Morpho-geometric functional analysis of New World cranial samples and the distribution of the Paleoamerican morphological pattern.

JOSÉ ROLANDO, GONZÁLEZ; ABADÍAS NEUS, MARTÍNEZ; SARDI MARINA,; GONZÁLEZ MARTÍN, ANTONIO; VAN DER MOLEN, SILVINA; ROZZI FERNANDO, RAMÍREZ; HERNÁNDEZ MIQUEL,; PUCCIARELLI HÉCTOR,

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Wiley International

Lugar: Hoboken; Año: 2004 vol. 123 p. 101 - 102

0002-9483

The debate about the settlement of the America usually focuses on the lack of morphological affinities between early Holocene human remains (Palaeoamericans) and modern Amerindian groups, as well as the degree of contribution of the formers to the gene pool of the latters. It is suggested that the pattern of craniofacial affinities in the Americas is the result of a double migratory event: a first migration of Palaeoamericans which were originated in an ancestral population inhabiting southern Asia in pre-glacial times, and a second migration of the so-called Mongoloids, from which derived much of the modern Amerindians. Under this hypothetical scenario, detection of relict groups deriving from the former Palaeoamerican population is expectable somewhere in the New World. Cranial samples consisting of digitized images in lateral view were analyzed for twelve groups of modern Amerindians, Asiatics, and Australians, and Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene remains from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Statistical analysis was focused on the observation of within and between-group variability of specific functional components of the skull by means of geometric-morphometric techniques. Results showed that some modern Amerindian groups, like those from Baja California peninsula in Mexico, shows clear affinities with Palaeoamericans and Late Pleistocene Asian and African skulls, rather than with modern Amerindians. Climatic changes during the middle Holocene probably generated the isolation conditions which restricted the gene flow between Baja California inhabitants and Northern populations, which resulted in the temporal continuity of the Palaeoamerican traits to the present.