory is scheduled to begin in 2019 thanks to a partnership between the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE) and its Bioscience Institute (IB) with funding from FAPESP it will give a new thrust to research on the peopling of South America and Brazil,” Strauss said “To some extent this study not only changes what we know about how the region was peopled but also changes considerably how we study human skeletal remains,” Figuti said Human remains were first found in Lagoa Santa in 1844 when Danish naturalist Peter Wilhelm Lund (1801-1880) discovered some 30 skeletons deep in a flooded cave Almost all these fossils are now at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen It was donated by Lund to the Brazilian History and Geography Institute in Rio de Janeiro On the same day as the Cell article was published (November 8, 2018), a paper in the journal Science also reported new findings on fossil DNA from the first migrants to the Americas Among the 15 ancient skeletons from which genetic material was taken five belong to the Lund Collection in Copenhagen They date from between 10,400 and 9,800 years ago alongside an individual from Nevada estimated to be 10,700 years old The sample comprised fossilized human remains from Alaska The results of its molecular analysis suggested the peopling of the Americas by the first human groups out of Alaska did not come about merely through gradual occupation of territory concomitantly with population growth According to the researchers responsible for the study the molecular data suggests that the first humans to invade Alaska This happened between 17,500 and 14,600 years ago One group colonized North and Central America The peopling of the Americas ensued by leaps and bounds as small bands of hunter-gatherers traveled far and wide to settle in new areas until they reached Tierra del Fuego in a movement lasting one or at most two millennia Among the 15 individuals whose DNA was analyzed three of the Lagoa Santa five were found to have some genetic material from Australasia as suggested by the theory proposed by Neves for the occupation of South America The researchers are unable to explain the origin of this Australasian DNA or how it ended up in only a few of the Lagoa Santa people “The fact that the genomic signature of Australasia has been present for 10,400 years in Brazil but is absent in all the genomes tested to date is a challenge considering its presence in Lagoa Santa,” they said Other fossils collected during the twentieth century include the Luzia skull Almost 100 skulls excavated by Neves and Strauss in the past 15 years are now held at USP A similar number of fossils are held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC-MG) But the vast majority of these osteological and archeological treasures belonging to perhaps more than 100 individuals were deposited at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and were presumably destroyed in the fire that raged through this historic building on September 2 The Luzia skull was on display at the National Museum alongside Neave’s facial reconstruction Scientists feared it had been lost to the fire but fortunately it was one of the first objects to be recovered from the ruins The fire destroyed the original facial reconstruction (of which there are several copies) The article “Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America” (Posth et al.) can be retrieved from Cell at cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31380-1 Brazilian archeologists have discovered an ancient rock carving they say is at least 10,000 years old making it the oldest human carving in the Americas detailed in an article in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE opens the controversial debate over when and how humans populated the Americas The 30 centimeter (12 inches) carving is of a man with a "C" shaped head three fingers per hand and an oversized phallus an archeologist with the Universidad de Sao Paulo and a member of the team that made the discovery The ancient work of art was found in 2009 at Lagoa Santa in central Brazil some 60 kilometers (35 miles) from Belo Horizonte "We can confidently state that the petroglyph is older than 10,500 years which means that this pecked figure could be the oldest figurative petroglyph ever found in the New World," the authors The experts based their claim on carbon dating the sediment covering the carving The most widely accepted theory is that humans crossed the frozen Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska some 11,000 years ago and gradually spread south best known as "Clovis First," states that the Clovis people from western north America were the first humans to arrive in the continent some 11,500 years ago "We have proven a very early human occupation of the American continent Some 11,000 years ago there was already great symbolic diversity in the continent," he told local media REVEAL  DNA analyses of these skulls and bone fragments from Lagoa Santa and other ancient remains from North and South America are helping scientists learn more about the peopling of the Americas REVEAL  DNA analyses of these skulls and bone fragments from Lagoa Santa By Tina Hesman Saey DNA from a 9,000-year-old baby tooth from Alaska the oldest natural mummy in North America and remains of ancient Brazilians is helping researchers trace the steps of ancient people as they settled the Americas Two new studies give a more detailed and complicated picture of the peopling of the Americas than ever before presented People from North America moved into South America in at least three migration waves, researchers report online November 8 in Cell. The first migrants, who reached South America by at least 11,000 years ago, were genetically related to a 12,600-year-old toddler from Montana known as Anzick-1 (SN: 3/22/14 The child’s skeleton was found with artifacts from the Clovis people who researchers used to think were the first people in the Americas although that idea has fallen out of favor Scientists also previously thought these were the only ancient migrants to South America We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday By subscribing, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.  You must be 13 or older to sign up For full digital access, consider a $2.99 per month subscription But DNA analysis of samples from 49 ancient people suggests a second wave of settlers replaced the Clovis group in South America about 9,000 years ago And a third group related to ancient people from California’s Channel Islands spread over the Central Andes about 4,200 years ago geneticist Nathan Nakatsuka of Harvard University and colleagues found Early Americans moved into prehistoric South America in at least three migratory waves Ancestral people who crossed from Siberia into Alaska first gave rise to groups that settled North America (gray arrows) The first wave of North Americans (blue) were related to Clovis people represented by a 12,600-year-old toddler from Montana called Anzick-1 They moved into South America at least 11,000 years ago followed by a second wave (green) whose descendants contributed most of the indigenous ancestry among South Americans today A third migration wave (yellow) from a group that lived near California’s Channel Island moved into the Central Andes about 4,200 years ago Dotted areas indicate that people there today still have that genetic ancestry People who settled the Americas were also much more genetically diverse than previously thought. At least one group of ancient Brazilians shared DNA with modern indigenous Australians a different group of researchers reports online November 8 in Science but distinct groups of people came into the Americas and spread quickly and unevenly across the continents a geneticist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and a coauthor of the Science study “People were spreading like a fire across the landscape and very quickly adapted to the different environments they were encountering.” Origin examines what genetics and archaeology including stone tools such as these Clovis spearpoints reveal about how people settled the Americas tens of thousands of years ago The book also takes a hard look at how geneticists can overcome unethical practices and collaborate with Native American tribes Ancestors of the people who built massive statues on Easter Island possessed ancestry acquired from South Americans around 800 years ago Archaeologists have unearthed what appear to be stone tools in a cave in central Mexico that date to as early as about 33,000 years ago Both studies offer details that help fill out an oversimplified narrative of the prehistoric Americas an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who was not involved in the work Willerslev’s group did detailed DNA analysis of 15 ancient Americans different from those analyzed by Nakatsuka and colleagues A tooth from Trail Creek in Alaska was from a baby related to a group called the ancient Beringians who occupied the temporary land mass between Alaska and Siberia called Beringia the land mass was above water before the glaciers receded at the end of the last ice age The ancient Beringians stayed on the land bridge and were genetically distinct from the people who later gave rise to Native Americans The link between Australia and ancient Amazonians also hints that several genetically distinct groups may have come across Beringia into the Americas The Australian signature was first found in modern-day indigenous South Americans by Pontus Skoglund and colleagues (SN: 8/22/15 No one was sure why indigenous Australians and South Americans shared DNA since the groups didn’t have any recent contact a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute in London and a coauthor of the Cell paper was that the signature was very old and inherited from long-lost ancestors of both groups Nakatsuka and colleagues tested DNA from a group of ancient Brazilians examined DNA from 10,400-year-old remains from Lagoa Santa supporting the idea that modern people could have inherited it from much older groups.  And Skoglund is thrilled “It’s amazing to see it confirmed,” he says How that genetic signature got to Brazil in the first place is still a mystery  Researchers don’t think early Australians paddled across the Pacific Ocean to South America “None of us really think there was some sort of Pacific migration going on here,” Skoglund says That leaves an overland route through Beringia There’s only one problem: Researchers didn’t find the Australian signature in any of the ancient remains tested from North or Central America And no modern-day indigenous North or Central Americans tested have the signature either Raff thinks it likely that an ancestral group of people from Asia split off into two groups with one heading to Australia and the other crossing the land bridge into the Americas The group that entered the Americas didn’t leave living descendants in the north because not many ancient remains have been studied, it’s possible that scientists have just missed finding evidence of this particular migration that could mean that multiple groups of genetically distinct people made the Berigian crossing or that one group crossed but was far more genetically diverse than researchers have realized The studies may also finally help lay to rest a persistent idea that some ancient remains in the Americas are not related to Native Americans today The Lagoa Santans from Brazil and a 10,700-year-old mummy from a place called Spirit Cave in Nevada had been grouped as “Paleoamericans” because they both had narrow skulls with low faces and protruding jaw lines, different from other Native American skull shapes. Some researchers have suggested that Paleoamericans — including the so-called Kennewick Man whose 8,500-year-old remains were found in the state of Washington (SN: 12/26/15 but a separate group that didn’t have modern descendants But previous studies of Paleoamericans and Willerslev’s analysis of the Spirit Cave mummy’s DNA provide evidence that the Paleoamericans were not different from other Native Americans of their time And the ancient people are more closely related to present-day Native Americans than any other group Willerslev presented the results about the Spirit Cave mummy to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe when the data became available the tribe was able to claim the mummy as an ancestor and rebury the remains Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ A version of this article appears in the December 8, 2018 issue of Science News C. Posth et al. Reconstructing the deep population history of Central and South America. Cell J. V. Moreno-Mayar et al. Early human dispersals within the Americas doi:10.1126/science.aav2621.    Tina Hesman Saey is the senior staff writer and reports on molecular biology in molecular genetics from Washington University in St Louis and a master’s degree in science journalism from Boston University A member of New Mexico’s Picuris Pueblo Tribal Nation stands in front of a Round House used for rituals and meetings A DNA study initiated and directed by Picuris officials now supports their oral histories describing more than 1,000-year-old ancestral ties to ancient Chaco Canyon society But is this “woolly mouse” really a step toward bringing woolly mammoths back Millions of people have used DNA testing kits from 23andMe to trace family ties and to learn more about health conditions they may be susceptible to The company filed for bankruptcy leaving customers wondering what to do about genetic data Labradors with a higher genetic risk for obesity are more likely to seek out food like the one illustrated (brown) attacking cancer cells (purple) are programmed to track specific proteins on a cancer cell and kill it may look like South Africa’s golden mole but it is more closely related to kangaroos than to the other moles of the world Excavations of Iron Age skeletons such as this one from Celtic sites in southern England have produced genetic evidence reflecting social practices that enhanced women’s power Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them It is published by the Society for Science a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483) enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions The theory according to which the Americas were originally populated by two migration waves from Northeast Asia—with a population carrying African and Australian traits and another with Amerindians similar to present-day indigenous—has just been disproved A study based on fossil DNA has analyzed samples from the oldest skeletons found in the continent and confirms the existence of a single ancestral group for all ethnic groups in America The discovery led to a redesign of the strikingly African-looking face of Luzia—as the skull was the Paleoamerican young woman found in the 1970s in Brazil is referred to The conclusion is based on the research conducted by 72 scientists from eight countries including scholars from the University of São Paulo (USP) Archaeogenetic data reveal that all populations in America stem from a single group that arrived in the New World through the Bering Strait some 20 thousand years ago The DNA links this migration flow to peoples in Siberia and northern China The results of the research were published Thursday (Nov had her face reconstructed for the first time by British scholar Richard Neave Her features were based on a theory by University of São Paulo (USP) Professor Walter Neves according to which the people of Luzia—the set of fossils found in the 19th century in Minas Gerais—arrived before the ancestors of present-day indigenous people in Brazil is believed to have had African or Australian traits The thesis was based on a morphological analysis of the skull which indicated that these people were considerably different from present-day natives at the USP Archaeology and Ethnology Museum explains that Neves’s contribution was key to ascertaining there were differences between the ancestral and modern-day indigenous individuals but genetic studies—aided by today’s technology—refute his thesis which argues that this difference was brought about during the process of migration between continents “This link with a previous population of Africa did not exist The difference between Lagoa Santa and current natives originated in America itself,” he declared Luzia’s new face was designed by Caroline Wilkinson a specialist in forensic reconstruction and a follower of Neave The descendants of the ancestral migratory wave that came down south through North America split into two lineages some 16 thousand years ago The members of one of the lineages crossed the Isthmus of Panama and peopled South America on three different occasions The first was between 15 and 11 thousand years ago; the second wave 9 thousand at the most The study shows the presence of fossil DNA from both contingents throughout the South American continent The third migration wave is the most recent one—some 4.2 thousand years back—and settled chiefly in the central Andes region The genetic data reveal that Luzia’s people had strong ties with the Clovis culture a lineage of human beings who went south from the north approximately 16 thousand years back It was hitherto not known that this group had migrated south “It started dying out some 9 thousand years ago and was replaced with the direct ancestors of the indigenous groups that lived in Brazil during the colonial period,” the study says The reasons that led to the disappearance of the Clovis groups remain unknown Strauss explains that the new archaeogenetic technique brings information previously inaccessible to archaeologists “It opens up a world of analytical possibilities not just for determining ancestral relations metagenomics—countless studies and information now made available,” he pointed out He further reports that these technological strides were made in the past ten years or so especially thanks to the work of Max Planck Institute which has revolutionized archaeological studies as the tropical climate speeds up the deterioration of the genetic material “We made the first modest attempts in 2012 so it took us at least two years until we were familiar with the protocol for DNA extraction that worked for Lagoa Santa,” he recounted had managed to extract the Neanderthal DNA in 2010 seven skeletons aged 10.1 thousand to 9.1 thousand years originated from Lapa do Santo and Peru were also used—adding up to 15 archaeological sites Strauss says that the next steps will include increasing DNA samples in a bid to understand the process of settlement of the Americas in further detail from which we may extract genetic material to ascertain exactly when this population arrived as well as their relation with other groups,” he explained An archaeogenetics laboratory is expected to be built at USP in 2019 “We hope it may become a center attracting Latin American colleagues so they can carry out analysis here in collaboration with peers from Europe and the US,” the expert said Nearly a hundred skulls excavated by Neves and Strauss over the last 15 years are stored at USP Other fossils are kept at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais according to São Paulo Research Foundation FAPESP which provides funding for excavation campaigns most of this archaeological archive was kept in Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum consumed by a fire on September 2 this year Luzia’s skull was being displayed in the museum next to a bust with its features by Neave The representation of the original face was lost in the fire fragments of the skull were salvaged from the rubble The piece is among the oldest fossils ever found in the American continent “[Confirming] what has been observed in the 12 skeletons scrutinized—which is considerable—is just natural Nearly all of them point in the same direction if we can’t examine the fossil,” Strauss stated He reported that the DNA must be extracted from the fragments of Luzia’s skull recovered from the fire after permission is granted by the museum “The material was exposed to extremely high temperatures and if there’s something that DNA doesn’t take kindly to is heat We have to keep expectations modest,” he concluded Scientists have sequenced 15 ancient genomes spanning from Alaska to Patagonia and were able to track the movements of the first humans as they spread across the Americas at “astonishing” speed during the last Ice Age and also how they interacted with each other in the following millennia Our study proves that Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were actually genetically closer to contemporary Native Americans than to any other ancient or contemporary group sequenced to date The results have been published in the journal Science as part of a wide-ranging international study which genetically analysed the DNA of a series of well-known and controversial ancient remains across North and South America The research also discovered clues of a puzzling Australasian genetic signal in the 10,400-year-old Lagoa Santa remains from Brazil revealing a previously unknown group of early South Americans – but the Australasian link left no genetic trace in North America a legal battle over a 10,600-year-old ancient skeleton – called the ‘Spirit Cave Mummy’ – has ended after advanced DNA sequencing found it was related to a Native American tribe The researchers were able to dismiss a longstanding theory that a group called Paleoamericans existed in North America before Native Americans The Paleoamerican hypothesis was first proposed in the 19th century “Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were very controversial because they were identified as so-called ‘Paleoamericans’ based on craniometry – it was determined that the shape of their skulls was different to current day Native Americans,” said Professor Eske Willeslev who holds positions at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen “Our study proves that Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were actually genetically closer to contemporary Native Americans than to any other ancient or contemporary group sequenced to date.” The scientific and cultural significance of the Spirit Cave remains which were found in 1940 in a small rocky alcove in the Great Basin Desert The preserved remains of the man in his forties were initially believed to be between 1,500 and 2000 years old but during the 1990s new textile and hair testing dated the skeleton at 10,600 years old a group of Native Americans based in Nevada near Spirit Cave claimed cultural affiliation with the skeleton and requested immediate repatriation of the remains Their request was refused and the tribe sued the US government a lawsuit that pitted tribal leaders against anthropologists who argued the remains provided invaluable insights into North America’s earliest inhabitants and should continue to be displayed in a museum The deadlock continued for 20 years until the tribe agreed that Professor Willeslev could carry out genome sequencing on DNA extracted from the Spirit Cave for the first time “I assured the tribe that my group would not do the DNA testing unless they gave permission and it was agreed that if Spirit Cave was genetically a Native American the mummy would be repatriated to the tribe,” said Professor Willeslev The team extracted DNA from the inside of the skull proving that the skeleton was an ancestor of present-day Native Americans Spirit Cave was returned to the tribe in 2016 and there was a private reburial ceremony earlier this year The tribe were kept informed throughout the two-year project and two members visited the lab in Copenhagen to meet the scientists and they were present when all of the DNA sampling was taken The genome of the Spirit Cave skeleton has wider significance because it not only settled the legal and cultural dispute between the tribe and the Government it also helped reveal how ancient humans moved and settled across the Americas The scientists were able to track the movement of populations from Alaska to as far south as Patagonia They often separated from each other and took their chances travelling in small pockets of isolated groups said: “A striking thing about the analysis of Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa is their close genetic similarity which implies their ancestral population travelled through the continent at astonishing speed That’s something we’ve suspected due to the archaeological findings but it’s fascinating to have it confirmed by the genetics These findings imply that the first peoples were highly skilled at moving rapidly across an utterly unfamiliar and empty landscape They had a whole continent to themselves and they were travelling great distances at speed.” The study also revealed surprising traces of Australasian ancestry in ancient South American Native Americans but no Australasian genetic link was found in North American Native Americans University of Copenhagen and first author of the study said: “We discovered the Australasian signal was absent in Native Americans prior to the Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa population split which means groups carrying this genetic signal were either already present in South America when Native Americans reached the region That this signal has not been previously documented in North America implies that an earlier group possessing it had disappeared or a later arriving group passed through North America without leaving any genetic trace.” explained why scientists remain puzzled but optimistic about the Australasian ancestry signal in South America He explained: “If we assume that the migratory route that brought this Australasian ancestry to South America went through North America either the carriers of the genetic signal came in as a structured population and went straight to South America where they later mixed with new incoming groups At the moment we cannot resolve which of these might be correct leaving us facing extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary chapter in human history The population history during the millennia that followed initial settlement was far more complex than previously thought The peopling of the Americas had been simplified as a series of north to south population splits with little to no interaction between groups after their establishment The new genomic analysis presented in the study has shown that around 8,000 years ago but this time from Mesoamerica into both North and South America Researchers found traces of this movement in the genomes of all present-day indigenous populations in South America for which genomic data is available to date Dr Moreno-Mayar added: “The older genomes in our study not only taught us about the first inhabitants in South America but also served as a baseline for identifying a second stream of genetic ancestry which arrived from Mesoamerica in recent millennia and that is not evident from the archaeological record These Mesoamerican peoples mixed with the descendants of the earliest South Americans and gave rise to most contemporary groups in the region.” Adapted from a St John's College press release Inset image: Skulls and other human remains from P.W Kept in the Natural History Museum of Denmark Professor Eske Willerslev with Donna and Joey two members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe Credit: Linus Mørk, Magus Film I wish to 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We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold. Please read our email privacy notice for details Please press and hold the button until it turns completely green If you believe this is an error, please contact our support team 147.45.197.102 : 1500bd4d-8452-4fe4-98ef-7d93d4cf Metrics details The biological variation of the earliest skeletons of South America has been intensely debated for the last two centuries One of the major research constraints has been the limited number of available samples dating to the early Holocene We here present the first direct radiocarbon-date for the early Holocene human skeleton from Toca dos Coqueiros (Serra da Capivara also known as “Zuzu” (8640 ± 30 BP; 9526–9681 cal years BP) We performed craniometric analyses using exclusively samples from Brazil and to discuss the evolutionary processes involved in the occupation of the continent The sex of the individual was estimated as a female when compared to late and early Holocene individuals but as a male when compared only to the early Holocene series We also found that Zuzu presents the strongest differences with the late Holocene Guajajara individuals and the strongest similarities with the early Holocene series from Lagoa Santa attesting for solid biological affinities among early Holocene individuals from Brazil as well as a moderate level of morphological variation among them This suggests that the early individuals were part of the same heterogeneous lineage possibly a different one from which late Holocene populations diverged The aim of this study was to analyze the morphology of the first individual from Serra da Capivara for which it was possible to extract dental enamel carbonate for radiocarbon determination by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Method (AMS): the burial 1 from Toca dos Coqueiros which includes an individual that is also known as “Zuzu” we present the results from three aspects that were analyzed for this skeleton: (1) chronological assessment (direct radiocarbon dating) and (3) craniometric affinities in the context of the Brazilian/Central-Eastern South American early Holocene archaeological record we compare our new direct date with the current distribution of direct early Holocene radiocarbon dates on human bones and teeth from South America (North as well as with the most reliable direct dates for the Central-East of the continent By comparing the Toca dos Coqueiros cranial variation with that of early and late Holocene individuals from Central-East of South America we intend to provide a more accurate sex estimation appraisal based on geographical and chronological criteria we will address the temporal and spatial patterns of morphological differences and similarities in CESA since we consider this regional perspective as a necessary step to better understand the diversification of Homo sapiens in the continent Getting a deeper understanding of the cranial variation in samples from Central East South America contributes to discussing the number of ancestral lineages from which they originated as well as the magnitude of variation of the founding population Violin plots showing the distribution of direct radiocarbon dates on early Holocene human bone/teeth per region in South America based on the 2-sigma error of the calibrated date range The yellow star indicates the radiocarbon date of Toca dos Coqueiros skeleton The boxplot within each violin shape indicates the mean and standard deviation for that group it was not possible to include this region in the violin plot since at least two values are needed for such plots The radiocarbon date mean from CESA is the second oldest after Patagonia and presents the largest number of direct radiocarbon dates for South American late Pleistocene/early Holocene sites The Pampas and Southern Andes regions present the earliest dates on the continent there are just a few radiocarbon samples directly dated indicating either that more research is needed in those areas or the occupation density there was lower the only direct radiocarbon date for the Lowlands may result from the poor preservation conditions of collagen in the tropics Due to the highest correct classification rates of the last analysis and the fact that sexual dimorphism patterns might differ among early Holocene individuals we consider the sex estimation of the Toca dos Coqueiros individual as a male as the most accurate one Morphometric results: (a) PCA showing the distribution of samples along the PC1 (Principal Component 1) and PC2 (Principal Component 2) of the cranial shape variables Botocudo (brown); early Holocene samples: Lagoa Santa (turquoise) The individual from Toca dos Coqueiros is highlighted with a star symbol; (b) Cladogram showing the results of the Ward’s hierarchical clustering analysis unfortunately this has not been possible to date Considering that it took several decades to find a suitable method for dating the skeletons coming from this region in which collagen is not preserved in the bones we think of this achievement as a milestone that should be considered in future debates on the first human expansions in South America as well as on the biological variation of the first inhabitants in the continent Future studies in the archaeological sites at Serra da Capivara should focus on applying the enamel dental carbonate and any other method of direct radiocarbon dating possible allowing the comparison of those possible new dates with the dental enamel carbonate dating we report here The morphological differences between these two skeletons may either demonstrate the pattern of sexual dimorphism in the early Holocene (“Zazá" being a female and “Zuzu” a male) or it could result from the idiosyncratic variation among individuals of the same biological sex (both being female) the degree of conservation of dimorphic sexual characters is reduced in early Holocene samples as it depends on the general preservation of bones Further studies are needed to address this issue probably by comparing the morphological variation of sexual dimorphism in the pelvis and skull of “Zuzu” in relation to other individuals from the early Holocene Elucidating if there was more than one ancestral population that gave rise to native Americans requires further work not only incorporating more directly dated human remains into the comparisons but also making interdisciplinary efforts to tackle this research problem Future studies should focus on testing this hypothesis by comparing samples from all these regions together in a comprehensive study In this paper we showed that the first radiocarbon-dated individual from Serra da Capivara shows strongest craniometric affinities with other early Holocene individuals from CESA and strongest differences from late Holocene individuals from the same region we found that the morphological variation among individuals from the early Holocene of CESA is moderate when compared to the variation present among late Holocene groups this study supports the hypothesis that the morphological variation of the earliest inhabitants of South America was moderate and differs from the level present in the most recent individuals suggesting either the arrival of more than one lineage and/or an initial heterogeneous founding population We also showed that the direct radiocarbon dating that we obtained falls within the expected ages for early Holocene individuals from South America and that the sex estimation of this individual differs depending on whether it is compared to early or late Holocene individuals We expect that our work will contribute to the current debate on the human diversification in the Americas by adding chronological and morphometric results from an individual and geographic area (Serra da Capivara) that have been previously dismissed or excluded from international debate Incorporating these results into the current discussion will allow some of the current difficulties to be overcome by expanding a sample that has over-relied on the study of the same few individuals repeatedly analyzed with the complete methodological toolkit available to date Future research should focus on studying in detail further individuals from Serra da Capivara in a comparative context of individuals from Brazil Interdisciplinary efforts in which multiple strands of evidence is carefully combined are needed to move forward into a more comprehensive debate on the first humans’ expansions into South America Brazil: (a) Skeleton position; (b) Bifacial projectile point made of hyaline quartz; (c) Stemmed projectile point made of chert This Figure has been created from images that belong to the FUMDHAM archives adapted from images that belong to the FUMDHAM archives The Toca dos Coqueiros skull: (a) frontal view; (b) lateral view A tooth crown (left M3) and teeth fragments (left M1 mandibular molar) were selected to perform radiocarbon analyses from the dental enamel carbonate The teeth were grouped into one sample (BETA—536529) that was analyzed in the laboratory Beta Analytic Inc the dental enamel was abraded to remove any attached surface particles or adhesions. It was then pretreated with 1.2 N HCl to clean the external surfaces and remove any probable secondary carbonate and vacuum desiccated until dry. Finally it was crushed to a powder and acidified under vacuum with 80% phosphoric acid in order to collect the evolved CO2 for the subsequent analysis by Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (d13C IRMS) while it was graphitized for the subsequent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) detection Since we combined morphometric measurements taken by two observers (Héctor Pucciarelli and SFSMDS) we tested for the existence of significant differences to detect if the results may differ due to interobserver error we compared the differences between the two observers for the 10 measurements used in this study taken on a series of 5 individuals from Museo Nacional of Brazil Repeated measures ANOVA and the Intraclass Coefficient showed no significant statistical differences between the sets of measurements that were registered by the two observers (F = 0.28 These shape variables were used in all the subsequent morphometric comparisons View of the fauna of Brazil previous to the last geological revolution Morphological affinities of the first Americans: An exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas The settlement of the Americas: A comparison of the linguistic The peopling of America: Craniofacial shape variation on a continental scale and its interpretation from an interdisciplinary view The late Pleistocene colonization of South America: An interdisciplinary perspective Discrepancy between cranial and DNA data of early Americans: Implications for American peopling Demographic expansions in South America: Enlightening a complex scenario with genetic and linguistic data North and South in the ancient Central Andes: Contextualizing the archaeological record with evidence from linguistics and molecular anthropology A paleogenetic perspective of the Sabana de Bogotá (Northern South America) population history over the Holocene (9000–550 cal BP) Variación dental y craneofacial en el norte de los Andes durante el Pleistoceno y el Holoceno: su relevancia para la discusión de la colonización temprana de Sudamérica A three-dimensional geometric morphometrics view of the cranial shape variation and population history in the New World A reassessment of human cranial indices through the Holocene and their implications for the peopling of South America Investigating cranial morphological variation of early human skeletal remains from Chile: A 3D geometric morphometric approach Evolutionary population history of early Paleoamerican cranial morphology Morphological variation of the early human remains from Quintana Roo Mexico: Contributions to the discussions about the settlement of the Americas Reconstructing native American population history Early South Americans cranial morphological variation and the origin of American biological diversity Early Holocene human remains from the Argentinean Pampas: Cranial variation in South America and the American peopling The first human settlement of the New World: A closer look at craniofacial variation and evolution of early and late Holocene Native American groups Revisiting east–west skull patterns and the role of random factors in South America: Cranial reconstruction and morphometric analysis of the facial skeleton from Cuncaicha Rockshelter (southern Peru) South Amerindian craniofacial morphology: Diversity and implications for Amerindian evolution East-West cranial differentiation in pre-Columbian human populations of South America Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study Lagoa Santa revisited: An overview of the chronology and material culture of Paleoindian sites in Eastern Central Brazil Cranial morphology of early Americans from Lagoa Santa Brazil: Implications for the settlement of the New World “Zuzu” strikes again—Morphological affinities of the early holocene human skeleton from Toca dos Coqueiros Cranial morphology of early human skeletal remains from Lapa do Santo eastern central Brazil: craniometric variation of the initial settlers of South America in Paleomerican odyssey (eds R.) 397‒412 (Texas A&M University Press The cranial morphology of the Botocudo Indians Archaeological and Paleontological Research in Lagoa Santa: The Quest for the First Americans (Springer Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord The Brazilian megamastofauna of the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and its relationship with the early human settlement of the continent Early Holocene ritual complexity in South America: the archaeological record of Lapa do Santo (east-central Brazil) The origins project and the first Americans’ controversy in Archaeological and Paleontological Research in Lagoa Santa: The Quest for the First Americans (eds micro-evolução e ocupação pré-histórica da costa brasileira The Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene archaeological record in Brazil: A geo-referenced database Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Santana do Riacho Human skeletal remains from Serra da Capivara Brazil: review of the available evidence and report on new findings in New Perspectives on the Peopling of the Americas (eds Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Sumidouro Cave A new late Pleistocene archaeological sequence in South America: the Vale da Pedra Furada (Piauí O sítio arqueológico Toca do Sítio do Meio (Piauí) The chronology of the New World: Two faces of one reality Carbon-14 dates point to man in the Americas 32,000 years ago Earliest hunters and gatherers of South America The ignored continent: South America in models of earliest American prehistory in Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis (eds M.) 199–208 (Texas A&M University Press The seventy-year itch: Controversies over human antiquity and their resolution A Serra da Capivara e os primeiros povoamentos sul-americanos: Uma revisão bibliográfica La antiguedad del hombre en el Nordeste de Brasil Le Gisement Quaternaire de Pedra Furada (Piauí premier peuplement des Amériques: application de la morphométrie géométrique 3D à la variation crânienne actuelle et fossile “Osteobiographics” of Dos Coqueiros Paleoindian reconsidered: Comment on Lessa and Guidon (2002) Análise antropológica de 15 esqueletos in Os biomas e as sociedades humanas na pré-história: região do Parque Nacional Serra da Capivara and morphology in Brazil: Archaeological complexity of the earliest Americans Nouvelle découverte d’un homme préhistorique américain: une femme de 9700 ans au Brasil Analysis of sexual dimorphism of craniofacial traits using geometric morphometric techniques Paleoamerican Morphology’s dispersion in the New World and its implications for the settlement of the Americas Diversidade morfocraniana dos remanescentes ósseos humanos da Serra da Capivara: Implicações para a origem do homem americano and late Holocene Brazilian groups: Implications for human dispersion in Brazil Radiocarbon dating of biological apatites: A review The effect of grain size on carbonate contaminant removal from tooth enamel: Towards an improved pretreatment for radiocarbon dating ¿Dónde están los restos óseos humanos del período pleistoceno tardío Problemas y perspectivas en la búsqueda de los primeros americanos Nota sobre a sepultura da Toca dos Coqueiros The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine (Thomas Testing evolutionary and dispersion scenarios for the settlement of the New World Craniofacial morphology of the first Americans: Pattern and process in the peopling of the New World Early peopling and evolutionary diversification in America Amerindians: Testing the hypothesis about their homogeneity Nonrandom factors in modern human morphological diversification: A study of craniofacial variation in southern South American populations Dos Sambaquis do sul do Brasil a diaspora africana: Estudos de geoquimica isotopica de series esqueleticas humanas escavadas de sitios arqueologicos brasileiros Variation among early North American crania O mito da homogeneidade biológica na população paleoíndia de Lagoa Santa: implicações antropológicas Evaluating microevolutionary models for the early settlement of the New World: The importance of recurrent gene flow with Asia Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California Patterns of modern human diversification: Implications for Amerindian origins Mitochondrial population genomics supports a single pre-Clovis origin with a coastal route for the peopling of the Americas Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas Beringian standstill and spread of Native American founders Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry to Native Americans and the Beringian Standstill model: issues of timing and migrations into the New World A ‘First’ American to Compare: The Pedra Furada Controversy in The Orce Man: Controversy Media and Politics in Human Origins Research (Baruzzi Pesquisas arqueológicas na região do Parque Nacional Serra da Capivara e seu entorno (Piauí-1998/2008) Os biomas e as sociedades humanas na pré-história: região do Parque Nacional Serra da Capivara Rare anatomic variation on a 10,000-year-old South American skeleton: the case of Iuzu Stuiver, M., Reimer, P.J. & Reimer, R.W. CALIB 8.2. http://calib.org (2021) R Core Team. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. https://www.R-project.org/ (2020) Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series 44 (Arkansas Paschetta, C., González-José, R. & Lanata, J. L. De cómo cruzar fronteras en la ciencia: homenaje a Héctor M. Pucciarelli. http://www.repositorio.cenpat-conicet.gob.ar/123456789/488 (CONICET Canonical and principal components of shape Información morfométrica en estudios interpoblacionales: una comparación de técnicas basadas en proporciones y coordenadas Procrustes PAST: Paleontological statistics software package for education and data analysis Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function In Research Methods in Human Skeletal Biology (eds DiGangi Download references We would like to thank Laura Buck for her insightful comments on a previous version of this manuscript We are grateful with the FUMDHAM for allowing us to use and reproduce images from their archives This project was partially funded by a grant from the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG Projektnummer 415489479) and by a grant from Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Regional—Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Piauí (DCR-FAPEPI) The radiocarbon dating for the Toca dos Coqueiros individual was covered with a grant from Instituto Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología de Arqueología Paleontología y Ambiente del Semiárido del Nordeste de Brail (INCT-INAPAS) The University of Bonn allowed the open access funding which was enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL Department of Anthropology of the Americas Lumila Paula Menéndez & María Clara López-Sosa Sergio Francisco Serafim Monteiro da Silva Instituto Nacional de Ciencia e Tecnologia de Arqueologia Paleontologia e Ambiente do Semiárido do Nordeste do Brasil measured the Toca dos Coqueiros skull; M.C.L.S conducted all the morphometric analysis; A.S handled the radiocarbon dating analysis; L.P.M curated the archaeological materials; L.P.M. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11893-3 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Human burial sites in Minas Gerais reveal a succession of customs from 10,000 to 8,000 years ago a rockshelter in the midst of the Cerrado savannah appears to have been an important center for rituals associated with deathmauricio de paiva An opening in the face of a steep cliff in the midst of the Cerrado savannah in the Lagoa Santa region of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais has presented archeologists biologists and anthropologists with a surprising revelation was once an important center for funerary rituals as revealed by the excavations described in an article published in the Antiquity journal one of the most prominent publications in that field The cave housed complex burial patterns featuring dismembered corpses arranged according to precise rules revealing a succession of very distinct cultures during a period—approximately 10,000 years ago—that had previously been considered to be homogeneous “The greatest benefit was in discovering these cultural changes over time which for some reason no one had noted before,” says André Strauss a Brazilian archeologist and visiting professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany a doctoral candidate at Germany’s Max Planck Institute The study goes beyond the deaths themselves and provides a glimps of who these people were and how they lived Strauss felt that there was something special about this place during his first year in the geology program at the University of São Paulo (USP) He went on his first field expedition in 2005 as an intern for bioanthropologist Walter Neves of USP’s Biosciences Institute (IB-USP) “I was at the bottom of a two-meter-deep trench digging and sifting through what I found.” It was from that vantage point that Strauss became fascinated with the potential discoveries to be made there and decided that he wanted to do something other than focus on skull measurements and search for signs of coexistence with large animals That was the focus of the research conducted in the 19th century when Danish naturalist Peter Lund discovered human bones alongside those of large animals in a cave in Lagoa Santa setting in motion a tradition of excavation that made it one of the most long-lasting archeological regions in Brazil Strauss observed some order in the apparent confusion at the site: what appeared to be a meaningless jumble of bones did “It’s difficult to perceive the subtleties “This was made possible because Walter reversed the usual order of the field procedures,” Strauss notes and only calls in specialists in human fossils when bones are found “Many skeletons are damaged in the process.” Neves has been analyzing human evolution in the Americas since 1988 bioanthropologists coordinate the excavation and rely on specialists to analyze the artifacts—in the case of Lapa do Santo the stone fragments and tools made of bone the walls of which are decorated with relief drawings indicative of fertility rituals (phallic images) Neves and their colleagues identified three distinct periods of human occupation the oldest from 12,700 to 11,700 years ago they exhumed and analyzed 26 human burials dating back to approximately 10,500 and 8,000 years ago which revealed a variety of funerary practices never before discovered in the lowlands of South America These practices were described in an article in Antiquity and a second article of which André Strauss was the sole author published in the January-April 2016 issue of Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi “There were highly sophisticated funerary practices in the Andes,” says Neves “but the previously studied Chilean mummies are more recent than the material found in Lapa do Santo” Another distinction is that the cave in Minas Gerais contains no funerary offerings while the customary practice of hunter-gatherers was to bury the dead along with their belongings “The complexity of the practices discovered at Lapa do Santo resides not in the objects but in a high degree of manipulation of the body and the skeleton in a very sophisticated manner,” says the USP professor Funerary rituals The oldest burial pattern, dating back to between 10,600 and 9,700 years ago, included a man and a child who was approximately five years old — both buried intact. The child was placed in a seated position, with the legs folded and the knees close to the head. The open jaw, which causes the mouth to look agape, indicates that the pit was not completely filled in. Mauricio de Paiva Skull with teeth removedMauricio de Paiva involves nine heaps of completely disarticulated bones arranged in circular pits with diameters of 30 or 40  centimeters and and a depth Each pit was fully occupied by the remains of a single individual the longer bones were generally broken after death to allow their placement in these small tombs Mauricio de Paiva Fishhooks made of boneMauricio de Paiva Life practices Since the beginning of his PhD studies in 2011 Strauss has coordinated the work at Lapa do Santo The archeological riches in the area sustain both countries’ interest in these collaborative efforts which includes partnerships for genetic studies The Brazilian counterpart for the project is Walter Neves whose Laboratory for Human Evolutionary and Ecological Studies (LEEEH) receives the materials collected on the expeditions No vestiges of ceramics have been found in recent years—a strong indication that these were hunter-gatherers who lived there part-time thus corroborating the established theories all of which they carried back to the cave intact There is no evidence of larger animals such as tapirs or the enormous mammals that were believed to have been associated with the humans of Lagoa Santa ever since Peter Lund found proof of association in a different cave in the region referring to a rodent slightly larger than a guinea pig no diet is more precarious than one consisting of these animals indicating that better sources of protein were not available to the groups in Lagoa Santa who apparently existed at a borderline subsistence levels the scarcity of personal belongings at the burial sites may indicate that there was no room for waste only seven of which were found at Lapa do Santo—were basic life necessities “Their time was devoted to facilitating the existence of the group,” Neves speculates André Strauss / University of TübingenTheir way of life may now be more clearly delineated but these conclusions also present an enigma Chemical analyses that reveal diets by quantifying carbon and nitrogen isotopes carried out by the Brazilian biologist Tiago Hermenegildo during his PhD studies at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom have shown that the inhabitants of the region consumed large amounts of vegetables and supplemented their diet by hunting Such a high consumption of vegetables is unexpected for hunter-gatherers especially with a diet rich in carbohydrates as indicated by the high incidence of cavities in the teeth found in the area has coauthored a paper with lead author Pedro Tótora da Glória Their study will be published in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences journal who has partnered with Strauss since 2006 in the excavations at Lapa do Santo explains that the discrepancies between the incidence of cavities they have observed and those of other documented hunter-gatherer populations are derived from the fact thatLagoa Santa has a tropical climate with Cerrado vegetation “The other examples we have are from temperate climates,” he says “Here food which is naturally available—various types of fruit and tubers—can cause more cavities.” He is focusing on the fruit of the Brazilian pequi and cherry trees and carbonized fragments have been found at the Lagoa Santa sites who conducted his PhD research under Walter Neves and is now a postdoctoral researcher in periodontics at the USP School of Dentistry brings to the project a detailed knowledge of teeth—which are abundant at archeological sites because they are made of stronger material than bone He explains that bones renew themselves continuously so one could say that a person replaces his skeleton every 10 years are evidence of the period in one’s life when teeth take their permanent form Oliveira hopes that the isotopic studies currently underway conducted in collaboration with Hermenegildo will help them to delve deeper into such detailed dietary aspects of these people the migratory movements during their lifetimes The dentist adds that the presence of strontium isotopes indicate that the people found at Lapa do Santo were natives of Lagoa Santa MAURICIO DE PAIVAA Floor of ashes The inference of intense human occupation arises from the confirmation that many bonfires  were lit at Lapa do Santo “They used fire all the time; they knew what they were doing,” says archeologist Ximena Villagran of USP’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE) Her microscopic analyses of the cave sediment revealed a large quantity of ashes as published in a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science website in July 2016 The inhabitants of the region not only controlled fire they apparently planned its use by storing decomposing wood This detailed understanding is made possible by organic petrology analysis a technique that has recently come into use in archeology and to which Villagran had access through her partnership with the French geologist Bertrand Ligouis during a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tübingen where he heads the Laboratory for Applied Organic Petrology Another cutting-edge technique used by Villagran was the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) normally used in the analysis of loose sediment Villagran placed her samples on glass slides which enabled her to investigate exactly why the sediment is composed of aggregates of several shades of yellow During her classification of the sediments inside and around the cave it became clear that the ashes had been produced inside the rockshelter She also identified termite mound fragments indicating that the material was brought inside the cave for a reason “Perhaps they used these fragments as hot stones for cooking or as outdoor ovens like the ones used by the Xavante Indians to bake maize cakes,” she speculates Following this microscopic-scale revelation it became apparent that the grasslands of Lagoa Santa were replete with termite mounds An enigma presented itself when Villagran confirmed that the dark red color she had observed in certain parts of the sediment would have required temperatures of over 600 degrees Celsius (°C) Through experiments in which she lit fires and inserted a long-stem thermometer into the flames Villagran verified that the soil beneath the fire was not subjected to such high temperatures The explanation literally fell upon her during her second visit to the archeological site: “I realized that sediment rains down from the rock wall above the cave’s entrance,” she said If this sediment were to fall directly into the fire the particles would be subjected to temperatures of 800°C to 1000°C Adriano Gambarini During her analysis of the microstructure of the sediment surrounding the burial sites Villagran noted a continuity that had been disturbed at certain points She intends to continue conducting analyses in order to produce a detailed description of how the burials were made Strauss also wants to know whether the sophisticated funerary practices existed exclusively in Lapa do Santo He supports the hypothesis that these burials were part of a more disseminated culture and the signs are there; they just needed an analysis of this kind,” says the archeologist who wants to expand the study to other regions of Brazil One limitation is  the fact that that what has already been excavated cannot be recovered unless it has been documented with extreme meticulousness “Excavating is like reading a book and then burning the pages,” says Strauss who specialized in archeological documentation He says that removing the contents of a grave takes 20 to 25 days as the sediment is gradually removed while a three-dimensional model of the finding is generated should convey the information and observations in detail and should be made public “This perception is still growing within Brazilian archeology.” corroborating the patterns described earlier The excavations continue at Lapa do Santo and promise to reveal even more layers of time and human customs According to the American archeologist Kurt Rademaker a professor at Northern Illinois University and an expert on hunter-gatherers combined with the work being done in the Andes region is revealing considerable cultural diversity “Strauss and his interdisciplinary team are doing cutting-edge archeological science and enriching our knowledge about the physical appearance ancestry and ways of life of ancient South Americans particularly their highly interesting ritual practices,” he says It is impossible to know what was going on in the minds of these ancient inhabitants of what is now called Minas Gerais but the team involved in the research is committed to painting an approximate picture Project Origins and microevolution of man in the Americas: a paleoanthropological approach (III) (nº 2004/01321-6); Grant Mechanism Research Grant – Thematic Project; Principal Investigator Walter Alves Neves (IB-USP); Investment R$2,032,930.19 © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved The Americas were the last continent to be inhabited by humans An increasing body of archaeological and genomic evidence has hinted to a complex settlement process where unexpected ancestral signals have raised perplexing scenarios for the early migrations into different regions of the continent such as whether the first humans migrated south along the Pacific coast or by some other route While there is archaeological evidence for a north-to-south migration during the initial peopling of the Americas by ancient Indigenous peoples where these ancient humans went after they arrived has remained elusive.   Not only do researchers provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast – for the first time The work provides the most complete genetic evidence to date for complex ancient Central and South American migration routes researchers also have discovered evidence of Neanderthal ancestry within the genomes of ancient individuals from South America Neanderthals are an extinct population of archaic humans that ranged across Eurasia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.  published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest that human movements closer to the Atlantic coast eventually linked ancient Uruguay and Panama in a south-to-north migration route – 5,277 kilometers (3,270 miles) apart This novel migration pattern is estimated to have occurred approximately 1,000 years ago based on the ages of the ancient individuals Findings show a distinct relationship among ancient genomes from northeast Brazil This new model reveals that the settlement of the Atlantic coast occurred only after the peopling of most of the Pacific coast and Andes “These regional events likely derived from migratory waves involving the initial Indigenous peoples of South America near the Pacific coast.” Researchers also found strong Australasian (Australia and Papua New Guinea) genetic signals in an ancient genome from Panama “There is an entire Pacific Ocean between Australasia and the Americas and we still don’t know how these ancestral genomic signals appeared in Central and South America without leaving traces in North America,” said Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos an archaeologist and a postdoctoral fellow in FAU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science researchers also detected greater Denisovan than Neanderthal ancestry in ancient Uruguay and Panama individuals Denisovans are a group of extinct humans first identified from DNA sequences from the tip of finger bone discovered around 2008 “It’s phenomenal that Denisovan ancestry made it all the way to South America,” says John Lindo a co-corresponding author of the article who specializes in ancient DNA analysis and is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University “The admixture must have occurred a long time before The fact that the Denisovan lineage persisted and its genetic signal made it into an ancient individual from Uruguay that is only 1,500 years old suggests that it was a large admixture event between a population of humans and Denisovans.” Previously at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife dos Santos and colleagues uncovered the remains of the two ancient humans from northeast Brazil which date back to at least 1,000 years before present and sent them to Lindo for DNA extraction and subsequent genomic sequencing and analyses Raw data were then sent to FAU for computational analysis of the whole genome sequences from northeast Brazil Researchers compared the two newly sequenced ancient whole genomes from northeast Brazil with present-day worldwide genomes and other ancient whole genomes from the Americas Lindo says that only a dozen or so ancient whole genomes from South America have been sequenced and published in contrast to hundreds from Europe.  Apart from the occurrence of mass burials in the sites that yielded the samples from northeast Brazil there is no other evidence in the archaeological record that indicate shared cultural features among them the analyzed ancient individuals from southeast Brazil are about 9,000 years older than those from northeast Brazil enough time for expected and noticeable cultural divergence are located thousands of kilometers apart from each other “This groundbreaking research involved many different fields from archaeology to biological sciences to genomics and data science,” said Stella Batalama FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science “Our scientists at Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with Emory University have helped to shed light on an important piece of the Americas puzzle which could not have been solved without powerful genomic and computational tools and analysis.” Emory University; Henry Socrates Lavalle Sullasi State University New York at Buffalo.  This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco.  About FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences Genomic evidence for ancient human migration routes along South America's Atlantic coast are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system Copyright © 2025 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 147.45.197.102 : 3152b7cf-0500-4a8f-8219-488905fd Excavations at Lagoa Santa reinforce an alternative theory of the peopling of the continent EDUARDO CESARCrania from the Lagoa Santa: fossil remains from the Minas Gerais region backed an alternative theory of how the continent of the Americas was populatedEDUARDO CESAR archeologist and anthropologist Walter Neves of the Emílio Goeldi Museum in the State of Paraná was hurriedly called to an assignment abroad by Guilherme de la Penha who was instructed to represent the museum at a conference on salvage operations to be held a week later in Stockholm Sweden agreed to fill in for his boss during the trip but under one condition: he wanted to extend his stay in Scandinavia for a few days to visit Copenhagen in order to see the Peter Lund collection of extinct mammals and human skulls were found by the naturalist Lund in the 19th century in the Lagoa Santa region of the State of Minas Gerais Neves’ visit to the Danish capital would alter the course of his research He conducted anatomical measurements on 15 skulls from the collection’s Minas Gerais find and archeologist Hector Pucciarelli of the National University of La Plata The Paleoindian skulls from Lagoa Santa seemed to have belonged to people with negroid features similar to modern-day Africans and Australian Aborigines with prominent cheekbones and projecting jaws They were not reminiscent of the almond-shaped eyes found in Asiatic populations whose descendants are found in the indigenous tribes still present today in the Americas The findings met head-on with established archeological views concerning the process by which the continent was populated According to conventional and widely-accepted theory the Americas were settled by three migratory waves of individuals bearing mongoloid (Asiatic) features – the first of which occurred approximately 13,000 years ago across the Bearing Strait the skulls in the Lund collection failed to corroborate this notion and even provided evidence to support alternative hypotheses Neves and Pucciarelli presented the initial draft of this alternative hypothesis in a 1989 article published in the now out of print journal Ciência e Cultura In planting the seed for what would come to be called the dual-component biological model the archeologists suggested that there were two original migratory waves to the Americas composed of hunter-gatherers bearing negroid features emigrated approximately 14,000 years ago and is no longer represented in any current population group made up of individuals whose appearance was closer to that of Asians made its way to the New World approximately 12,000 years ago Present-day Amerindian tribes are the morphological descendents of this second migratory wave RICHARD NEAVE Artist’s rendering of Luzia, owner of the oldest skull ever found in the Americas at 11,000 years old, and similar in appearance to modern-day Africans and Australian AboriginesRICHARD NEAVE ARCHIVO LEEH Excavations at the Lapa do Santo site, Minas Gerais: field work that yielded additional proof supporting Neves’ theoryARCHIVO LEEH “The bones were buried in very shallow geological strata,” recalls archeologist Levy Figuti of the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE) who coordinated the project responsible for finding the skull. “We never imagined she was so old,” he remarked in an interview for Pesquisa FAPESP. Neves was one of the co-authors of the article on Luzio. MARIANA INGLEZ/LEEH Aerial view of limestone formation in Matozinhos (MG): the presence of this type of mineral helped preserve the skeletons of the Lagoa Santa region.MARIANA INGLEZ/LEEH Megafauna and carvings Excavations of Lagoa Santa led by Neves did yield finds that lent greater consistency to the USP researcher’s hypothesis His fieldwork also led to discoveries in areas bearing some relationship to the arrival of humans in the Americas carbon-14 dating of a rib fragment belonging to a giant land sloth of the species Catonyx cuvieri – found in an area of Minas Gerais rich in prehistoric sites – showed that these enormous mammals had in fact not completely disappeared some 10,000 years ago The study reinforced the idea that the older terrestrial species and the more adept of the modern arboreal sloths were contemporaries of Luzia’s people and practically shared the same territory “The test demonstrated that the sloth inhabited that area 9,990 years ago,” says Neves The giant sloth was one representative of the spectacular megafauna that inhabited the southern portion of the American continent 2012 Neves published an article in the scientific journal Plos One in which he announces an unexpected find encountered during the final moments of his fieldwork at Lagoa Santa in 2009 excavation work revealed a petroglyph measuring approximately 30 centimeters The rock carving was of an anthropomorphic or stylized human figure of a man with an enormous phallus which lay hidden at a depth of four meters The carving was estimated to be between 9,600 and 10,400 years old “This rupestrian carving is the oldest in the Americas to present incontestable age,” Neves claims “It strongly suggests that the culture that existed between the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene (12,000 years ago) was not limited to subsistence and the manufacture of stone implements but also boasted a rich symbolic dimension.” With this new discovery Lagoa Santa bears the distinction of having both the oldest human skull and the oldest rupestrian carving ever found in the Americas 43,000+ global companies doing business in the region. 102,000+ key contacts related to companies and projects Analysis, reports, news and interviews about your industry in English, Spanish and Portuguese. 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Read our Privacy notice A massive study of ancient remains spanning two continents has revealed the movements of the first people to colonise the Americas Scientists sequenced the genomes of 15 ancient Americans from across North and South America six of which were more than 10,000 years old Among the specimens examined were remains from a Brazilian site called Lagoa Santa the most ancient bodies found in Patagonia and the world’s oldest natural mummy from Spirit Cave in Nevada Using the evidence which stretched from Alaska to Chile researchers were able to demonstrate the “astonishing” speed at which people colonised the region after they diverged from their East Asian ancestors Conducting DNA analysis, the scientists were also able to conclusively prove that the Spirit Cave mummy was related to Native Americans living today in the Nevada The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe had requested repatriation of the remains which they claimed belonged to one of their own but were denied due to the body’s disputed ancestry It was only after Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge and his team conducted their genetic analysis that they were able to prove a connection with the modern tribe “Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were very controversial because they were identified as so-called ‘Paleoamericans’ based on craniometry – it was determined that the shape of their skulls was different to current day Native Americans,” said Professor Willerslev​ the remains were returned to the tribe in 2016 A statement from the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe said they “had a lot of experience with members of the scientific community there are a handful of scientists that seemed to understand the tribe’s perspective and Eske Willerslev was one of them His new study confirms what we have always known from our oral tradition and other evidence – that the man taken from his final resting place in Spirit Cave is our Native American ancestor.” the scientists revealed a story of ancient movement that spanned millennia “A striking thing about the analysis of Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa is their close genetic similarity which implies their ancestral population travelled through the continent at astonishing speed,” said Dr David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University “That’s something we’ve suspected due to the archaeological findings “These findings imply that the first peoples were highly skilled at moving rapidly across an utterly unfamiliar and empty landscape They had a whole continent to themselves and they were travelling great distances at breath-taking speed.” The findings were published in the journal Science. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Aristos is a Newsweek science and health reporter with the London He is particularly focused on archaeology and paleontology although he has covered a wide variety of topics ranging from astronomy and mental health Aristos joined Newsweek in 2018 from IBTimes UK and had previously worked at The World Weekly He is a graduate of the University of Nottingham and City University You can get in touch with Aristos by emailing a.georgiou@newsweek.com. Languages: English either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content A wide-ranging study in which researchers genetically analyzed the DNA of famous and controversial human remains from across North and South America has revealed fascinating new details about the ancient history of the vast region as well as settling a long-running legal battle over a 10,600-year-old skeleton that is the world's oldest natural mummy an international team of researchers sequenced 15 prehistoric genomes—essentially the complete set of genes present in an organism—extracted from remains found in locations as far apart as Alaska and Patagonia an Inca mummy and the oldest remains in Chilean Patagonia as well as the 10,600-year-old skeleton—known as the "Spirit Cave mummy." "Throughout the last three decades many methodological advancements have been made which have facilitated the retrieval of ancient DNA from human remains," José Victor Moreno Mayar first author of the study from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen "Today we are able to get DNA from remains that have been deposited in settings that make DNA preservation unlikely." These techniques enabled the researchers to track the movements of the earliest humans in the Americas revealing both how they spread across the region at "astonishing" speed during the Ice Age and how they interacted with each other in the following millennia we know some things about the peopling of the Americas from different disciplines like archaeology those things that we know are only enough to build a very simplistic model for how things happened "Such model states that the first Native Americans travelled from Asia into Alaska at some point after 25,000 years ago and once they moved into mid-latitude America they followed a north to south route with some populations staying behind at different locations at different times; after that it seems that established populations did not interact much with one another," he said there are indications that suggest the story is far more complex with long periods of population isolation in some places and constant population interaction in some others "Genetics is a good way to characterize these processes," Mayar said the genomes of present-day Native Americans are only a subset of those present during initial settlement we decided to look at the genomes of individuals that lived shortly after Native Americans were initially settling the Americas." the results enabled the team to dismiss a long-standing hypothesis that a group of genetically distinct humans existed in North America before Native Americans "Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were very controversial because they were identified as so-called 'Paleoamericans' based on craniometry—it was determined that the shape of their skulls was different to current day Native Americans," Eske Willeslev leader of the study who holds positions both at St John's College "Our study proves that Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were actually genetically closer to contemporary Native Americans than to any other ancient or contemporary group sequenced to date." The 10,400-year-old Lagoa Santa remains—located in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais—were discovered by Danish explorer Peter W The findings led him to develop the "Paleoamerican hypothesis" which suggested that the famous collection of skeletons could not be Native Americans due to the particular shape of their skulls—something the latest study refutes "Looking at the bumps and shapes of a head does not help you understand the true genetic ancestry of a population—we have proved that you can have people who look very different but are closely related," Willeslev said The latest study also marks an important chapter in the history of the Spirit Cave mummy—a prehistoric man who died in his forties and was preserved naturally Discovered in 1940 in the Great Basin Desert its significance was not properly understood for 50 years The remains were initially thought to be between 1,500 and 2,000 years old new textile and hair testing dated the bones to 10,600 years old the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe—a group of Native Americans based in Nevada near Spirit Cave—requested immediate repatriation of the remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act claiming they had cultural affiliation with the skeleton this request was refused because the ancestry of the remains was disputed In response the tribe sued the federal government with the lawsuit pitting tribal leaders against anthropologists who argued that the mummy should continue to be displayed in a museum due to its historical value The case was deadlocked for 20 years until the tribe allowed Willeslev to sequence the genome of the mummy for the first time "It was agreed that if Spirit Cave was genetically a Native American the mummy would be repatriated to the tribe," Willeslev said After determining that the Spirit Cave individual was an ancestor of modern Native Americans the remains were returned to the tribe in 2016 and a private reburial ceremony took place earlier this year—the details of which have just been released "What became very clear to me was that this was a deeply emotional and deeply cultural event," Willeslev said "The tribe have real feelings for Spirit Cave which as a European it can be hard to understand but for us it would very much be like burying our mother We can all imagine what it would be like if our father or mother was put in an exhibition and they had that same feeling for Spirit Cave." Not only has the sequencing of the Spirit Cave genome brought the long-running legal dispute to an end but it has also cast new light on how ancient human populations moved and settled across the Americas "A striking thing about the analysis of Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa is their close genetic similarity which implies their ancestral population travelled through the continent at astonishing speed," David Meltzer from the Department of Anthropology at the Southern Methodist University "That's something we've suspected due to the archaeological findings but it's fascinating to have it confirmed by the genetics They had a whole continent to themselves and they were travelling great distances at breathtaking speed." The latest research also uncovered surprising traces of Australasian ancestry in the Lagoa Santa remains indicating that Native South Americans had ancient ties to these people no Australasian genetic link was found in Native North Americans "We discovered the Australasian signal was absent in Native Americans prior to the Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa population split which means groups carrying this genetic signal were either already present in South America when Native Americans reached the region or Australasian groups arrived later," Mayar said "That this signal has not been previously documented in North America implies that an earlier group possessing it had disappeared or a later arriving group passed through North America without leaving any genetic trace." "If we assume that the migratory route that brought this Australasian ancestry to South America went through North America "At the moment we cannot resolve which of these might be correct." the latest findings may force us to rethink our ideas on how the Americas were first settled suggesting that this process was far more complex than previously thought "We found that before moving south of the ice sheets that covered northern North America during the Ice Age there were many Native American groups that we hadn't genetically documented before," Mayar said it seems that Native Americans radiated and explored the whole continent very quickly that was not the end of the story and it appears that starting from 8,000 years ago there was a second population expansion out of Mesoamerica which contributed to the ancestry of most present-day South Americans and also some peoples in the U.S Mayar noted that we are only scratching the surface in terms of characterizing different population movements at different times "Our results make it clear that future studies will show further Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsletters in your inbox See all Ten sets of human bones from Brazilian prehistory suggest that the first inhabitants of the Americas were not Mongoloids RAFAEL BARTOLOMUCCIInternal view of the Cerca Grande complex of funeral sites: bone finds of 9,000 years agoRAFAEL BARTOLOMUCCI A good number of American archeologists like to say that Luzia is an aberration and not the rules amongst the first inhabitants of the Americas similar to today’s Asians and native Brazilians Luzia is the name given to the skull of a young woman who lived (and died) about 11,000 years ago in the region of Lagoa Santa The polemical bone find in Minas Gerais shocked the traditionalists for not showing cranial characteristics compatible with Mongoloid populations Its features recall those of the present day Australian aborigines and African blacks This discrepancy led researchers Walter Neves from the Human Evolutionary Studies Laboratory of the University of São Paulo (USP) an alternative theory to explain the colonization of the Americas the first waves of individuals similar to Luzia from which all the indigenous tribes still to be found today between Patagonia and Alaska descend would only have reached the continent some time afterwards Both the populations used the same access path of entry to the Americas the critics of this model say that the South Americans have constructed a thesis from just one skull But new studies published by Neves and collaborators from 1999 onwards showing that pre-historical human populations similar to Luzia were not rarities in the Americas and that their geographical distribution was not restricted to the outskirts of the capital of  Minas Gerais two works have just come out that provide support for the alternative theory on the colonization of the Americas In an article printed in the latest edition of the British magazine World Archaeology a team of researchers coordinated by Neves presents nine skulls found in Cerca Grande a complex of seven prehistoric sites located in the region of  Lagoa Santa All the bone finds show Afro-aboriginal characteristics and an age estimated at about 9,000 years whose studies are funded by a FAPESP thematic project published in December in the American periodical Current Research in the Pleistocene the archeologist from USP analyzes a skull also roughly 9,000 years old and with black traits a site rich in prehistorical material located in Caatinga do Moura As opposed to the typical anatomy of the Mongoloid peoples the skulls of the Brazilian paleo-indians are thinner and longer associated with non-Mongoloid populations originating from a region far away from Lagoa Santa suggests that this physical type was spread through other parts of the country “Its geographical distribution was wider than used to be thought” from the National Sciences Museum of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC/MG) a co-author of the article on the skull from Toca das Onças “Perhaps the presence of individuals of the black type occurred all along the basin of the São Francisco River coordinated the team that found the human skull from Toca das Onças in an expedition to the region of  Bahia at the end of the 1970s this archeological material is part of the collection of the museum at PUC/MG The nine skulls from Cerca Grande were collected even longer ago on a trip to Lagoa Santa made in 1956 by the American These fragments of skeletons are currently part of the collections of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) “The Cerca Grande site has all been destroyed due to the removal of the limestone and calcite from the region” and went back to the place with Neves’s team in 2001 Neves decided to study in detail the skulls from Cerca Grande and Toca das Onças in the hope of getting more input for his thesis on the colonization of the Americas “As I am facing a lot of criticism from colleagues I decided to publish analyses about the largest possible number of prehistoric skulls from different sites in Lagoa Santa he started this academic crusade in favor of  his ideas in 2003 with an article in the Journal of  Human Evolution in which he analyzes six paleo-indian skulls (also around 9,000 years old) a region not very distant from Belo Horizonte with this strategy of pointing out that Luzia was not alone Neves promises to publish shortly evidence that there were also paleo-indians similar to the Australian aborigines in the state of São Paulo It is not easy to find evidence for the controversial thesis that the first inhabitants of the Americas were not Mongoloids has to meet two requirements to be classified as belonging to a paleoindian of  Negroid traits: to be the target of minimally reliable dating (the cost of which is very expensive) and undergoing rigorous statistical evidence about their anatomical conformation Neves believes he has overcome these two stages in a satisfactory manner in his recent work with human bone finds in Lagoa Santa Of  the nine skulls from Cerca Grande analyzed in the scientific article in World Archaeology two had their age determined in a direct way more reliable and the target of less criticisms is only possible to be done when collagen has been preserved in the skeleton something that is difficult to happen in the Lagoa Santa region did not have this element that is indispensable for the carbon 14  test Its antiquity was established in an indirect way an approach that was also used to locate in time the other seven skulls from Cerca Grande the researchers associate the object of their study –  the skeleton of a human or an animal – with some element from the prehistoric site whose age is known or estimated but we often have to resort to indirect datings” To say that a prehistoric skull is similar to a given biological group the researchers resort to comparative anatomy Neves makes a point of he himself carrying out the measurements of the skulls that are targeted in his scientific articles This is how he guarantees standardization of procedures in carrying out the task The measurements of the bones are submitted to computer models that compare them with dozens of physical parameters – in the case of Cerca Grande and 43 for those of men – displayed by the main biological groups that there are in existence today in the world the program positions the material analyzed in relation to the contemporary physical standards the computer models place the nine skulls from Cerca Grande like Luzia and the material from Toca das Onças in Bahia alongside the African ones from the Sahara and those of the aborigines from Australia – and far from the Mongoloids (the present day Asians and Amerindians) That does not necessarily mean that Luzia’s people had dark skin as people tend to think when they look at the artistic reconstitutions of the ancient inhabitants of Lagoa Santa and their traits suggest populations that today are black “The color of the skin is a characteristic that can change rapidly There are some points that are difficult to comprehend in the alternative thesis advocated by Neves and his collaborators in the first Homo sapiens in the New World The main one of them is the reason no descendents of these non-Mongoloid pioneers survived here Nobody has a totally satisfactory answer to this question but perhaps time and new archeological evidence will take care of resolving the controversy the news spread that a skull of about 11,000 years in age also displays physical traits similar to those of the people from Lagoa Santa an article came out in the Nature magazine in which 33 skeletons are described which show non-Mongoloid anatomical characteristics They are not skulls of prehistoric peoples which lived in isolation until the 16th century in Baja California when it became extinct after the Spaniards disembarked the Pericues were perhaps the last remnants of the first non-Mongoloid lineages that occupied the Americas The huge South American mammals were contemporaries of the oldest human fossil of the Americas An old suspicion has now been confirmed: Luzia and the enormous ground sloths the South American “elephants” were contemporaries and occupied the same piece of land The name of the woman is in reference to the fragment of the oldest human skeleton found in the Americas the skull f the young woman who lived some eleven thousand years ago and was found in the mining region of Lagoa Santa the ground version and an improvement on the current sloths that live in the trees is possibly the most spectacular of the extinct animals that made up the megafauna of this portion of the south of the continent The doubt about the coexistence of man with these hairy quadrupeds – who could weigh up to five tons and reached six meters in total length – has been removed with the release of the result of a carbon-14 test to which was submitted a fragment of the rib of a ground sloth unearthed in the surroundings of Lagoa Santa one of the thirteen identified in Brazil up until now “The examination showed that the sloth inhabited that area some 9,990 years ago” from the Institute of Biosciences of the University of São Paulo (IB-USP) who will send off the examination to the North American laboratory Beta Analytic Neves is coordinating the FAPESP thematic project that is proposing a new theory for the occupation of the Americas which originated and developed in South America and whose representatives of today are restricted to three groups of animals – tree sloths came about around about 50 million years ago it is not known exactly when they went into extinction – if it was before or after the presence of man in this part of the continent that the sloths still walked through the woodlands of Brazil consequently after the first registrations of human presence in the Americas the giant sloths and human beings must have had some degree of living together for some time The hypothesis that the ground sloths and man had been together side by side in the State of Minas Gerais was brought up in the middle of the 19th century by the Danish naturalist Peter Lund who made lots of excavations in Lagoa Santa and found fossils of these large animals from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) long before the result of the carbon dating test was ready “We have the bones of sloths with marks of cuts that must have been made by humans” carried out on the bones of other species of sloths rescued from the soil in Minas Gerais thus increasing the evidence of the living together between humans and this prodigious animal Even for anthropologists that are well used to digging up the remains of human bodies this latest discovery is particularly grisly Scientists have discovered what is believed to be the oldest case of a ritual beheading ever found in the Americas The 9,000-year-old decapitated skull was unearthed with a pair of amputated hands placed in opposite directions over the face and cut marks suggest the flesh had been removed It was found in a cave called Lapa do Santo Researchers believe the decapitated head may provide clues about the origins of decapitation practices that later became widespread throughout South America The Tupinamba from Brazil were famed for collecting heads as war trophies while the Arara Indians used the heads of defeated enemies as musical instruments for the Chmiu culture in Peru decapitation was used during human sacrifices Prehistoric humans living in a cave 14,700 years ago were cannibals and made cups from the skulls of the dead Researchers at the Natural History Museum in London and University College London found evidence that the human bones found in Gough's Cave in Somerset had the flesh cut from them before being chewed and crushed They found tooth marks on many of the bones which were discovered in the cave during excavations between 1880 and 1992 Human skulls found in the cave had also been extensively shaped to create cups or bowls The archaeologists behind the study say the findings suggest people living in the late Ice Age indulged in ritual cannibalism perhaps as a macabre way to revere their dead kin There is also evidence that early humans living in Germany 7,000 years ago may have indulged in mass cannibalism Analysis of the decapitated skull has revealed that it belonged to a young man who was member of the group of humans who inhabited the cave The careful positioning of the hands and skull also suggest the disembodiment was carried out as a part of a ritual or ceremony Tiny cut marks on the skull suggest the soft tissue around the skull was additionally cut away before it was buried researchers are baffled about why this beheading took place although they believe the head may have been removed after the man had died the lead author of the study at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig said: 'This ritualised decapitation attests to the early sophistication of mortuary rituals among hunter-gatherers in the Americas the finding from Lapa do Santo doubles the chronological depth of the practice of decapitation in South America it expands the known range of decapitation in more than 1,240 miles (2,000km) showing that during the early Holocene this was not a phenomenon restricted to the western part of the continent as previously assumed.' the oldest known case of decapitation in South America occurred in the Peruvian Andes The oldest known case in North America was found in Florida and is around 6,990 to 8,120 years old Lapa do Santo is thought to have been occupied by humans up to 12,000 years ago Stone tools and animal bones found in the region suggested prehistoric hunter-gatherers used the site for some time anthropologists discovered the disembodied skull and jaw together with the first six vertebrae of the neck and two severed hands in a pit just below the surface of the cave They had been covered with limestone slabs The hands had been cut from the rest of the body and placed palm sized down over the face with the left hand pointing upwards on the right side of the face and the right hand pointing down on the left side of the face another of the researchers involved in the study at the Max Planck Instiute for Evolutionary Anthropology said the decapitation appears not to have been a violent act 'The chemical analysis of strontium isotopes done in this study indicates that the decapitated individual was not an outsider to the group,' he said it was probably not a defeated enemy but instead a member of the community' The way the remains had been arranged contrasts dramatically with other burials discovered in the Lagoa Santa area Writing in the journal Public Library of Science One, the researchers said the discovery suggests these early human inhabitants of South America had quite complex burial rituals. They said: 'At Lapa do Santo, neither drill holes nor an enlargement of the foramen magnum were observed in the skull, making it unlikely that this was a trophy head. 'The ritualised decapitation of Burial 26 was not a violent act against the enemy but instead part of a broader set of mortuary rituals involving a strong component of manipulation of the body. 'The careful arrangement of the hands over the face is compatible with an important public display component in the ritual that could have worked to enhance social cohesion within the community.  'In the apparent absence of wealth goods or elaborate architecture, Lagoa Santa's inhabitants seemed to be using the human body to reify and express their cosmological principles concerning death.' Riddle of 9,000-year-old decapitated skull with hands over its faceCommenting on this article has endedNewest{{#isModerationStatus}}{{moderationStatus}} A skull from Lagoa Santa, Brazil (Natural History Museum of Denmark)November 8, 2018 ShareSave Tens of thousands of years ago, two gigantic ice sheets smothered the northernmost parts of what has since been named North America. They towered more than two kilometers high and contained 1.5 times as much water as Antarctica does today impassable barriers to the early humans who had started moving east from Asia walking across a land bridge that once connected the regions now known as Russia and Alaska these peoples—the ancestors of the Americas’ Indigenous groups—spread southward into new lands They showed that whatever happened south of the ice the southern lineage of early American Indians spread through the continent with blinding speed incrementally sending out new branches and twigs with many rays zooming out simultaneously and rapidly these people had gone down both sides of the Rockies who is based at the University of Copenhagen This pattern confirms the suspicions of archaeologists whose finds had long suggested that humans suddenly appeared throughout the Americas “You can now see that in the genetics,” Moreno-Mayar says Coincidentally, a second group of researchers, fronted by Cosimo Posth of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, independently found the same pattern They studied the DNA of 49 ancient humans from Central and South America and found similar evidence for a rapid starburst expansion and a southward migration that connects the Clovis culture of the north to early peoples in Belize These studies show that the histories of the Americas are more complicated than earlier genetic studies suggested, says Deborah Bolnick an anthropologist from the University of Connecticut But that’s more because those studies were overly simplistic to begin with rather than because the new results are surprising have suggested that multiple groups of people—related and interacted in the Americas over the millennia,” she says They’re not just reinventing the wheel, though. For example, the tools of the Clovis people were so different from those found at Spirit Cave (which lies on the other side of the Rockies) that some researchers took them as evidence that the Americas were peopled by two genetically distinct founding groups Moreno-Mayar and his colleagues have disproved that idea: They showed that the two groups were genetically similar a geneticist based in Mexico’s LANGEBIO institute The two studies also differ on a particularly puzzling and controversial result. Back in 2015, the leaders of both Posth’s and Moreno-Mayar’s teams found that today’s Indigenous Amazonians share small hints of ancestry with people from Australia and Papua New Guinea—places on the other side of the Pacific Moreno-Mayar’s team found that same tantalizing smidgen of Australasian ancestry in the 10,400-year-old remains from Lagoa Santa in Brazil but in none of the other remains they tested “Every explanation that we can come up with for that is less plausible than the last,” says Moreno-Mayar If people with Australasian ancestry somehow entered the Americas before the early American Indians how did they get into Brazil without leaving any trace in North America If they entered after the first American Indians did how did they get from Alaska to Brazil seemingly without interacting with anyone else after hypothetically inventing seafaring technology millennia before the Polynesians how did they cross the Andes and traverse the Amazon It doesn’t help that Posth’s team didn’t find any Australasian DNA among their ancient remains including ones from the same region of Brazil It could be that people from that area were very diverse—or that the Australasian signal is a mistake “The only way to get a better answer is to do more studies on other ancient samples,” adds Moreno-Mayar in a mostly empty room with a few dozen people a similar session was so popular that it spilled into an overflow room—and packed that That change is becoming apparent in new published work includes an ethics statement before describing the study’s results “More than any other project I’ve been involved in we paid a lot of attention to interacting with communities Moreno-Mayar’s team also took the criticisms over past missteps to heart Before studying the 10,600-year-old mummy from Spirit Cave sought permission from the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe which had cultural affiliation with the remains But they changed their minds because they realized that a genetic study could solve the long-running legal debate regarding the remains and—most important for Moreno-Mayar—taught the geneticists about their culture Such steps aren’t just about ticking an ethical checklist but “about trying to understand other ways of seeing the world.” but it’s great to see the trend shifting toward ethical consultations being the norm Agustín Fuentes an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame is particularly impressed with Moreno-Mayar’s study which he says shows a deeper attempt to rectify the problematic practices of the past “It front-ends Indigenous participation and centers it on the peoples of the Americas rather than the peopling of the Americas,” he says He means that the paper gives agency to the ancient individuals it describes instead of simply distilling them into abstract concepts of “gene flow.” It’s the kind of subtle difference that reflects genuine engagement with Indigenous groups—as does the styling of the word Indigenous but people or groups of people should be capitalized,” says Krystal Tsosie an American Indian geneticist at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine The ethical situation is harder to parse in South America where there are often no tribal communities who claim kinship with a given set of remains; in such cases the two teams contacted local government officials “This can be problematic when government agencies are unmotivated to provide good stewardship over ancient remains especially if their own policies toward present-day Indigenous communities are questionable,” says Tsosie Those communities “don’t have the same protections as the sovereign tribal nations of the United States [and] it is up to scientists to not exploit lax policies in other countries as a means of circumventing ethical practices.” Keolu Fox a Native Hawaiian at the University of California would also prefer Indigenous scientists to take charge of this field themselves “We want to create some kind of infrastructure where our communities benefit from this work,” he says “The new standard should be letting Indigenous people tell their own stories.” Skull from Piauí strengthens the idea that physically distinct human groups occupied South America ten thousand years ago FumdhamIntriguing appearance: the Paleo-Indian had Australian aboriginal featuresFumdham a 10 thousand year old human skeleton regarded as one of the most important from Brazil’s pre-history may be overturned if a new analysis of its morphological characteristics proves to be correct a study indicated that Zuzu was a woman – hence the name details of the skull and pelvis suggest that she was actually a man Though he died at the age of 35 to 45 in the area that is now in the state of Piauí he would fit in perfectly with the people who lived thousands of years ago in the region of Lagoa Santa in the state of Minas Gerais – a people whose physical traits were very different from those of the modern Amerindians and close to those of the Australian aborigines This analysis is one of the earliest results of the collaboration between the group coordinated by archeologist Niède Guidon from the Human Evolution Studies Laboratory of the University of São Paulo (USP) After several years of conflicting views about when and how modern human beings reached America both groups decided to set aside their animosity and to explore the possible links between their lines of research Zuzu is precisely one of the points in common Found in 1997 by Niède’s team in the rich prehistoric complex of the National Park of Serra da Capivara the skeleton is one of the oldest in South America older even than most of the dozens of skulls and other human bones found in Lagoa Santa Neves and his colleagues have dedicated themselves to showing that these early inhabitants of South America had a very different physical appearance from that of the modern Amerindians besides a jaw and other facial bones that projected forward the Paleo-Indians of Lagoa Santa remind one of the current African peoples or of the natives of Australia and of Melanesia whereas the modern Amerindians have a clear similarity with the peoples from northeast Asia Neves and his collaborators have already shown that more than 80 skulls from Lagoa Santa fit into the so-called Australomelanesian morphology The Brazilian researchers think that these people might be the first wave of immigrants to reach the Americas To show that the population of this ancient region in the state of Minas Gerais is no mere idiosyncrasy generated by isolation a criticism voiced by other experts on the prehistory of the Americas the USP team began investigating skulls from other parts of Brazil and of the Americas “We declared war upon those who doubted the occupation of South America by peoples with Australomelanesian morphology” “This strategy of taking samples from several places is a way of cornering the issue so that people won’t be able to use the argument that the population of Lagoa Santa is a fluke.” in addition to the independent work carried out by Argentinean anthropologist Rolando González-José who found the same Lagoa Santa morphology among 16th century Mexican Indians the USP team has identified these features in Chile in the Ribeira Valley in the São Paulo inner-state area and among the botocudo Indian tribe that occupied central Brazil during colonial times it was still necessary to learn where the important population of Piauí whose earliest representative with a preserved skull was Zuzu This is where Niède’s invitation to Neves and his collaborators to examine the skull came into the story There had already been doubts as to Zuzu’s sex for some time Although a DNA analysis performed in 2002 tended to indicate it was female the artifacts found with the skeleton gave rise to doubts “The burial included a number of stone artifacts a former student of Neves and now a researcher in Chile with the North Catholic University and the San Pedro de Atacama Archeological Museum “These artifacts theoretically lend strength to the idea that it’s a man’s skeleton” who co-authored the analysis presented in an article soon to be published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology In addition to the artifacts that were believed to be for the exclusive use of men previous anthropological analysis suggested that Zuzu might be just a man whose bone structure was not very strong Hubbe and Neves have reviewed details taken mainly from the skull and the pelvis They have also compared the similarities between the skull from Piauí and those of natives from five continents The results showed a close association between Zuzu’s skull and those of Paleo-Indians from Colombia and Lagoa Santa Australian aborigines and Easter Island natives Niède was not surprised by the results of the analysis which attributed aboriginal traits to Zuzu similar to those of the Lagoa Santa people “Lagoa Santa is not that far from the north of Minas Gerais and the São Francisco River As these groups lived by hunting and gathering food they could easily have spread throughout the whole territory” “With the work we’ve done we’ve practically exhausted the investigation of the available skeletons of Paleo-Indians from South America Were finally making progress in convincing the international scientific community that two groups with different physical characteristics must have entered the continent” From the morphological point of view the skeleton really does seem to be that of a male Neves praises the willingness of his colleagues from Piauí in their joint work “Niède was extremely open to cooperation” it is still necessary to define whether a new DNA analysis will be performed on Zuzu to eliminate any doubts about whether this was a man or a woman which is important information to discover if there were ritual differences between the burial of men and women “This discussion is now down to the physical anthropologists” “If they think it’s necessary we’ll do the analysis.” © Revista Pesquisa 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