Lapa vermelha IV Hominid 1: morphological affinities of the earliest known American

Abstract

Several studies concerning the extra-continental morphological affinities of Paleo-Indian skeletons, carried out independently in South and North America, have indicated that the Americas were first occupied by non-Mongoloids that made their way to the New World through the Bering Strait in ancient times. The first South Americans show a clear resemblance to modern South Pacific and African populations, while the first North Americans seem to be at an unresolved morphological position between modern South Pacific and Europeans. In none of these analyses the first Americans show any resemblance to either northeast Asians or modern native Americans. So far, these studies have included affirmed and putative early skeletons thought to date between 8,000 and 10,000 years B.P. In this work the extra-continental morphological affinities of a Paleo-Indian skeleton well dated between 11,000 and 11,500 years B.P. (Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1, or "Luzia") is investigated, using as comparative samples Howells' (1989) world-wide modern series and Habgood's (1985) Old World Late Pleistocene fossil hominids. The comparison between Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 and Howells' series was based on canonical variate analysis, including 45 size-corrected craniometric variables, while the comparison with fossil hominids was based on principal component analysis, including 16 size-corrected variables. In the first case, Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 exhibited an undisputed morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the second comparison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology.

Genetic relationships among native americans based on beta-globin gene cluster haplotype frequencies

“…These haplotypes were probably brought to America by the first settlers of the continent, given that they are also common in Asia, the probable place of origin of the first migrants, and in the islands of the South Pacific, from where additional immigrants may have come (Salzano and Callegari-Jacques, 1988;Nei and Roychoudhury, 1993;Ward et al, 1991;Horai et al, 1993;Neves et al, 1998). According to this scheme, haplotypes 2, 5, and 6 would have originated directly from the ancestral type, possibly haplotype 1 (Chen et al, 1990 andLong et al, 1990) or haplotype 3 (Vincek et al, 1994), or from another firstorder haplotype (1 or 4).…”

O mito da homogeneidade biológica na população paleoíndia de Lagoa Santa: implicações antropológicas

“…Para legitimar essa afirmação, basta relembrar aqui apenas dois eventos, cronologicamente extremos, a eles ligados: a proposição de Lund (1844) de que esses esqueletos, por estarem associados à megafauna extinta, eram de grande antiguidade, sugerindo a presença do homem no Novo Mundo pelo menos a partir do final do Pleistoceno -coisa impensável à sua época -, e a recente demonstração de que o esqueleto humano mais antigo até o momento conhecido na América, popularizado por um de nós (WAN) como "Luzia", exumado nos anos 1974-1975 da Lapa Vermelha IV, como de resto toda a população paleoíndia de Lagoa Santa, mostra grande afinidade morfológica com os atuais africanos e australianos, sem prejuízo a uma origem asiática (Neves et al, 1998;1999a;1999b;. Diferentemente desses estudos de impacto internacional, que ocuparam os extremos cronológicos do final do século XIX/início do sécu-lo XX e final do século XX/início do século XXI, os estudos relativos a esses importantes remanescentes ósseos humanos, desenvolvidos neste intervalo por bioantropólogos brasileiros, não lograram ultrapassar os limites do consumo doméstico.…”

Riqueza e diversidade de aves aquáticas de uma lagoa natural no sudeste do Brasil

“…Embora a APA LS seja internacionalmente reconhecida como uma das localidades mais importantes da América do Sul sob os pontos de vista botânico (WARMING 1908), arqueológi-co (NEVES et al 1998) e paleontológico (CARTELLE 1994), pouca ênfase vem sendo dada ao sistema cárstico como um todo. A região abriga um sistema complexo de mais de 60 lagoas conectadas por canais subterrâneos naturais.…”