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Mexican Zapotec Native American Indian history - page 3 of 7

Skull measurements on the remains of an isolated group of people who lived at the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California have also stirred up the debate on the identity of the first Americans. These early inhabitants of North America also differed subtly but significantly from modern Native Americans, since they also have the longer, narrower skulls.

Anthropologists once assumed the earliest Americans resembled modern Native Americans. That changed with the discovery of a 10,500-year-old skeleton called Luzia in Brazil, the 9000-year-old skeleton of Kennewick man in Washington state, and the dating of a 13,000 year old skull of a 26 year old woman called Peñon III, found on the shores of Lake Texcoco in the valley of Mexico. All have the long, narrow skulls that more resemble those of modern Australians and Africans than modern Native Americans, or the people living in northern Asia, who are thought to be Native Americans' closest relatives. Some researchers previously argued these were simply unusual individuals, but scientists have now identified the same features in recent remains from the Baja California.

Rolando González-José, of the University of Barcelona, Spain, reasons the formation of the Sonora desert isolated the Pericú hunter-gatherers for thousands of years. DNA evidence suggests that early immigrants, the Pericú, an extinct tribe of Baja California, are more closely related to the ancient populations of southern Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific Rim, than to other Native Americans and peoples of the North Pacific Rim. The Pericú survived until just a few hundred years ago at the end of the Baja peninsula, but they vanished when Europeans disrupted their culture. González-José measured 33 Pericú skulls and found their features were similar to those of the ancient Brazilian skulls. This supports the idea that a first wave of long, narrow skulled people from southeast Asia colonized the Americas about 14,000 years ago, and were followed by a second wave of people from northeast Asia about 11,000 years ago, who had short skulls. The idea that the Pericú represent an earlier, more southerly migration by boat or along the coast to the Americas is quite plausible. For one thing, all of the very early humans found in the Americas seem more closely to resemble Austronesians and Ainu than later American Indians; a distinct migration would explain this.

Joseph Powell, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, is not convinced. He thinks the earliest Americans did come from southeast Asia, but believes they evolved into modern Native Americans, since even with two waves; each would have changed over the past 10,000 to 12,000 years, through adaptation and microevolution. The theory a first wave of long, narrow skulled people from southeast Asia; however, has been championed by Walter Neves, at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He believes the second wave of immigrants may have been larger, and eventually came to dominate the Americas. Neves argues the change in skull shape after 8000 years ago is too sudden to be explained by evolution.

One theory is two distinct groups of people migrated to North America at different times; another theory, only one population reached the continent and, excepting a few isolated groups, different physical attributes eventually evolved.

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