Divers transport Hoyo Negro skull.PAUL NICKLEN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPICThe uncovering of an almost completely intact, 12,000-year-old skeleton of a 15- or 16-year-old girl—found in an underwater cave near Mexico—lends support to the idea that modern Native Americans originated from an ancient population that came from Beringia, not from distinct migrations of peoples from different parts of Asia and Europe. The discovery of this remarkably well-preserved specimen by divers has, for the first time, allowed researchers to perform both genetic and morphological analyses from a single, ancient individual. Washington-based archaeologist and paleontologist James Chatters and his colleagues today (May 15) published in Science their analysis of the ancient individual.
The well-preserved ancient skeleton, which includes facial bones and teeth, helps to resolve the debate among scientists of whether ancient Native Americans arrived in the Americas from Asia through Beringia in a single migration sometime between 26,000 and 14,000 years ago. Genetic analyses to date have supported the idea that ancient people from Beringia were the ancestors of today’s Native Americans, who eventually spread south and populated the Americas. Yet morphological analyses showed that the oldest available American skeletons do not have the same facial features of modern Native Americans, or even indigenous Siberian populations. Rather, these early American inhabitants resembled people from Eurasia.
“With this specimen, we have evidence that the physical differences between the ancient and modern Americans came about through evolution that ...
