A study of skulls of early people in South America suggests that there were multiple waves of migration into the New World more than 10,000 years ago.

Credit: Mauricio de Paiva

Wide variation in the skull shape of modern South American people has triggered debate over whether this results from rapid changes after the arrival of people in the region, or from successive migrations that introduced diversity. Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel at the University at Buffalo in New York and her colleagues compared the shape of Palaeoamerican crania (pictured) from the Lagoa Santa site in Brazil with those from modern populations. The team used the data to develop a model of ancestry, and found that the most recent common ancestor of the Palaeoamericans and contemporary Native American groups lived outside the Americas.

This adds weight to the theory that people moved into the Americas at many different times from northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge.

Sci. Adv. 3, e1602289 (2017)