Skulls Enliven Debate on Earliest Americans

Skulls enliven debate on earliest Americans Ancient tribe's roots differ from those of modern natives, researchers say

By ANNE McILROY SCIENCE REPORTER Thursday, September 4, 2003 - Page A3

They had short, narrow faces distinctly different from old. It predated other evidence of people in North America North American native people and their ancestors. by a full millennium, but unfortunately he found no skulls or other human remains to examine. Researchers have analyzed 33 skulls from a tribe that lived in isolation in Mexico from 200 to 2,700 years ago and But other discoveries -- about a dozen different skulls more have found that they are similar to those of ancient than 11,000 years old in different parts of South America -- Australians. provided evidence that people very different from modern North American natives may have arrived here first. "They are clearly very different," said Rolando González- José, a researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain The skulls had long, narrow brain cases and short, thin who did the in-depth analysis of the skulls, comparing them faces, similar to ancient skulls from southern parts of Asia to other samples from around the world. and the Pacific Rim. If they were part of the same group that arrived in North America about 11,500 years ago, they Who were they? would have had to travel extremely quickly to establish themselves in the Amazon basin and other remote areas. Dr. González-José argues that they may have been the direct descendants of Paleoamericans, a relatively modern Archeologists have dubbed these people Paleoamericans, group that is said to have arrived in North America 15,000 but because so few skulls have been found it is difficult to years ago, long before the ancestors of modern native draw any conclusions about who they were or how they people. may have interacted with the migrants from northeast Asia who successfully populated North America before Europeans arrived. His study, published in today's edition of the journal Nature, adds to the growing evidence that the early settlement of North America was a far more complex story The Paleoamerican theory is controversial because, to than researchers had long believed. some, it may imply that modern native people do not have the same claim to territory and status that they now enjoy, if they were not the first ones on the land. "Their findings lend weight to the view that not all early American populations were directly related to present-day native Americans," said Tom Dillehay, a researcher with Scientists are still in a legal battle with native bands in the University of Kentucky who wrote an explanatory Washington state to examine a 9,300-year-old skeleton article on the discovery for the scientific journal. known as Kennewick Man. It has features that are different from North American native people and their ancestors. For more than 50 years, archeologists and anthropologists argued that the first North Americans were from northeast Dr. González-José was intrigued by the notion that distinct Asia and came over a land bridge between Siberia and populations of Paleoamericans might have continued to live Alaska about 11,500 years ago. They believed that those in isolation long after the waves of migrants from northeast people moved south through an inland corridor between the Asia arrived. giant glaciers and ice sheets that covered much of Canada. He had heard rumours about the strange morphology of a Ancient North American skulls, reconstructed from collection of skulls at the Regional Museum of La Paz and fragments, were the same as skulls from early inhabitants the National Museum of Anthropology and History in of northeast Asia and from present-day Indians. Mexico, and decided to see if they were similar to Researchers concluded the early migrants were the Paleoamericans. They were, but he conceded that there ancestors of modern North American native groups. could be an alternative explanation. The tribe may have evolved distinct physical characteristics The theory that the northeast Asians arrived first took a because its members lived alone for many years in what is blow in 1977, when Dr. Dillehay found the remnants of a now Baja California, a place where plants and animals also settlement in Monte Verde, Chile, that was 12,500 years evolved differently than in the rest of Mexico.