Early Holocene human remains from the Argentinean Pampas: cranial variation in South America and the American peopling

MENÉNDEZ, L.; PUCCIARELLI, H.; BONOMO, M.; MESSINEO, P.; GONZALEZ, M.; POLITIS, G; PEREZ I.

PaleoAmerica

Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

Lugar: Texas; Año: 2015 vol. 1 p. 251 - 265

2055-5563

Morphological comparisons between the earliest and latest human skeletons of America have suggested the existence of a complex scenario underlying the biological diversification of American populations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Florentino Ameghino initiated the debate on the antiquity of humans of the Argentinean Pampas. The importance of Argentinean Pampas has been reviewed recently to discuss the diversification of American populations due to recent radiocarbon dates obtained from nine samples of human bones studied by Ameghino and other Argentinean researchers. Morphometric analyses from these Argentinean Pampas samples are presented together with other early samples from Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. All early samples were compared with late Holocene samples by region. Results showed that while there is no clear separation between early and late samples from Chile, the samples from Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina show more pronounced differences. Argentinean Pampas samples present the largest morphological variation when plotted against other early American samples. However, the hypotheses that the morphological differences between early and late American samples are related to migration, drift, natural selection or other processes are difficult to support using cranial morphometric differences alone. Future studies need to consider more evidence (e.g., archaeological, molecular, among others) combined.