Salsassin Wrote:
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> Also Lucia, the skull found in Brazil. I still
> suspect admixture of these people did occur with
> other native American groups and they are still
> alive and kicking. Possibly explains the Olmecs a
> lil better as well?

Oh, there is proof of admixture..... the only question is whether they were a different stock in the first place, or whether the "admixture" was among differentiated sub-populations all equally descended from the same first arrivals.

The PaleoIndian Lagoa Santa people (Luzia's folk) overlap American Indian & East Asian features MORE than they do anybody else. And there is an Indian tribe called the Botocudo, from the same region of Brazil that the Lagoa Santa remains were found, who are described as having originally (the tribe has no fullbloods nowadays, but they DO have a good collection of older crania from fullblooded tribal members) been close matches for Lagoa Santa. I've REALLY wondered why Walter Neves didn't include them in his craniometric comparisons......

The Pericu of Baja California (only "recently" killed off, by the Spanish) show strong craniometric affinities to the Lagoa Santa paleoIndians, AND even closer ones to PaleoIndian (like Penon Woman) Archaic era samples from the Valley of Mexico. These PaleoIndian/Archaic samples, in turn, closely match modern Aztec samples. (Can you spell "biological continuity?")

Heh, something to recall is that if you don't sample the most related groups, OF COURSE you won't neccessarily "find" local affinities in your studies. The big fuss over Luzia & her kin came about because they were compared MOSTLY to Old World peoples..... & the Australian/Melanesian/Negrito/African (depending on who you asked) affinities were thus noted. This was in the context of claiming a "different" origin for them than for other "Mongoloid-type" Native Americans (who aren't actually mongoloid, but that's another story). Less mentioned, even today, is that the Lagoa Santa people (AND the Pericu) match up to other Native American tribes MUCH more closely than they match anybody in the Old World..... WHEN you use a decent sampling of Native American populations in the studies!

So, irregardless of whether several different populations migrated to the New World, or whether a single population came over and fragmented (sub-groups differentiating in isolation), the various "different types" of PaleoIndians all mixed together & modern Native Americans are ALL descended from ALL of them, to varying degrees depending on geographic location.

BTW, every single DNA study of PaleoIndian remains HAS revealed the common Native American mtDNA haplogroups. DNA studies haven't yet been completed on the Pericu per se, but we DO have them on a closely related tribe (much intermarriage, lived just north of them) called the Guaycura & for MANY surrounding tribes. The data reveals a SOLID cline of admixture, with no genetic discontinuities between the Pericu and any of their neighbors. Fuegians & Patagonians have also been claimed to show affinities to Lagoa Santa, and we DO have DNA studies on those. "Surprise" (not!)...... they possessed only the "normal" Native American mtDNA haplogroups.

Etc, etc. The fact is that American Indians are quite variable, and while you CAN find "extreme forms" here & there that don't match people's stereotypes of what Indians should look like, you ALSO find intermediates linking the extremes to the rest of the Native American population.

BTW, the Olmec don't need explaining. Their skeletons, and those of their modern descendants, are typically MesoAmerican. The only "anomaly" is the features depicted on some of their sculptures.... and those are easily explained as either 1) rare features fully documented in various American Indian populations, 2) artistic license.... a stylized way of depicting deified rulers and mythical personages, or 3) Structural limitations, certain constraints are placed on you when you're carving basalt boulders WITHOUT modern steel tools, the result tends to be "rounded off".

Sincerely,

Kenuchelover.