LUZIA - Second Oldest Human Skeleton Ever Found In The Americas

Andaman.org ^ | 12-2003

[blam]

The Lagoa Santa (or "Luzia") Group (Minas Gerais, Brasil)

A skull belonging to a roughly 20 year old woman was unearthed in Brazil by the French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire in the 1970s. She died before being able to do much work on her dicovery.

Annette Laming-Emperaire at work in her Lapa Vermelha excavation.

The skull was later re-discovered by Brazilian Prof. Walter Neves and analyzed. He also excavated more remains in the same cemetery-like site where the original "Luzia" had been found. Neves named the ancient lady "Luzia" in analogy to the famous and much older African "Lucy" - the press and a wider public much preferred the new name to the skull's cumbersome official designation "Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1".

The face of "Luzia" was reconstructed using modern forensic methods and its morphology painstakingly analyzed by craniometric measurements. The reconstruction brought to light and and the measurements confirmed that "Luzia" was not a mongoloid Amerindian but had features indicating a possibly Australoid or southeast Asian ancestry. When it was dated to around 11,500 to 12,500 years ago (the oldest human remains found so far in the Americas), the sensation was perfect.

Since Luzia's discovery, at least 50 similarly un-mongoloid Palaeoamerican remains have been found in the Lagoa Santa area near where "Luzia" herself was found. They all seem to have been buried within a small area that may have been a cemetery. This rises the intriguing question of whether the Lagoa Santa population at this early time was perhaps already settled in a specific area and perhaps even no longer just hunter-gatherers. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the Lagoa Santa people that cry out for further research.

The craniometric analysis of the skulls found later confirms that "Luzia" was not a single aberrant individual but belonged to an established population with apparently southeast Asian characteristics. "Luzia" herself is now in the National Museum at Rio de Janeiro while most of the other finds are stored at the Natural History Museum, Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais.

Her investigators think of "Luzia" as Australoid. She could be. However, at the Andaman Association we cannot help thinking that the Lagoa Santa people look more Negritoid than Australoid in the way her facial features have been reconstructed (see picture above). Our president, George Weber, says that his own spontaneous reaction to seeing the restored face of "Luzia" for the first time was an astonished "my God! an Onge woman in Brazil!"

If Luzia was indeed Negritoid, it would do away with the somewhat unlikely crossing of the Pacific at such an early date as well as with the enormous return trek by Australians from Australia via Siberia and Alaska into the Americas (a lot of which would have led through their left-behind cousins' hunting territories).There is evidence that both modern Australians and modern Negritos (along with Melanesians, Papuans, Veddoids and some others) come from the same original immigrant stock and are thus distantly related. The wanderings of the Americans-to-be would most likely have taken them along the coast of China and Japan (which was not an island then).

It would be interesting to hear of some evidence, however scant, linking an Amerindian group with the area. Such evidence does indeed exist: a study among the living Cayapa (Chachi) of Ecuador indicates some molecular similarities of Japanese and Southeast Asians populations - similarities that are absent in northeast Asians (Trachtenberg E.A. et al, 1995. "HLA Class II Linkage Disequilibrium and Haplotype Evolution in the Cayapa Indians of Ecuador", American Journal of Human Genetics 57:415-424).

Those wishing to delve deeper into this subject could do worse than read Thomas D. Dillehay's book "The Settlement of the Americas" (published 2000 by Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-07668-8) or watch the documentary of 1999 "Tracking the first Americans," by Jean-Claude Bragard, BBC Manchester, The Learning Channel.

For detailed study of the subject there are Prof. Neve's and his collaborators' reports:

Neves W.A . and Pucciarelli H.M. 1991. "Morphological Affinities of the First Americans: an exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains". Journal of Human Evolution 21:261-273

Powell J.F. and Neves W.A . 1999. "Craniofacial morphology of the first Americans: pattern and process in thepeopling of the New World". Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 42:153-188

Neves W.A ., Powell J.F. and Ozolins E.G. 1999. "Extra-continental morphological affinities of Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1: A multivariate analysis with progressive numbers of variables. Homo 50:263-268

Neves W.A ., Powell J.F. and Ozolins E.G. 1999. "Extra-continental morphological affinities of Palli-Aike, Southern Chile". Interciencia 24:258-263

[Varda]

I think most peoples move around if they can. The Ice age melts probably did displace people as well as opening up new territory for colonization. One things for sure, southeast Asia is an important area full of surprises.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

[taxesareforever]

"Negritoid" means southeast Asian not African. I had a book from Indonesia that had a number of pictures of the native "Negritos". They really do look African but actually are one of the populations of people with the most genetic distance from Africa.

Well I stand corrected. However, in my statement I should replace the "black race" with Asian. Now the Asians should have the benefit of being the Native Americans.

[blam]

"There was a report on CNN today about some stone tools and animal remains found in the Midwest that were in a level dated to 50,000 BP."

I believe you're talking about the Topper site in South Carolina that has been the news for the last couple days.
Check out the below link, 169 complete skeletons and 90 intact brains that contain the oldest DNA in the world. (According to the article)

Bye, Bye Beringia (8,000 Year-Old- Site In Florida)

These ancient mummies in Florida have 'European' DNA...according to a documentary I saw about this on TV.

[SunkenCiv]

thanks blam for the ping and the topic.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

Ooooh, thanks also for that one.

[B.Bumbleberry]

Thanks for the link about Windover.

[bert]

You might be right. The pygmy in the White Housecould be related

[SunkenCiv]

This topic was posted 11/18/2004, thanks again blam.