The settlement of the New World as inferred from craniofacial and genomic Data: a critical review.

GONZÁLEZ JOSÉ, ROLANDO

Simposio; DFG Center Symposium 2016: New Perspectives on the Peopling of the Americas.; 2016

During the last years, a very prolific research on DNA extracted from ancient and modern specimens from the New World and Asian has fueled the debate regarding the timing of the America´s settlement and the affinities among both, extant and extinct populations. The advantages of phylogenetically structured and genome-wide genetic markers extracted from a growing sample of human remains provide a powerful avenue to decipher affinities and infer past evolutionary processes. However, most interpretations try to expand the settlement scenarios inferred from genetic evidence to explain patterns of craniofacial variation. In this presentation I will argue that, due to the intrinsic complexity of craniofacial phenotypes, direct and simplistic extrapolations of genetic patterns to skeleton data are not always accurate. Recent studies on genome-wide association studies of craniofacial phenotypes, as well as Evo-Devo theoretical and empirical advances, suggest that such complex phenotypes respond to microevolutionary forces in ways that cannot be compared to genomic data on a ?model-free? way. Here I present some original data regarding novel, Evo-Devo derived approaches to 3D craniofacial data. Also, I will discuss some integrative approaches that are based on a strict definition of ?interdisciplinary research on complex systems?, and can be seen as a proper and more realistic way to integrate evidence from different markers.