Craniometric evidence for Palaeoamerican survival in Baja California (original) (raw)

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

$199.00 per year

only $3.90 per issue

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Additional access options:

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Neves, W. A. & Pucciarelli, H. M. Morphological affinities of the first Americans: an exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains. J. Hum. Evol. 21, 261–273 (1991)
    Article Google Scholar
  2. Powell, J. F. & Neves, W. A. Craniofacial morphology of the first Americans: pattern and process in the peopling of the New World. Yearb. Phys. Anthropol. 42, 153–188 (1999)
    Article Google Scholar
  3. Neves, W. A., Powell, J. F. & Ozolins, E. G. Extra-continental morphological affinities of Lapa Vermelha IV, Hominid 1: A multivariate analysis with progressive numbers of variables. Homo 50, 263–282 (1999)
    Google Scholar
  4. Neves, W. A., Powell, J. F. & Ozolins, E. G. Extra-continental morphological affinities of Palli-Aike, Southern Chile. Interciencia 24, 258–263 (1999)
    Google Scholar
  5. González-José, R., Dahinten, S. L., Luis, M. A., Hernández, M. & Pucciarelli, H. M. Craniometric variation and the settlement of the Americas: testing hypotheses by means of R matrix and matrix permutation tests. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 116, 154–166 (2001)
    Article Google Scholar
  6. González-José, R., Neves, W., Hernández, M., Pucciarelli, H. & Correal, C. Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene skulls from Mexico demonstrate the existence of the Paleoamerican morphological pattern in Mesoamerica. (submitted).
  7. Willey, G. R. An Introduction to American Archaeology (Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1966)
    Google Scholar
  8. Rosales-López, A. & Fujita, H. La Antigua California Prehispánica: la Vida Costera en El Conchalito (INAH, México, 2000)
    Google Scholar
  9. Howells, W. W. Cranial Variation in Man (Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts, 1973)
    Google Scholar
  10. Relethford, J. H. & Blangero, J. Detection of differential gene flow from patterns of quantitative variation. Hum. Biol. 62, 5–25 (1990)
    CAS PubMed Google Scholar
  11. Relethford, J. H. & Harpending, H. C. Craniometric variation, genetic theory and modern human origins. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 95, 249–270 (1994)
    Article CAS Google Scholar
  12. Williams-Blangero, S. & Blangero, J. Anthropometric variation and the genetic structure of the Jirels of Nepal. Hum. Biol. 61, 1–12 (1989)
    CAS PubMed Google Scholar
  13. Relethford, J. H., Crawford, M. H. & Blangero, J. Genetic drift and gene-flow in post famine Ireland. Hum. Biol. 69, 443–465 (1997)
    CAS PubMed Google Scholar
  14. Bookstein, F. L. Principal warps—Thin-Plate Splines and the decomposition of deformations. Trans. Pat. Anal. Mac. Intel. 11, 567–585 (1989)
    Article Google Scholar
  15. Goodall, C. R. Procrustes methods in the statistical analysis of shape. J. R. Stat. Soc. B. 53, 285–339 (1991)
    MathSciNet MATH Google Scholar
  16. Rohlf, F. J. Shape statistics: Procrustes superimpositions and tangent spaces. J. Classif. 16, 197–223 (1999)
    Article Google Scholar
  17. Dryden, I. L. & Mardia, K. V. Statistical Shape Analysis (Wiley, Chichester, 1998)
    MATH Google Scholar
  18. Lahr, M. M. The Evolution of Modern Human Diversity. A Study of Cranial Variation (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1996)
    Google Scholar
  19. Relethford, J. H. Apportionment of global human genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 118, 393–398 (2002)
    Article Google Scholar
  20. Sparks, C. S. & Jantz, R. L. A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 14636–14639 (2002)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
  21. González-José, R., Van der Molen, S., González-Pérez, E. & Hernández, M. Patterns of phenotypic covariation and correlation in modern humans as viewed from morphological integration. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. (in the press)
  22. Bradley, R. S. Paleoclimatology: Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary (Academic, San Diego, 1999)
    Google Scholar
  23. Haberle, S. Late Quaternary vegetation and climate history of the Amazon Basin: correlating marine and terrestrial pollen records. Proc. Ocean Drilling Prog. Sci. Res. 155, 381–396 (1997)
    Google Scholar
  24. Baker, P. A. et al. The history of South American Tropical precipitation for the past 25,000 years. Science 291, 640–643 (2001)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
  25. Grismer, L. Evolutionary biogeography on Mexico's Baja California peninsula: a synthesis of molecules and historical geology. Proc. Natl Acad Sci. USA 97, 14017–14018 (2000)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
  26. Riddle, B. R., Hafner, D. J., Alexander, L. F. & Jaeger, J. R. Cryptic vicariance in the historical assembly of a Baja California Peninsular desert biota. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 14438–14443 (2000)
    Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
  27. Dixon, E. J. Human colonization of the Americas: timing, chronology and process. Quat. Sci. Rev. 20, 277–299 (2001)
    Article ADS Google Scholar
  28. Slice, D. E. Morpheus et al. software for morphometric research. Revision 01-30-98 (Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1998).
  29. Sheets, H. D. Integrated Morphometrics Package (Department of Geology, SUNY at Buffalo, New York, 2001).
  30. Howells, W. W. Skull Shapes and the Map (Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts, 1989)
    Google Scholar

Download references

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.

Author information

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
  2. Antonio González-Martín
  3. Miquel Hernández
  4. Héctor M. Pucciarelli
  5. Marina Sardi
  6. Alfonso Rosales
  7. Silvina Van der Molen

Corresponding author

Correspondence toRolando González-José.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

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

Download citation

This article is cited by

Associated content