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Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California

Nature volume 425, pages 62–65 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

A current issue on the settlement of the Americas refers to the lack of morphological affinities between early Holocene human remains (Palaeoamericans) and modern Amerindian groups, as well as the degree of contribution of the former to the gene pool of the latter1,2,3,4,5,6. A different origin for Palaeoamericans and Amerindians is invoked to explain such a phenomenon3. Under this hypothesis, the origin of Palaeoamericans must be traced back to a common ancestor for Palaeoamericans and Australians, which departed from somewhere in southern Asia and arrived in the Australian continent and the Americas around 40,000 and 12,000 years before present, respectively. Most modern Amerindians are believed to be part of a second, morphologically differentiated migration3. Here we present evidence of a modern Amerindian group from the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico, showing clearer affinities with Palaeoamerican remains than with modern Amerindians. Climatic changes during the Middle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolation from the continent, restricting the gene flow of the original group with northern populations, which resulted in the temporal continuity of the Palaeoamerican morphological pattern to the present.

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Figure 1: Results concerning the multivariate analysis of Howells variables.
Figure 2: Geometric morphometric comparisons of BCS, TLAT and Palaeoamericans.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank personnel and authorities of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia (México), and Musée de l'Homme (France) for their collaboration during the data acquisition. We thank P. Nepomnaschy, C. O'Connor, and J. Garrett for comments on the manuscript. We are also indebted to E. Ozolins who made available his data on Palaeoamerican series. This work was partially funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Biologia, Secció d'Antropologia, Diagonal 645, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Rolando González-José & Miquel Hernández

  2. Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, Área Académica de Historia y Antropología, 42000, Pachuca, México

    Antonio González-Martín

  3. Departamento Científico de Antropología del Museo de La Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 1900, La Plata, Argentina

    Héctor M. Pucciarelli & Marina Sardi

  4. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro INAH Baja California Sur, 23000, La Paz, México

    Alfonso Rosales

  5. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Ciències, BAVE, Unitat de Zoologia 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Silvina Van der Molen

Authors
  1. Rolando González-José
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  2. Antonio González-Martín
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  3. Miquel Hernández
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  4. Héctor M. Pucciarelli
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  6. Alfonso Rosales
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Correspondence to Rolando González-José.

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Supplementary information

41586_2003_BFnature01816_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Table and Figures: Further archaeological information in reference to the Baja California Sur skeletal materials. (PDF 1031 kb)

41586_2003_BFnature01816_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Table and Figures: Illustrating the results of a Relative Warp Analysis performed on the BCS, TLAT, and PAL samples. (PDF 228 kb)

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González-José, R., González-Martín, A., Hernández, M. et al. Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California. Nature 425, 62–65 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01816

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