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 © 

Archaic Hominin in China author of the earliest use of ochre on bone engravings

Two engraved bones were unearthed at the Lingjing site in Central Eastern China. The remarkable thing about these bones is that they were dated to 105,000 - 125,000 years and the incissions were done deliberately, not as the result of removing meat from a carcass, but with a symbolic intent. The bones were also coated with ochre.

The paper (Engraved bones from the archaic hominin site of Lingjing, Henan Province, Zhanyang Li, Luc Doyon, Hao Li, Qiang Wang ... DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.81Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2019) finds these bones as the earliest evidence of human populations using ochre for symbolic or abstract purposes.

The age of these bones means that they were done by "archaic" hominins that lived prior to and during the evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa (according to the prevalent "out of Africa" theory).

Ochre is a clay with an iron content that once it has oxidized (rusted) gives the clay a tone which can range from yellow to red to brown. It has been used around the world for religious purposes and sacred art (even by Neanderthals, 73 kya - see paper).

Its bright red color may have symbolized blood and therefore life, afterlife, fertility. It is also very visible in the dimly lit caves and was used as raw material for many of the cave rock paintings from the origin of humankind onwards, all across the globe.

A photograph (top) and tracing of an engraved bone fragment found at Lingjing in China’s Henan Province. (Image courtesy Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon).

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

Patagonian Mummy Cueva del Gualicho

In my previous post on the mummy found by Samuel Mitchill in a cave in Kentucky in 1815, I pointed out that it was "a red-haired mummy in Kentucky. Buried in a cave wrapped in several liners, including feathers and squatting". The red hair is quite uncommon among Native Americans, but, I wonder... could it be due to the ochre with which many Amerindian corpses were painted prior to burial? in other words, a red pigment (ochre) dyed their hair?.

In any case, lets follow the data and see what we can find. Today: Patagonia, a squatting mummy with a feather and ochre.

The Mummy of Cueva del Gualicho

In South America, the Patagonian Paleo Indian natives buried their dead using ochre (a red pigment). Half a world away from Kentucky a mummy was discovered in 1877 by Argentine explorer and scientist, Francisco Pascasio Moreno. He was exploring unknown territory in Southern Patagonia, following the Santa Cruz river to its sources: at a lake which he named Lake Argentino. He trekked along the coast as the lake was really choppy due to the prevailing westerly winds and came across a hill on a promontory where, in a cave which he named "Cueva del Gualicho" (more on Gualicho and a previous post on the cave's rock art), alluding a native myth regarding evil spirits (Gualicho also Walichu).

In summer of 1877 (February in the Southern Hemisphere), Moreno came across a mummy at Cueva del Gualicho, close to what is now the town of El Calafate in southwestern Patagonia. His description of the discovery: (2)

"... in a small cave with figures painted on its walls, 8 meters wide by three deep [25 x 9 ft.] and a decreasing height that is only 20 cm in the back part [8 in.] , I find after digging where my common sense told me to, to my delight, a human body, painted red, in a similar position to those found in Peru; this one is in fairly good shape, because the body was buried wrapped in ostrich [actually, South American rhea, or ñandú] hides and then covered with grass and soil, from which I pick up two stone knives and an arrowhead of the same material. This interesting mummy has the hair cut nearly at its roots, and this together with the red paint with which the body had been covered alive, or after dead, makes me wonder if it may belong to a Fueguian of those that inhabited the Strait of Magellan in the times of Gamboa. [Sarmiento de Gamboa, Spanish explorer of the 1570's AD]".

We will see that Moreno was right on the mark with the Fuegian origin of this mummy.

So here we have a Mummy, in foetal position, wrapped in hides and painted red

Moreno would later write that it belonged to a distinct group different to the contemporary Tehuelche - Aonikenk groups of that area.

The mummy, unlike the one found by Mitchell in a Kentucky cave (see my post on that Red haired mummy), did not have a vest with feathers, instead it had one large condor feather across its chest, as can be seen in the drawing of the mummy:

Cueva del Gualicho Mummy. From (1)

 

Moreno wrote: "between that arm [the left one] and the body, crosses a lovely black condor feather which has also been painted". It is interesting to point out that they painted the feather red too.

Regarding Moreno's reference to Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, he was sent, in 1579 by the Viceroy of Peru to settle the Strait of Magellan to avert the possibility of the English occupying the region. Sarmiento’s wrote about "Giants" (the Tehuelche patagonians). He carried out his mission and founded two settlements, But lack food and harsh local conditions doomed both of Sarmiento’s fledgling settlements; their fate was sealed when provisions sent from Spain failed to arrive; nearly all of the settlers starved or froze to death. When English privateer Sir Thomas Cavendish landed at one of the villages in 1587 he found a handful of survivors, and appropriately renamed it Port Famine.

Anyway, Sarmiento de Gamboa actually mentions the locals, but it does not coincide with Moreno's comment:

Sarmiento de Gamboa mentions in his account (page xvii) (3) that the natives painted their face in "red and white"... but no reference to short cut hair. Actually they wore it long but they bundled it.

As a summary: foetal positioned mummy, with feathers, ochre painted. In southern Patagonia. And wrapped in layers of local ostrich hides.. Not red haired though, but very similar to the Kentucky mummy. mtDNA will show further similarities, but that is another post.

Sources

(1) Echeverría Baleta, Mario , (1995). La Momia del Cerro Gualicho, Cumacú, B. Aires. pp. 31. I took the snapshot from my book.
(2) Moreno, F., (2007). Exploración de la Patagonia Sur II: el lago Argentino y los Andes meridionales. 1877. B. Aires: Continente. pp. 101.
(3)Sarmiento de Gamboa, P., (1768). Viaje al Estrecho de Magallanes por el Capitán Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa en los años de 1579 y 1580… Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta. Pp 205 and plates.

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