On the Lagoa Santa skull: fake / hoax?

While writing yesterday's post on the Diprothomo skull, I revisited an old post about the Lagoa Santa skull, a calotte with heavy brow ridges and a thick bone structure (pictured below). While reading it I came across its closing comments, that suggested it was a hoax. In this post I will delve deeper into that possibility.

Lagoa Santa, skull with thick brow ridges

The original comment read: "Notice how thick the bones are! Definitively primitive and erectus-like. Actually, comparing it with the photograph of Diprothomo they look very similar" And continued with the remark about the skull being fake: "I would love to end the post here but, the source that provides the photograph shown above goes on to mention another paper Investigation of a fossilized calotte from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, by EDXRF by Anjos, Lopes and Souza (2005) that reproduces a calotte from Lagoa Santa that is identical to the one in the photographe above and which, disclosed after an X-Ray study that it "had been mounted with pieces from different origins", meaning that it is a fake."

Some context and background: an unusual human skullcap discovered in Brazil was first described by Dr. Alan Lyle Bryan, of the University of Alberta. It had been found in the Lagoa Santa / Sumidouro region in 1958 by Harold Victor Walter (1887-1976) who was the British consul in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Bryan examined it and took some photographs in 1970. Then the skull got lost. It has a primitive apparance ant the anthropologists who saw the pictures thought that it was a fake, or, alternatively it could have been a cast or a fossil from an Old World hominin that somehow had got misplaced with genuine Brazilian specimens in the museum. But Bryan said that he had seen it, and that it wasn't a fake, it was genuine. He did, however, note that it was very different from the other crania found in Lagoa Santa, suggesting perhaps an ancestor or older lineage from which the later Lagoa Santa people had evolved.

Update — 2026

A 1985 paper by Richard A. Rogers and Larry D. Martin (Paleoindian Studies and the Disappearance of Collected Material, Current Research in the Pleistocene, vol 2, p.58) addressed the issue of lost or misplaced archaological samples, especially Paleoindian ones. It mentions the Lagoa Santa skull: "An important question in Paleoindian studies is whether some of the Pleistocene human immigrant populations had "Neanderthaloid" features. A highly mineralized human calotte with extremely large brow ridges and thick skull walls, was recovered from the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil. The specimen was photographed, but later become lost at the museum where it was stored (Bryan 1978:318). The Yuha skeleton has also disappeared... It is apparent that loss of material due to theft is a serious problem in Paleoindian studies and has already contributed to the slowing down of the acceptance of new ideas and data. The loss of such important data in the Western Hemisphere points up the need for special precautions to be taken with Paleoindian material. The material is either easily misplaced or attracts thieves." A conclusion that does not include deliberate hoaxes with fake specimens, or destruction of inconvenient samples by Clovis-First supporters.

I came across a paper (Taylor, 2009, Six Decades of Radiocarbon Dating in New World Archaeology), which states that the skull was a forgery: "It has subsequently been determined that the large brow ridges on this specimen had been faked (Anjos et al. 2005). According to information provided to M Beltrão, as reported in Beltrão et al. (2005), the thick ridges had been modeled on the cranium using a mixture of glue and plaster mixed with ground bone fragments and the resultant modeled surface was then painted to approximate the original color of the bone. At the time, it was viewed by Bryan, the facts associated with how the specimen had acquired its brow ridges apparently had not been known to the museum personnel and thus was not communicated to Bryan. This Logoa (sic) Santa skull might thus be regarded as the South American example of a “Piltdown-like” specimen."

The work of Marí Beltrão cited by Taylor is also co-authored by him: Beltrão M, Taylor RE, Kirner DL, Southon JR. 2005. Historical context and radiocarbon age of Lagoa Santa human populations in Brazil. In: Dillon DB, Johnson KL, editors. Onward and Upward: Papers in Honor of Clement W. Meighan. Lancaster: Labyinthos. p 257–64.

The other source, is the one I mentioned in my posts, Anjos, M.J., Lopes, R.T., Mendonça de Souza, S.M.F. and de Jesus, E.F.O. (2005), Investigation of a fossilized calotte from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, by EDXRF. X-Ray Spectrom., 34: 189-193. https://doi.org/10.1002/xrs.783 🔒. Unfortunately it his locked behind a paywall, but it is mentioned in a more recent work by Pereira de Freitas, R., 2021 (O Uso de técnicas físico-químicas de análise como suporte na conservacão, catalogacão e investigacão forense de acervos museológicos. Museologia & Interdisciplinaridade, 10 (Especial), 182-195. https://doi.org/10.26512/museologia.v10iEspecial.36104) who comments on Anjos' paper: "Anjos et al. (2005) analyzed an ancient fossilized skullcap belonging to the collection of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro using XRF. In analyzing this artifact, which the researchers believed to be authentic and directly related to the ancient civilizations that populated Brazilian territory, it was verified that the concentration of elements such as calcium (Ca) and strontium (Sr), which are the base materials of the skullcap, vary between regions. The results confirmed that the skullcap was actually assembled from parts of different materials, unrelated to the soil of the region where it was found."

This agrees with Anjos' abstract: "The origin of the component parts of a fossilized calotte (skull cap) from Lagoa Santa in Brazil was investigated by using energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence analysis. The specimen was irradiated with a miniaturized and low-power x-ray generator (2.25 W, tungsten anode). The calotte and rock samples from the two known sites have a similar chemical composition, especially rich in S, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Pb, Br, Rb and Sr. These elements are associated with the geological constitution of the limestone complex where the archaeological samples were found. The small differences in the relative amount of each element, especially the Ca/Sr ratio, in different parts of the calotte reinforce the hypothesis that the calotte had been mounted with pieces from different origins."

But if Anjos analyzed the skullcap in 2005, was it lost? Are we sure it is the same skull mentioned by Bryan? Also, they don't mention the plaster and ground bone or darkening paint that were added to the skull according to Beltrão. Maybe the skull studied by Anjos was a composite, legitimate, genuine, pieced together by mistake, but not the one that Bryan reported as lost.

Beltrão is a firm believer in the ancient peopling of America, and wrote several articles on the subject (see, for instance O Homem Pré-histórico há 300 Mil Anos no Brasil. Revista Geográfica Universal, 84-91, 1992 — Prehistoric Man in Brazil 300 thousand years ago). So, why would she be so critical about the Lagoa Santa calotte?

It seems that there was not one calotte, but two, from different sites! George Weber, 1984 mentions a lost calotte and a fake calotte (George Weber, Lagoa Santa sites (Minas Gerais, Brazil).

Weber cites Bryan A.L., and Beattie O.B., 1984 who wrote about the calotte (A Fossilized calotte with Prominent Browridges from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Current Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 3:345-346) as follows: They reported the excavations done by P.W. Lund in Sumidouro cave in the 1800s. Most of them were tinted red with ochre, but in a part of the cave he found black colored remains both animal and human, among them was the calotte that was later seen by Bryan and vanished by 1975. This is what Weber calls the Lost Calotte.

Then, separately, Weber describes the Fake Calotte which was reported by the EDXRF X-ray technique as "a fake. A very well-made fake cleverly put together from different pieces of unknown origin and antiquity, but still a fake. Seven different pieces were indentified through restoration marks."

Weber wonders if they are the same or different calottes: "What is not clear is whether the calotte outed as a forgery is the (very discreetly re-found) calotte reported as missing above, or another calotte that never wentd missing. Or what? The question one is left with in this confusion of calottes is: what IS it with calottes at Lagoa Santa and in Belo Horizonte Museums?"

What did Alan L. Bryan say about the calotte?

Alan Lyle Bryan, (1978) in his research article Early man in America from a circum-pacific perspective. Issue 1 of Occasional papers of the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. Archaeological Researches International, included photographs (below) of the calotte:

Bryan, after explaining the circumstances of his discovery (the calotte in the Belo Horizonte museum, and the reaction of his colleagues, who considered it improbable, and either a fake or a cast of a European hominin), adds that he discards the hoax option (see page 318 ) stating that "My wife Ruth Gruhn, and I have had considerable experience in handling human skeletal material and we are both positive that it was neither a fake nor a cast. It was a human skullcap, the frontal and both parietals, all sutures fused, highly mineralized, and stained black, the same color as a minority of fossilized animal bones in the Walter paleontological collection (most are stained red)."

Closing remarks

We don't necessarily need to imagine a hoax in the case of the mixed-bones skull. In fact the Sumidouro cave has a complex stratigraphy, which has been flooded many times over the millennia. Piló et al., 2005 mention that "Seasonal flooding reworked and mixed these two highly asynchronous assemblages [fauna and human remains] U-series and radiocarbon ages indicate that there are at least two distinct episodes of sediment input in the cave, at ˜240,000 yr B.P. and ˜8000 yr B.P. Human remains represent a later emplacement event, probably at ˜8400 cal yr B.P. Although the human remains are of considerable age, the cave's complex stratigraphy, flooding dynamics, and extensive removal of the cave's filling during earlier excavations do not allow the determination of an unequivocal co-existence between Paleo-Indians and extinct megafauna at the site" It could explain how different bones were mixed naturally inside the cave, and assembled as if they were of the same skull.

Finally, the use of ochre to stain the bones red in burials dating back to 9,400-9,600 years, as reported by Strauss et al., 2016 at Lagoa Santa, shows that Bryan was correct. The black-stained calotte must surely be older, when ochre was not used (or the ochre washed off the old bones). We should also point out that ochre was used, not only by humans, but also by Neanderthals (Roebroeks et al., 2012) 200 to 250 kya, and Homo erectus, as shown by Deino and McBrearty, 2022 reported its use at the Kapthurin site in Kenya, in sediments dated to 509-284 kya coexisting with Levallois stone tools during the transition from older Achulean ones (typical of Homo erectus) and of a similar age, reported by Watts, Chazan and Wilkins, 2016 in South Africa.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

The mysterious lack of Olmec DNA papers

The Olmec culture flourished on the Gulf of Mexico coast (Campeche Bay) in the Tehuantepec, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco region of Mexico between 1,500 BC and 100 BC. They are the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilisation, predating the Mayas and the Aztecs. (Short article on the Olmec people or this book with a section dedicated to their culture, both of them in English).

My previous posts (Blacks in Pre-Columbian America and Africans reached America ca. 1310 C.E.?) explored the weird and pseudoscientific theory that assumes as true that Black African people sailed across the Atlantic from Western Africa, reached Mesoamerica, and settled there, creating the Olmec civilization. For some examples of this theory, see: "Olmec and Mayas have distinct genetic origins", "The surprising connection between Olmecs and Africans", "African Origins of Olmec Civilization", etc.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Instead, I opt for believing in human ignorance, incompetence, and deliberate manipulation of information to forward certain causes and obscure legitimate ones. Nevertheless, as I sought information on the genetics (mtDNA, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA) I quickly realized that there is little to be found. This seems to be a blank in the research of Amerindian genetics. Which, is quite surprising! (just google the terms "genetics Olmecs" and you will undertand what I mean).

The paltry papers on Olmec genetics

It is true, papers on Olmec genetics are really scarce! There are very few; I have only found the following, none of which analyzed nuclear DNA or Y-chromosome DNA, they only seem to have looked at the mtDNA, and it is unclear if the specimens analyzed were Olmec or not. Of course, none of these papers hint at an African origin, they state that the Olmecs are Amerindians, like all the other Native Americans. Below are these papers, with a brief comment on their main conclusions):

• Arnaiz-Villena A, et al., (2000). HLA genes in Mexican Mazatecans, the peopling of the Americas and the uniqueness of Amerindians. . Tissue Antigens. 2000 Nov;56(5):405-16. doi: 10.1034/j.1399-0039.2000.560503.x. PMID: 11144288.
  Old paper! "The HLA allele frequency distribution of the Mexican Mazatecan Indians (Olmec culture) has been studied and compared with those of other First American Natives and worldwide populations (a total of 12,100 chromosomes; 6,050 individuals from 59 different populations). The main conclusions are: 1) An indirect evidence of Olmec and Mayan relatedness is suggested, further supporting the notion that Olmecs may have been the precursors of Mayans..."
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2021). Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Hispanic Human Remains from Puyil Cave, Tabasco, Mexico, in María de Lourdes Muñoz-Moreno, and Michael H. Crawford (eds), Human Migration: Biocultural Perspectives (New York, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Oct. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190945961.003.0007.
  It tells that the archaic and pre-classic individuals had The mtDNA of haplogroups A, A2, C1, C1c, and D4, haplogroup B was absent. It does not specifically mention "Olmecs" only Maya and Zoque people. But the team's next paper mentions Olmecs, see it below.
• Navarro-Romero MT, et al, (2024). Bioanthropological analysis of human remains from the archaic and classic period discovered in Puyil cave, Mexico. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Jun;184(2):e24903. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24903. Epub 2024 Feb 2. PMID: 38308451.
  It investigated "ACD" and conducted mtDNA tests, finding: "artificial cranial deformation (ACD)... These pre-Hispanic remains exhibited five mtDNA lineages: A, A2, C1, C1c and D4. Network analysis revealed a close genetic affinity between pre-Hispanic Puyil Cave inhabitants and contemporary Maya subpopulations from Mexico and Guatemala, as well as individuals from Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and China. Conclusions: Our results elucidate the dispersal of pre-Hispanic Olmec and Maya ancestors and suggest that ACD practices are closely related to Olmec and Maya practices. Additionally, we conclude that ACD has likely been practiced in the region since the Middle-Archaic Period." More or less a re-hash of the 2021 paper, but, it does mention the Olmec culture.
• Enrique Villamar Becerril, (2018) Estudios de ADN y el origen de los olmecas, Arqueología Mexicana, núm. 150, pp. 40-41.
  "The pioneering mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study conducted on Olmec individuals, one from San Lorenzo and the other from Loma del Zapote, resulted, in both cases, in the unequivocal presence of the distinctive mutations of the maternal lineage “A”. That is to say, the origin of the Olmecs is not in Africa but in the Americas, since they share the most abundant of the five mitochondrial haplogroups characteristic of the indigenous populations of our continent: A, B, C, D, and X." These individuals had haplogroup A.
• Cyphers, Ann, (2020) El ADNMT y la descendencia olmeca, Arqueología Mexicana, Edición especial, núm. 94, p. 23. Same conclusions. It is not based on new studies, only repetition of Villamar's paper (above), mtDNA is Amerindian and not African.

The Olmecs didn't vanish into thin air, their genes must be present in the current population of this region. According to Pye and Clarke (2005), the area where the Olmec and Mokaya lived, was peopled by the Proto-Mixe-Zoque people, who differed from their neighbors, the Maya and Zapotec. The Maya would have a large impact on them when their civilization bloomed and the Olmecs vanished.

The "Ghost" population

However, a study published in Science (Viridiana Villa-Islas et al., Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. Science 380, eadd6142 (2023). DOI:10.1126/science.add6142), though it does not mention the Olmecs and only goes back to the year 100 BC., does mention the Mixe people! and adds an intriguing fact, a "ghost population" admixed into the Mixe.

"Earlier studies report the contribution of “ghost” genetic ancestry from an unsampled group, designated as UpopA, among the present-day Mixe from Mexico. We tested the presence of this UpopA in the pre-Hispanic individuals using combinations of admixture graph models... we found that Sierra Tarahumara and Mixe share the same ghost genetic ancestry, UPopA ... Finally, we ... confirmed that ... Mixe share the contribution from UpopA1... A contribution from an unsampled population named UpopA was previously identified in present-day Mixe as well as in present-day northern and central Indigenous populations from Mexico. UpopA was estimated to have diverged ~24,700 years ago from Native Americans"

The "earlier studies" mentioned above by Villa-Islas et al. refer to a paper by J. I. Moreno-Mayar et al. (2018), Early human dispersals within the Americas (Science 362, eaav2621 (2018). DOI:10.1126/science.aav2621), which says "Modeling indicates that the Mixe most likely carry gene flow from an unsampled outgroup and form a clade with Lagoa Santa... Hereafter, we refer to that outgroup as unsampled population A (UPopA), which is neither AB, NNA, or SNA and which we infer split off from NAs ~24.7 ka ago, with an age range between 30 and 22 ka ago... Under a model with a pulselike gene flow, we inferred a probability of ~11% gene flow from UPopA into the Mixe ~8.7 ka ago (95% CI, 0.4 to 13.9 ka ago)... We infer that the Lagoa Santa population diverged from the Mixe shortly thereafter, ~13.9 ka ago (95% CI, 12.8 to 14.8 ka ago)"

A "Ghost" population is one that left genetic material (DNA, mtDNA, aDNA) in a current or ancient population, but has not been sampled or, it vanished, becoming extinct leaving no remains; a ghost.

Who were these people?

The fact that they appear among the Mixe (Olmec) and the peculiar Lagoa Santa people of Brazil, who carry rare haplogroups and also seem to be associated with Australasians, is surprising.

This is something that furhter genetic research could help clarify with deeper sampling, including ancient remains, if the ghost signal belongs to allelles found at very low frequencies, a larger sample will provide more data about them and help pinpoint the ghost population's origin.

Closing Comments

It is likely that the lack of publications on the Olmec DNA is due to a shortage of funds (Mexico may not provide funding for this kind of research), not enough academic interest in this culture, or, that the jungle habitat or the poorly preserved remains don't allow collection of adequate genetic material for DNA studies. I guess it is a combination of all factors. The Aztecs and the Mayas seem to be more popular as you can see in the following image which compares web searches for Olmecs (blue), Aztecs (yellow) and Mayas (red) between 2004 and now (Google Trends). Notice the Maya peak in 2012 (when many believed that the world was going to end according to a prophecy in the Maya calendar).

Link to this Google Trends result

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

EDAR in ancient Amerindians and modern ones - 2025 update

The ectodysplasin A receptor (EDAR) gene, which is also known as rs3827760; 370V/A (where the V and the A represent Valine and Alanine, two aminoacids) or 1540T/C (where T and C are two nucleotides Thymine and Cytosine respectively) has an impact on tooth shape, hair thickness, sweat glands, and milk production and breasts in women. It is also found almost exclusively in Asian and Native American populaitons. It is extremely rare in Africa and Europe who carry the "ancestral" variant the 370V. The derived or mutated allele, where the Alanine was replaced for Valine in the protein or Thymine for Cytosine in the DNA strand, is a "recent" mutation known as 370A.

I have posted about it, when I mentioned that an ancient Amerindian from Brazil, a the Lapa do Santo individual who died over 6,000 years ago, carried the ancestral variant. Which is odd, since his ancestors came from Asia, and the derived variant is predominant there. This variant is also predominant among current Native Americans.

The question is: How could he have the original ancestral unmutated version while the other natives have the derived version? What about the bottle necks and founder effects, the Beringian standstill and so forth? These "filters" are supposed to have narrowed down the genetic variability in America, only a few mtDNA and Y-Chromosome haplogroups managed to enter America. So, with these limiations, wouldn't we expect all ancient Native Americans to carry the mutated Asian variant with them into America?

Posth et al. (2018) were the first to point out this anomaly:

"EDAR gene Variant. Our data show that a variant in EDAR that affects tooth shape, hair follicles and thickness, sweat, and mammary gland ductal branching and that occurs at nearly 100% frequency in present day Native Americans and East Asians was not fixed in USR1, Anzick-1, a Brazil Lapa do Santo 9600 BP individual and a Brazil Laranjal 6700 BP individual, all of whom carry the ancestral allele. Thus, the derived allele rose in frequency in parallel in both East Asians and in Native Americans."

These ancient American remains mentioned by Posth are old: the USR1 baby was 11,500 years old, Anzic-1 ~12,900 years old, the Brazilian dates are given above.

Yet the derived (mutated) form was present in the ancient site of Los Rieles "(12.0 kya) from coastal Chile of South America." (source), and the same source states that the mutated form increased to a frequency of 90% by the Early Holocene in both East Asia and America (11.6 - 5.0 kya). Posth et al. give the Los Rieles site a younger age of 10.9 kya, and confirms it had a mutated variant (See the Table 7 in Posth's Supplementary Material with a site by site detail).

Posth explains this anomaly by suggesting that the derived EDAR was not yet fixed at that time and that it evolved later, in some kind of convergent evolution on both sides of the Pacific. Probably promoted by natural selection.

A newer paper by Xiaowei Mao et al., (2021) from which the following image was taken, discusses ancient remains from the Amur River region, it also mentions EDAR.

Fig 4B. EDAR alleles. Source

The image above is captioned "(B) Allele counts for adaptive mutations of EDAR V370A in Tianyuan, ancient populations in the Amur region, and recently published ancient northern East Asians (Yumin, Bianbian, Boshan, Xiaogao, and Xiaojingshan) (Yang et al., 2020) from 40–6 ka. Purple shading represents the period of the LGM. Dots represent genotype calls (blue, ancestral alleles; red, derived alleles; gray, missing alleles). The number at the top of the bar (separated by a comma) shows the allele coverage for the derived and ancestral allele, and the number in parentheses at the bottom of the bar shows the number of individuals included in that time column. Genotypes were called using a maximum-likelihood-based method (snpAD) that takes into account possible errors in the covered alleles."

The text adds that "here we show that mutation V370A in the EDAR gene appeared in all ancient East Asians (including AR19K), except for AR33K and Tianyuan, the only two individuals in our sample predating the LGM stadial in East Asia." So it was not present in the 34.3-32.4 cal BP AR33K specimen from the Amur River area or the older Tianyuan man (40 ky old). It developed later. Remember that it was not found in ancient Amerindians either.

The paper adds that "our direct observation demonstrated that this allele emerged as early as ∼19 ka, as observed in the AR19K individual (Figure 4B), providing an older and more accurate upper boundary for the allelic age estimate." Then it spreads quickly reaching 93.7% in Asia nowadays.

Prevous estimates from 2008 (online source) reported a later date of fixation of 370A, some 10,740 years ago, it also suggested that "370A was likely at high frequency before the colonization of the Americas 10,500–14,000 years ago. Thus, the high frequency of 370A in Native Americans is most likely due to positive selection prior to migrations from Asia to America."

These explanations suggest that the derived allele was already present in the people who populated America.

But why is it not found in the other old remains? Some would argue that the first people to reach America carried the ancestral and the derived variants, and that eventually the later replaced the former. I believe that these people came from a group that carried the Ancestral allele, so this places them before the LGM, say 30 or 40 kya. Then came the post LGM migration with the mutated allele and erased all of the previous original Americans.

Another explanation lies with the Australasians: A 2021 paper on the genetics ancient Asians reported that none of the 7 ancient Jomon samples (Jomon hunter-gatherers lived in Japan) dated to ~2500–800 BC carried the derived allele. The Jomon were assimilated by the a later wave of people who now make up the Japanese population. The Ainu of Northern Japan are realated to the Jomon, and these, in turn, seem to have reached Japan using a coastal route, linking them to Southeast Asian people like tue Taiwan aborigines (Ami, and Atayal) and the Igorot, all of which are Austronesian minorities. (source). This coastal migration from ASEAN to Japan could also link them with the Onge, who only carry the ancestral allele.

Could Onge-related people have carried the ancestral allele into America in a first peopling wave, and in the process leave their genetic imprint there?

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Neves and Pucciarelli's paper on affinities between Australians and Paleoindians

As promised, in this post I share a link to a paper by Neves and Pucciarelli (Neves, W.A. and Pucciarelli, H.M. (1991). Morphogical affinities of the first Americans: an exploratory analysis based on early South American human remains. J. Hum. Evol. 21: 261-273).

It tells how they compared the remains of three ancient South American remains (from Tequendama in Colombia, and Lagoa Santa in Brazil) with ancient and contemporary Eurasian and Australian remains. They used thirteen different cranial parameters in their analysis.

This was in the days before DNA was used to compare human groups. Neat and interesting. I thank Marcelo Bruyere for having shared the paper.

I have uploaded it to one of my websites: here.

The authors point out that "The comparison showed that early South Americans clustered very tightly with South Pacific populations, when size and shape were used as taxonomical criteria. When size was removed, the three series occupied an intermediate position".

And conclude that:

"the morphological affinities derived from our study can be perfectly matched to an Asian origin if we assume that Australians and Americans shared a common ancestor until just before they arrived at the New World. Accordingly, both branches, the one that migrated northwards and the one that migrated southwards, did not have a long, independent evolutionary history in northern and southern Asia prior to their settlement in the Americas and Australia. At least not enough to have changed their cranial morphology. If we accept the association detected in this study between Early South Americans, Early Australians and the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave people, Northern China can be suggested as the starting point of both migration branches."

So the remains from the upper Zhoukoudian Cave, which are between 20 and 30,000 years old would belong to a group which is the root of the first wave of Paleoindians and Australians.

It is possible, in my opinion, that this date could even be earlier, considering the date that humans reached Australia (some 50-70 ky ago).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Lagoa Santa sites and remains: old and odd

As promised, this post will look into the Lagoa Santa remains from Brazil, which are very old and have some enigmatic traits.

Lagoa Santa in Brazil is a region covering over 100 km² in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais (see map further down), it comprises several sites such as Lapa da Amoreira, Lapa de Carrancas, Lapa Mortuária: Rockshelter and Cave, ("lapa" in Portuguese means "cave") Santana do Riacho, Cerca Grande 6, Cerca Grande 7, Escrivania 3, Sumidouro, Cerca Grande 2, Cerca Grande 5, Lapa do Caetano, Lapa D'Agua and the cave where "Luzia" was found: Lapa Vermelha IV.

The first excavations here were done by Peter Lund at Sumidouro Cave (1842). Over the years amateur archaeologists dug the caves searching for bones, and their antiquity was clear because they were found close to megafauna bones in the same sedimentary deposits. [2]

In 1956 W. Hurt and O. Blasi conducted the first professional digs in the area. They managed to date some of their excavations to some 9,720 and 9,028 years before present (BP) at Rock Shelter 6. This was very important as it gave them a Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene age.

Over 250 skeletons have been unearthed in Lagoa Santa since Lunds days.

A breakthrough was the escavation at Lapa Vermelha IV cave in 1975, by Annette Laming-Emperaire who discovered the remains of a female who was named "Luzia" (the name is a homage to Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis found in Africa in 1974, 3.2 million-years-old).

Luzia, buried under 12 meters of sediments inside the rock shelter was dated [1] using charcoal samples found near her skull. They gave an age of 11,243–11,710 cal BP.

This makes Luzia one of the oldest Paleoindian skeletons found to date in the American continent.

Lagoa Santa Skulls have Australo-Melanesian features

Walter Neves (1999) [3] studied the "Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1", or "Luzia" and found that she "exhibited an undisputed morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the second comparison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology."

So her first similarity is with Africans followed by South Pacific people. This is relevant as we will see later.

Six years later he and Hubbe (2005) [2] expanded their sample side and studied 81 skulls recovered from Lagoa Santa and compared them with those of other extant groups using multivariate analysis. They found that: (bold font is mine)

"The results obtained from all multivariate analyses confirm a close morphological affinity between SouthAmerican Paleoindians and extant Australo-Melanesians groups, supporting the hypothesis that two distinct biological populations could have colonized the New World in the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.
...
The three different quantitative analyses undertaken in this study demonstrate that the first South Americans exhibit a cranial morphology that is very different from late and modern Northeastern Asians and Amerindians (short and wide neurocrania; high, orthognatic faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses) but very similar to present Australians/Melanesians and Africans, especially with the former (narrow and long neurocrania; prognatic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits and noses). Taking into account the large number of early specimens used in this study, this trend is unlikely to be a result of sample bias. The phenomenon cannot, as well, be said to represent the result of microevolutionary processes restricted to Lagoa Santa because the same cranial pattern has already been described in places as distant and as ecologically different as Southern Chile [Magellan's Strait], Colombia [Sabana de Bogotá], Mexico [Mexico Basin and Baja California], United States [Florida], and elsewhere in Brazil [Bahia and São Paulo]"

So this seems to confirm his initial finding, an Australian / Melanesian - African affinity and this led to the now controversial craniofacial reconstruction of Luzia:

Luzia's skull and face reconstruction

We will cite Neto, Valle and Santos (2010) [4] whose paper "The colour of the bones: scientific narratives and cultural appropriations of 'Luzia', a prehistoric skull from Brazil", looked into the impact of the subjective bias that scientists invariably have:

"the BBC in London, looking to make a documentary on the prehistoric occupation of the Americas, funded a craniofacial reconstruction of the specimen in 1998, undertaken by Richard Neave of the University of Manchester in England. Luzia's skull was mapped using computerized tomography in Brazil and the images sent to Manchester. There a replica of the skull was produced in resin over which the face was reconstructed using red-brown modelling clay. This reconstruction generated a face suggesting a visual similarity between Luzia and the appearance of populations of African origin."

You can judge this reconstruction by yourself, please take a good look at the image below:

Luzia's craniofacial reconstruction by R. Neave. BBC

Quite controversial indeed, Luzia as depicted in that reconstruction looks like an African or even an Australian Aboriginal or a Melanesian person.

But there were more skulls at Lagoa Santa, and one team led by A. Strauss (2015), [5] studied one belonged to a person who had been decapitated. Yes, this man was is the oldest decapitation known in the New World.

Another Lagoa Santa facial reconstruction

A. Strauss and his team studied the man of Lapa do Santo, Burial 26, whose head had been chopped off 8540+/-50 14C BP. (There are plenty of photos of the site and the skull in the paper [5]).

They too compared it to other human groups and found that (bold is mine):

"The DFA also show similar results for both size and shape, and size corrected analyses (S4 Table). When either posterior probabilities or typicalities are taken into account, Burial 26 classifies clearly with Australia, which has been shown in the past to share high morphological affinities with Early South Americans. Yet, interestingly, in none of the analyses Burial 26 appear close to the other Lagoa Santa remains. When typicalities are taken into account, in both analyses, Burial 26 is statistically different (p<0.05) from Lagoa Santa’s centroid. However, these results may be influenced in this case by the reduced number of individuals in the Lagoa Santa sample, which is probably biasing the population estimates in these analyses.
The results do not indicate Burial 26 from Lapa do Santo presents a distinct morphology compared to other specimens from the Lagoa Santa region, thus supporting the notion he was a local individual and not an outsider."

Again we come across a similarity with Australians, and some remarks that it is "not close to" other Lagoa Santa skulls but isn't exactly different either (they looked into this to discard the possibility of the Lagoa Santa people beheading a prisoner from some other tribe or group).

One of the team's members, Caroline Wilkinson, a specialist in forensic reconstruction, at the John Moores University in Liverpool, England, and a "disciple of Neave" conducted a facial reconstruction of this skull [6].

She worked on a digital model fo the skull, and the outcome is quite different from Luzia.

Strauss explains: "Even though we are used to the traditional facial reconstruction of Luzia, with strong African features, this new image reflects in a more precise manner, the appearance of the first inhabitants of Brazil, displaying generalized and undifferentiated features, from which, over thousands of years, the great Amerindian diversity was established." [6]

What Strauss is saying is that the Lagoa Santa people left Asia before those that stayed behind acquired their current "Asian" features, and once in America evolved into the current Amerindian features.

Below is this new facial reconstruction, which could be that of a modern European, Indian or Middle Eastern person. Eurasian features. The flat nose and the African features are absent.

Lagoa Santa, Lapa do Santo, Burial 26 man, facial reconstruction. C. Wilkinson.

Genetics of the Lagoa Santa people

Bones are interesting, but DNA comparisons are also revealing. A study on Central and Southern American populations (C. Posth. et al., 2018) [7] compared ancient remains in Asia and the Americas, North and South. Posth's paper mentions two rare genetic variants in the Lagoa Santa genome:

1. Y chromosome haplogroup: "our observation of the currently extremely rare C2b haplogroup at Lapa do Santo disproves the suggestion that it was introduced after 6,000 BP".

C2B is extremely rare in modern and recent Amerindians. In fact, it is so rare that a late arrival to America (after all the other groups had settled the continent) had been suggested to explain this odd situation.

But the Lapa do Santo individual carried this haplogroup, and he died more than 6,000 years ago.

2. EDAR gene Variant.: "Our data show that a variant in EDAR that affects tooth shape, hair follicles and thickness, sweat, and mammary gland ductal branching and that occurs at nearly 100% frequency in present day Native Americans and East Asians was not fixed in USR1, Anzick-1, a Brazil LapaDoSanto 9600 BP individual and a Brazil Laranjal 6700 BP individual, all of whom carry the ancestral allele. Thus, the derived allele rose in frequency in parallel in both East Asians and in Native Americans."

This is interesting, the Lapa do Santo individual carried the ancestral allele for the EDAR gene, so he reached America before the mutated form (the "derived" alelle EDAR V370A) evolved.

The derived EDAR is found in 100% of contemporary Native Americans and East Asians but was not present in Lagoa Santa, Anzick Montana (12,000 years ago) or in USR1 (Upward Sun River, Alaska) 11,500 BP.

Posth concludes that the derived EDAR was not yet fixed at that time and that it evolved later, in some kind of convergent evolution on both sides of the Pacific.

Then we have the issue of the "Polynesian mtDNA" among the Botocudo people in Brazil, considered the descendants of the Lagoa Santa Paleoindians:

Botocudos with Polynesian mtDNA

Goncalves, et al., (2013) [8] studied the cranial masures of different groups of extant and past American Natives. They concluded that "the Botocudo Indians presented sufficient similarities with the Lagoa Santa Paleoamericans to be considered candidates to be their possible descendants".

There is nothing odd in this finding, the probem is that when they analyzed the mtDNA of Botocudo skulls they found that they had a haplogroup that is found on the other side of the world!:

"[they had a ] sequence as belonging to haplogroup B4a1a1a (32–34). This haplogroup is found at high frequency in Polynesia, Micronesia, parts of Near Oceania, and Easter Island".

How could these genes find their way into Brazil? Goncalves' team put forward three explanations: (1) Slave trade from Africa brought Madagascar / Polynesian / Melanesian people into Brazil. (2) Slave trade from Polynesia (enslaved Polynesians) into South America -such as what happened to the Easter Island people, forcibly taken to South America and (3) the Botocudo got the genes from their Lagoa Santa ancestors who supposedly carried this haplogroup (no papers have reported it though).

We will look into their comments on the third explanation:

"[This] scenario, prehistoric, is related to the possibility of genetic continuity between the Paleoamericans from Lagoa Santa and Botocudo Indians, which indeed originally had motivated this study. It is conceivable that the Lagoa Santa Paleoamericans carried ancient mtDNA sequences related to those of modern Polynesians, possibly because of a contact with their ancestors, and passed them on to early Amerindians, along with genes associated with Paleoamerican skull morphology.
...
However, for this scenario to be acceptable it has to be chronologically compatible with what is known about the evolutionary history of the mtDNA "Polynesian motif" (14022G, 16217C, 16247G, 16261T), which has been associated with the Austronesian expansion and settlement of Polynesia and Micronesia at a time scale more recent than peopling of the Americas. Notably, the Polynesian motif has additionally been found in Indonesian populations at low frequencies and also in Madagascar.
Polynesian islands were apparently populated around 3,000 y ago. Nevertheless, the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Polynesian motif in Papuans and Polynesians was calculated as 9,300 +/- 2,000 y before present... These TMRCA dates for the Polynesian motif appear too recent for having been introduced into the Americas by the Paleoamerindian migration. Still, we cannot rule out this possibility—however improbable—because, as pointed out by Friedlander et al., the variances of these coalescence estimates may be greater than generally acknowledged."

In my opinion, the link across the Pacific via Lagoa Santa people seems to weak. The likely explanation lies with hypothesis (1) or (2): slave trade.

Nevertheless, Strauss, Neves et al. (2015) [9] reached the same conclusion: Botocudos descend from Lagoa Santa people. But they couldn't explain the Polynesian DNA found in the former:

"In conclusion, our analyses of the morphological affinities of the Botocudo Indians within a worldwide context support the hypothesis proposed by Lacerda and Peixoto (1876) that these groups from East-Central Brazil retained the same morphological pattern from the early inhabitants from Lagoa Santa
....
From a morphological point of view, our results fit better a scenario where the Botocudo are biological descendants from early Paleoamerican groups (e.g., Lagoa Santa), who share they last common ancestor with Polynesian groups probably in Southeast Asia, before the morphological differentiation that resulted in the present-day morphological pattern seen in Asia and most of the Americas occurred.
However, this scenario fails to shed light on the origin of the Polynesian DNA lineages found in the two Botocudo specimens collected from Rio Doce."

Last but not least, is the skull with prominent brow ridges unearthed by Walters in 1958 at Lagoa Santa, reported by Owen B. Beattie and Alan L. Bryan in 1984 [10] (they were trying to recover them, assuming that they had been sold to some private collector).

I had written about this skull in my post Diprothomo and Lagoa Santa - Homo erectus?, back in 2011, because those heavy supraorbital ridges looked very primitive to me:

Image : Skullcap from Lagoa Santa. Beattie and Bryan (1984) [10]

Harold Victor Walter published his findings in a book "Arqueologia Da Regiao de Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais. Indios Pre-colombianos Dos Abrigos-rochedos. (Archaeology of the Lagoa Santa Region.)" in Portuguese and English in 1958. Did he mention this skull?

Summary

And that is all for now. Lagoa Santa sites are very interesting because they have produced hundreds of skeletal remains of Paleo Indians older than 6,000 years BP. Some have very rare genetic haplogroups. They seem to be linked to an early East Asian - Australian - Melanesian people which lived before the typical East Asian and Amerindian features evolved.

Their purported descendants, the Botocudo people of Brazil carry genetic markers found in Polynesia (an area peopled long after America), so this raises interesting questions too.

Last but not least, the emblematic skull of Luzia, depicted with African features in a facial reconstruction is quite different from the reconstruction of another Lagoa Santa skull, which has a more neutral Eurasian appearance.

Sources

[1] Michel Fontugne, (2013), New Radiocarbon Ages of Luzia Woman, Lapa Vermelha IV Site, Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Volume 55, Issue 3 (Proceedings of the 21st International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 2)) 2013 , pp. 1187-1190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200048098P
[2] Neves WA, Hubbe M. Cranial morphology of early Americans from Lagoa Santa, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102(51):18309–18314. doi:10.1073/pnas.0507185102
[3] Neves, WA. et al. Lapa vermelha IV Hominid 1: morphological affinities of the earliest known American. Genet. Mol. Biol. [online]. 1999, vol.22, n.4 pp.461-469. Available from: . ISSN 1415-4757. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1415-47571999000400001.
[4] Gaspar Neto, Verlan Valle and Santos, Ricardo Ventura. The colour of the bones: scientific narratives and cultural appropriations of 'Luzia', a prehistoric skull from Brazil. Mana [online]. 2010, vol.5Selected edition [cited 2019-09-04], pp. 0-0 . Available from: . ISSN 0104-9313.
[5] Strauss A, Oliveira RE, Bernardo DV, Salazar-García DC, Talamo S, Jaouen K, et al. (2015) The Oldest Case of Decapitation in the New World (Lapa do Santo, East-Central Brazil), PLoS ONE 10(9): e0137456. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137456
[6] DNA de fósseis do Brasil desafia teorias de 'descoberta' da América, Evanildo da Silveira De São Paulo para a BBC News Brasil 8 novembro 2018
[7] C. Posth et al., Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America. Cell 10.1016/j.cell.2018.10.027 (2018)
[8] Goncalves VF, Stenderup J, Rodrigues-Carvalho C, et al. Identification of Polynesian mtDNA haplogroups in remains of Botocudo Amerindians from Brazil, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013;110(16):6465–6469. doi:10.1073/pnas.1217905110
[9] Strauss A, Hubbe M, Neves WA, Bernardo DV, and Atuí JV. 2015. The cranial morphology of the Botocudo Indians, Brazil, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157:202–216.
[10] Beattie O.B., Bryan A.L., (1984). A Fossilized calotte with Prominent Browridges from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Current Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 3:345-346

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Australasian signal in the DNA of Amerindians

BBack in 2015 (Skoglund P, Mallick S, Bortolini MC, et al. Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas. Nature. 2015;525(7567):104–108. doi:10.1038/nature14895) an article showed that " show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent or at all in present-day Northern and Central Americans or a ~12,600 year old Clovis genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.".

This is quite a remarkable discovery, and the authors quickly clarified that "These results do not imply that an unmixed population related anciently to Australasians migrated to the Americas. While this is a formal possibility, an alternative model that we view as plausible is that the 'Population Y' (we use 'Population Y' after Ypykuéra, which means 'ancestor' in the Tupi language family spoken by the Suruí and Kartiana) that contributed Australian related ancestry to Amazonians was already mixed with a lineage related to First Americans at the time it reached Amazonia."

They concluded that "he genetic data allow us to say with confidence that Population Y ancestry arrived south of the ice sheets anciently: the fact that the geographically diverse Andamanese, Australian and New Guinean populations are all similarly related to this source suggests that the population is no longer extant, and the absence of long-range admixture linkage disequilibrium suggests that the population mixture did not occur in the last few thousand years."

Last year another study (Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America Posth C. et al., (2018) Cell, Vol 175:5 P1185-1197.E22, Nov. 15, 2018) looked into the peopling of America but didn't manage to find this Australasian signal in "ancient remains" that they analyzed:

"failure to find significant evidence of Australasian or Paleolithic East Asian affinities in any of the ancient Central and South American individuals raises the question of what ancient populations could have contributed the Population Y signal in Surui and other Amazonian groups and increases the previously small chance that this signal—despite the strong statistical evidence for it—was a false-positive."

But shortly after another paper was published in Science (Early human dispersals within the Americas, Moreno-Mayar et al., Science 07 Dec 2018: Vol. 362, Issue 6419, eaav2621 DOI: 10.1126/science.aav2621) that sequenced the DNA of ancient remains from all across America, Alaska to Patagonia and found that prior to the main migration into America, there was an earlier one, with Australasian traits:

"... there are genomic and archaeological hints of an earlier human presence. How these early groups are related or structured, particularly those with Australasian ancestry, remains unknown.... [there were] multiple independent, geographically uneven migrations into South America. One such migration provides clues of Late Pleistocene Australasian ancestry in South America, [which] contributed to present-day South American ancestry."

"... we find that the Amazonian Surui share a larger proportion of alleles with Australasian groups (represented by Papuans, Australians and Andaman Islanders), with respect to Mixe. Lagoa Santa yielded similar results to those obtained for the Surui. When compared to Mesoamerican groups (Mixe and Huichol), Lagoa Santa also shares a larger proportion of alleles with Australasian groups but not with other Eurasians."

Remarkably, these first wave individuals with Austronesian genes somehow reached South America without leaving any traces in North America: "[a populaton] that harbored an Australasian signal in the Late Pleistocene and reached South America, yet left no apparent traces in North America".

-- New, Sept. 4, 2019 --

I had originally written:

So the facial reconstruction of "Luzia", one of the 12,500 year-old Lagoa Santa crania (and almost lost in the fire that razed the Rio de Janeiro National Museum -fortunately the skull survived) which originally depicted her with an African look now has her looking more Asian:

One of Luzia's relatives - African look has gone. Source

Luzia before, more "African".

Reader feedback:

D. Parker wrote an e-mail to me with the following text:

your source: http://agencia.fapesp.br/the-new-face-of-luzia-and-the-lagoa-santa-people/29168/. Notice caption ^^^ does not say that that picture is Luzia.
The Brazilian researchers’ contribution to the study was fundamental. Among the 49 individuals from which fossil DNA was taken, seven skeletons dated to between 10,100 and 9,100 years ago came from Lapa do Santo, a rock shelter in Lagoa Santa. A new bust has replaced Luzia in the Brazilian scientific pantheon. Caroline Wilkinson, a forensic anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and a disciple of Neave, has produced a facial reconstruction of one of the individuals exhumed at Lapa do Santo. The reconstruction was based on a retrodeformed digital model of the skull.
Estudos genéticos dão nova cara ao Povo de Luzia Representação do fóssil humano mais fa...
Facial reconstruction of the People of Luzia by Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University in England, based on a retroformed digital skull model of the Lapa do Santo archaeological site. The skull used as a reference is from a young man, cataloged as Burial 26.
Also in regard to the Caroline Wilkinson reconstruction. None of the articles, not the one you sourced said the Caroline Wilkinson reconstruction. looks more Asian. The eye fold is not depicted Asian. None of the features are particularly Asian. The nose is not as flat as many Asians. It's true that the ancestors of Native are believed to be Asian but the reconstruction is intended to depict someone looking Native American and though they have Asian ancestry they dont always look exactly like,Asians. People have said it looks racially ambiguous or could even pass for a dark skinned European or Middle Eastern person, Nevertheless these reconstructions include speculation from the forensic artist
regards,
D. Parker

I thank Mr. Parker for his comments. And I promise to write a specific post on these Brazilian remains (the whole group).

See this post here:Lagoa Santa sites and remains: old and odd

.

My remark on the features of the reconstructed face still stands however. The overall impression of the original bust is that of an African, now it is more Eurasian, it does not look like the typical Amerindian people one sees -today- in South America which have distinct features.

-- end of comment--

So the question remains open: where did this signal come from? And why is it not present in North America or Asia? Below is a map from Skoglund's 2015 paper, and the white circles show this lack of Australasian DNA in those regions, and the red and yellow cicles indicate their presence in South America:

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2019 by Austin Whittall © 

On Y chromosome Hg. C in South America

Hello again. I have taken a short break and vacations (winter here in Argentina, but vacations were needed!), and are back online posting again.

One year ago I wrote about Y chromosome's haplogroup C, one of the oldest ones, found in S.E. Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, East Asia and only very rarely among Native Americans (Y chromosome haplogroup C Part 1 - C hg. in America - seeking a link with Homo erectus). I revisited the subject again this week and was interestingly surprised to find two new developments:

New Paper on the Ecuadorian natives

A paper titled "Insights into the origin of rare haplogroup C3* Y chromosomes in South America from high-density autosomal SNP genotyping", by Massimo Mezzavilla, Maria Geppert, Chris Tyler-Smith, Lutz Roewer, Yali Xue (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2014.11.005) looks into different explanations for the unusual prevalence of hg C3* among two groups of Ecuadorian natives and concludes that:

"Our simulations revealed good power to detect recent admixture, and that ≥5% admixture 6 Kya ago could be detected. However, in the experimental data we saw no evidence of gene flow from Japan to Ecuador. In summary, we can exclude recent migration and probably admixture 6 Kya as the source of the C3* Y chromosomes in Ecuador, and thus suggest that they represent a rare founding lineage lost by drift elsewhere."

Which is in line with my conjectures put forth in my post one year ago: "It seems to me that there are several different haplotypes hidden in the C3* paragroup that have yet to be identified, but the Americans, but, it clearly indicates no relationship between Japanese or Koreans and the Amerindians...
It is extremely likely that the current patchy distribution and the extremely low frequences of C3* paragroup in South America reflects the remains of a once widespread lineage later overlaid by more recent migrants from Asia and which was seriously reduced due to the bottleneck provoked by the Conquest of America that began in the Sixteenth Century.".

Which is interesting as it indicates that a very "old" Y chromosome haplogroup is present in America. But wait, there is some more evidence:

The Botocudos of Brazil

A recent article at DNAeXplained, "Botocudo Ancient Remains from Brazil" tells about the odd discovery that took place in 2013 that detected a Polynesian mtDNA among some Botocudo skulls that were analyzed. It also adds some new information gleaned from a paper that was recently published. The skulls' Y chromosome was sequenced and it indicated that "...their Y haplogroups are C-P3092 and C-Z31878, both equivalent to C-B477 which identifies former haplogroup C1b2.". Note that the paper does not mention Y-chromosomes. The above is a conclusion of someone who checked the paper... so you can take that with a pinch of salt until ratified by some other source.

So, rhey are citing a paper which I read and checked, but found no reference to the Y-chromosome. (see it here). It does say that these individuals nuclear DNA as well as their mtDNA Bot15 and Bot17 are strongly Polynesian and lack any kind of Amerindian, African or European admixture. They then conjecture about possible origin for these odd individuals (slave trade of Polynesians via Peru, Madagascar slave trade to Brazil, Spanish or Portuguese ships bringing Polynesians to Brazil and a Trans-Pacific contact (strange as the genes appeared on the Atlantic coast of Brazil...). They are stumped and conclude: "Whether brought by Europeans or the result of the Polynesian expansion, the fact remains that some Brazilian Botocudos carried distinctive Polynesian genetic signatures. We hope that further sampling will provide a more definitive answer to this intriguing finding."

These Native Americans were considered backwards and primitive (see my post on them and the theory that they represented an authoctonous American "race"), below is an image of a Botocudo (and he looks anything but backwards or primitive...).

Their name came from the Portuguese word "botoque" (wooden disk) that they used as a personal decoration in earlobes and lower lip.

An article written in 2005 by Reinaldo Jose Lopes (read it here in Portuguese) stated that (my translation): "according to investigators of the University of Sao Paulo, everything indicates that the most typical representatives of the race of the first Americans were those known as Botocudos...". Lopes then explains that the cranial measurements of the Botocudos are closer to those of Paleo Indians and Africans or Melanesians

This was written in the context of the discovery of "Luzia" a woman's skull in the state of Minas Gerais, at Lagoa Santa (by the way, the Botocudos identified as Polynesians by their DNA were also from Minas Gerais). Luzia was dated at 11,500 years old. Below is a reconstruction of her face. Very African or Australian Aboriginal...

Closing Comments

So here we have some interesting facts: some Botocudos of Brazil have a very rare Y-chromosome haplogroup (C) in America, found among a group of Native Americans deemed as the closest to Paleo Indians and to very old remains that actually look Melanesian... The mtDNA and nuclear DNA of these Botocudos are almost pure Polynesian. And also some Ecuadorian natives also have Y Chromosome C Hg., which may belong to a now extremely rare "founding group".

Put together we could conjecture that the old human lineage that peopled Asia reached the New World long before later East Asian or Siberian waves got there. That they are found in some secluded parts of America. They are old, and linked to Melanesia, Australia (whose inhabitants recently moved across the Pacific peopling Polynesia).

In previous posts I have hinted that C hg may actually have a Homo erectus origin (you can read about this it here go down to "Some crazy ideas"), and these recent papers may indirectly support that notion.

Having said this, I also want to give another more critical point of view, a big "BUT..."

I have a suggestion for this oddity, based on the "dog principle": if it has a tail, wags it and barks, its a dog.

So if these skulls have Polynesian mtDNA, Y chromosome unique to Polynesia, nuclear DNA that is 100% Polynesian -and this is the real key- so they did not admix with the Native Americans or Europeans or Africans. These guys were Polynesians. Not American Natives with Polynesian ancestors. No. Pure Polynesians.

Since the papers above clearly indicate that the only possible routes used by these people to get to Brazil are highly improbable, there is only one possible explanation: The skulls belong to Polynesian individuals, picked by some scientific expedition to Polynesia, taken back to Rio de Janeiro, deposited there and incorrectly labeled as Botocudos.

I am going to wait for a formal paper assigning them to Y-chromosome's haplogroup C before considering them seriously.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2015 by Austin Whittall © 

Out of Africa and into America - H. erectus

 
Thinking about how our friend Homo erectus could have got in to America from his Old World home (the Bering route is very plausible but it is also cold and long), I wondered if H. erectus could have just come across the Atlantic Ocean from his original home in Africa.

I was aware of H. erectus sites along eastern Africa but did not know if there were any along the western coast of Africa (where they would have had to "set sail" for America). Well, the answer is yes, H. erectus did live in western Africa as shown in the map below: [1]

Above: Homo erectus occupation at 1 million years ago resulting from colonisation most consistent with the observed record of arrival (100%=black, 0%=white). From: [1]

You can see that they spanned Africa's Atlantic seaboard from Senegal to Angola. Could they have used simple log rafts to fish or move along the coast? Did a storm or sea currents drag them across the Atlantic?

A raft, wind and currents

The trade winds blow in a western direction in the Tropical Atlantic areas [2] and, the Southern Equatorial Current has a speed of about 1 meter / sec, which means that a raft would be pushed 86.4 km per day (53.7 miles/day) in a westerly direction. [2]

The current links the Gulf of Guinea and the easternmost point of Brazil (where the cities of Natal and Recife are located). The minimum distance between both continents is there, and is only 2,800 km (1,740) mi. Which at the speed given above would mean a voyage of about 32 days. Of course, the sea current does not traverse the Ocean at its narrowest point, so we could estimate a distance of about 5,000 km (3,107 mi) from the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea to Natal. This would take 58 days to cover.

The Atlantic has been crossed from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean by Dr. Hannes Lindeman in 1956, in 72 days, solo, in a kayak. So it is possible to cross the Ocean in flimsy craft and survive.[3]

See my post on the navigating abilities of H. erectus, who sailed across open stretches of sea in Indonesia some 800,000 years ago.


Additionally, the African Homo erectus, could explain the findings in Brazil (Lagoa Santa area) and Buenos Aires. The map below summarizes the route, the sites and the location:

Homo erectus a possible route from Africa to America across the Atlantic Ocean.
Copyright 2011 by Austin Whittall

Now, to survive, reproduce and grow enough to expand and move across the continent towards Buenos Aires and north, to Mexico, the group must have had females, and should have been quite large. Perhaps it was not a chance event, perhaps they embarked on an expedition and the winds and currents pushed them west.

Actually, the discovery of Brazil by Portuguese sailors in 1500 is attributed to this same effect: Pedro Alvarez de Cabral was sailing to India when a storm drove him away from his route.

My next post will summarize and index all my previous posts on H. erectus to make a simple entry point to access all the information. Future posts will also be referenced there.

Still, I have not found any references to unusual Patagonian skulls or remains. I will keep on searching.

Sources.

[1] Paul Valdes, Bruce Sellwood, Steve Mithen, Sam Smith, Alan Haywood, Sarah Elton and Hannah O'Regan, Advanced computer modelling of hominin dispersal from Africa: integrating archaeological and palaeoclimatic simulations. The Environmental Factors in the Chronology of Human Evolution & Dispersal programme (EFCHED). Natural Environment Research Council.
[2] S. G. Philander, (2001). Atlantic Ocean Equatorial Currents
[3] Hannes Lindeman (1957). Alone at sea for 72 days. The true story of a German doctor who sails and paddles a 17 foot kayak across the Atlantic Ocean. NSW Sea Kayaker vol. 41. Citing a Life Magazine Article (July 22, 1957).

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Diprothomo and Lagoa Santa - Homo erectus?

 

Diprothomo skull, Buenos Aires 1896. From [2] pp. 326.

Buenos Aires is located by the River Plate, a wide river that is formed by the Paraná and Uruguay rivers just upstream from the Argentine capital city. It is loaded with sediments washed down from the subtropical regions of Southern South America.

Here, in 1896 workers were building a port for Buenos Aires and while excavating the river bed to pour concrete for the docks, they came across a strange skull. It was found at the bottom of the excavation, about 12.86 m (42 ft.) below the water level at low tide (and 11 m -36 ft.- below the river bed). Very deep indeed to be the skull of a relatively recent native American.

In 1909, Florentino Ameghino described the skull and believed that it belonged to a distant ancestor of modern man, the Diprothomo platensis. [1] It was quite nice as it added proof to his theory of an American origin for mankind.

Later it was studied by Ales Hrdlicka and Bailey Willis from the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, U.S.A.), who promoted the theory that modern man entered America through Alaska from Asia. Unsurprisingly both concluded that it was just another modern human skull, perhaps one belonging to an Indian. [2]

The sediments where it was found, were of Pre-Ensenadian age, and thus would, according to modern dating techniques be at least one million years old. This was well before modern humans roamed the earth.

But, Hrdlicka systematically refuted all of Ameghino’s claims regarding the skull’s primitive aspect. He said that the brows or “[surbarobital] ridges are prominent but not at all comparable with the heavy supraorbital welts of the Neantherdals and Spy skulls or even with those of some of the Australians” .

However he was forced to admit that “the forehead is somewhat low and sloping” but quickly added that it is similar to those of Indian skulls. Note that “low” forehead is associated to “low” intellect (i.e. smaller brain) and, therefore something that would be expected in an archaic hominid such as H. erectus.

The image above shows our Buenos Aires Diprothomo skull. However This is not the only example in Southern South America of an ancient or primitive human skull which could belong to a H. erectus, there is another case in Brazil:

Brazilian erectus?

During the 1970s, a Canadian archaeologist, Dr Alan Lyle Bryan from the University of Alberta, found a highly mineralized calotte (skullcap) that had been found at Lagoa Santa in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

This calotte had “very thick walls and exceptionally heavy brow ridges” (i.e. supraorbital ridges). [3][4]

The bones seem to have come from the Sumidouro cave and were found by Danish naturalist P. W. Lund in the nineteenth century. [5]

It was photographed by Byran (see below) [6] and those anthropologists that saw the photographs believed that it was a fake or a cast or perhaps an Old World fossil that had got mixed up with the Brazilian specimens at the (regrettably unnamed museum where it was kept). Bryan said that he had seen it and that it was no fake. Supposedly it has later “mysteriously disappeared from the museum”. [3]

Lagoa Santa, skull with thick brow ridges. Adapted from [5][6]

Notice how thick the bones are! Definitively primitive and erectus-like. Actually, comparing it with the photograph of Diprothomo they look very similar.

I would love to end the post here but, the source that provides the photograph shown above [5] goes on to mention another paper Investigation of a fossilized calotte from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, by EDXRF by Anjos, Lopes and Souza (2005) that reproduces a calotte from Lagoa Santa athat is identical to the one in the photographe above and which, disclosed after an X-Ray study that it "had been mounted with pieces from different origins", meaning that it is a fake.

If the missing calotte and the one analyzed with X-Rays is the same one or different ones, is not known. So, there is still a chance that the Bryan skull exists and belonged to an H. erectus.

Sources.

[1] Ameghino, Florentino, (1909). Le diprothomo platensis un precurseur de l'homme du pliocene inferieur de Buenos. Aires. Anales del Museo. Nacional de Buenos Aires. 1909. pp. 107-209.
[2] Hrdlicka Ales, Bailey Willis, W.H. Holmes, (1912). Early Man in South America. Washington Government Printing Office. “Diprothomo platensis”. pp. 318+
[3] Michael A. Cremo, Richard L. Thompson (1996). Forbidden archeology: the hidden history of the human Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing, Inc., pp. 418.
[4] Alan Lyle Bryan, (1978). Early man in America from a circum-pacific perspective. Issue 1 of Occasional papers of the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta. Archaeological Researches International, pp. 318.
[5] George Weber, Lagoa Santa sites (Minas Gerais, Brazil). Citing: [6] Beattie O.B., Bryan A.L., (1984). A Fossilized calotte with Prominent Browridges from Lagoa Santa, Brazil. Current Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 3:345-346

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

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