Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California.

JOSÉ ROLANDO, GONZÁLEZ; GONZÁLEZ MARTÍN, ANTONIO; HERNÁNDEZ MIQUEL,; PUCCIARELLI HÉCTOR,; SARDI MARINA,; ROSALES ANTONIO,; VAN DER MOLEN, SILVINA

NATURE

Nature Publishing Group

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2003 vol. 425 p. 62 - 65

0028-0836

A current issue on the America’s settlement refers to the lack of morphological affinities between early Holocene human remains and the modern Amerindian groups, as well as the degree of contribution of the formers to the gene pool of the latter. A different origin for Paleoamericans and modern Amerindians is invoked to explain such a phenomenon. Under this hypothesis, the origin of Paleoamericans must be traced back to a common ancestor for Paleoamericans and Australians, which departing somewhere in southern Asia, achieved the Australian continent and the Americas around 40,000 and 12,000 ybp respectively. The majority of modern Amerindians are believed to be part of a second morphologically differentiated migration, characterized by a set of “Mongoloid” traits.  Here we present the first evidence of a modern Amerindian group from the Baja California peninsula in Mexico, showing clear affinities with Paleoamerican remains, rather than with modern Amerindians, even with their most neighbouring groups.  Our results suggest that climatic changes during the middle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolation from the continent, restricting the gene flow of the original group with northern populations, and resulting in the temporal continuity of the Paleoamerican morphological pattern until nowadays.