Early South Americans Cranial Morphological Variation and the Origin of American Biological Diversity

Author(s)

Hubbe, Mark ^{[1, 2]} ; Strauss, Andre ^[3] ; Hubbe, Alex ^[4] ; Neves, Walter A. ^[5]

Affiliation

^[1] Ohio State Univ, Dept Anthropol, Columbus, OH 43210 - USA

^[2] Univ Catolica Norte, Inst Invest Arqueol & Museo, San Pedro De Atacama, Region De Antof - Chile

^[3] Max Planck Inst Evolutionary Anthropol, Dept Human Evolut, Leipzig - Germany

^[4] Univ Fed Bahia, Inst Geociencias, Dept Oceanog, Salvador, BA - Brazil

^[5] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Biociencias, Dept Genet & Biol Evolut, Lab Estudos Evolut Humanos, Sao Paulo - Brazil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: PLoS One; v. 10, n. 10 OCT 14 2015.
• Web of Science Citations: 10

Abstract

Recent South Americans have been described as presenting high regional cranial morphological diversity when compared to other regions of the world. This high diversity is in accordance with linguistic and some of the molecular data currently available for the continent, but the origin of this diversity has not been satisfactorily explained yet. Here we explore if this high morphological variation was already present among early groups in South America, in order to refine our knowledge about the timing and origins of the modern morphological diversity. Between-group (Fst estimates) and within-group variances (trace of within-group covariance matrix) of the only two early American population samples available to date (Lagoa Santa and Sabana de Bogota) were estimated based on linear craniometric measurements and compared to modern human cranial series representing six regions of the world, including the Americas. The results show that early Americans present moderate within-group diversity, falling well within the range of modern human groups, despite representing almost three thousand years of human occupation. The between-group variance apportionment is very low between early Americans, but is high among recent South American groups, who show values similar to the ones observed on a global scale. Although limited to only two early South American series, these results suggest that the high morphological diversity of native South Americans was not present among the first human groups arriving in the continent and must have originated during the Middle Holocene, possibly due to the arrival of new morphological diversity coming from Asia during the Holocene. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 08/51747-0 - Mortuary practices characterization of the pre-historic hunter-gatherers from Lapa do Santo, Lagoa Santa (MG)
• Grantee: André Menezes Strauss
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• FAPESP's process: 12/24937-9 - Xenarthran (Mammalia) cranial evolution: modularity and its evolutionary consequences on the morphological diversification
• Grantee: Alex Christian Rohrig Hubbe
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• FAPESP's process: 04/01321-6 - Origins and microevolution of man in the Americas: a paleoanthropological approach (III)
• Grantee: Walter Alves Neves
• Support type: Research Projects - Thematic Grants