Ancient remains and the first peopling of the Americas: Reassessing the Hoyo Negro skull

ObjectiveA noticeably well-preserved approximate to 12.500 years-old skeleton from the Hoyo Negro cave, Yucatan, Mexico, was recently reported, along with its archaeological, genetic and skeletal characteristics. Based exclusively on an anatomical description of the skull (HN5/48), Chatters and colleagues stated that this specimen can be assigned to a set of ancient remains that differ from modern Native Americans, the so called Paleoamericans. Here, we aim to further explore the morphological affinities of this specimen with a set of comparative cranial samples covering ancient and modern periods from Asia and the Americas. MethodsImages published in the original article were analyzed using geometric morphometrics methods. Shape variables were used to perform Principal Component and Discriminant analysis against the reference samples. ResultsEven thought the Principal Component Analysis suggests that the Hoyo Negro skull falls in a subregion of the morphospace occupied by both Paleoamericans and some modern Native Americans, the Discriminant analyses suggest greater affinity with a modern Native American sample. DiscussionThese results reinforce the idea that the original population that first occupied the New World carried high levels of within-group variation, which we have suggested previously on a synthetic model for the settlement of the Americas. Our results also highlight the importance of developing formal classificatory test before deriving settlement hypothesis purely based on macroscopic descriptions. Am J Phys Anthropol 158:514-521, 2015. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.