Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California

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

NATURE

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Año: 2003 vol. 425 p. 62 - 65

0028-0836

A current issue on the settlement of the Americas refers to thelack of morphological affinities between early Holocene humanremains (Palaeoamericans) and modern Amerindian groups, aswell as the degree of contribution of the former to the gene poolof the latter1–6. A different origin for Palaeoamericans andAmerindians is invoked to explain such a phenomenon3. Underthis hypothesis, the origin of Palaeoamericans must be tracedback to a common ancestor for Palaeoamericans and Australians,which departed from somewhere in southern Asia and arrived inthe Australian continent and the Americas around 40,000and 12,000 years before present, respectively. Most modernAmerindians are believed to be part of a second, morphologicallydifferentiated migration3. Here we present evidence of a modernAmerindian group from the Baja California Peninsula inMexico, showing clearer affinities with Palaeoamerican remainsthan with modern Amerindians. Climatic changes during theMiddle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolationfrom the continent, restricting the gene flowof the original groupwith northern populations, which resulted in the temporalcontinuity of the Palaeoamerican morphological pattern to thepresent.