The skull of Naia on the floor of Hoyo Negro |
Some 12,000 years ago, a
teenage girl took a walk in what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula
and fell 190 feet into a deep pit, breaking her pelvis and likely killing her
instantly. Over time, the pit—part of an elaborate limestone cave system—became
a watery grave as the most recent ice age ended, glaciers melted and sea levels
rose. In 2007, cave divers
happened upon her remarkably preserved remains, which form the oldest, most
complete and genetically intact human skeleton in the New
World. Her bones, according to new research published in Science, hold the key to
a question that has long plagued scientists: Who were the first
Americans? Prevailing ideas point to
all Native Americans descending from ancient Siberians who moved across
the Beringia land bridge between Asia and North America between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago. As
time wore on, the thinking goes, these people spread southward and gave rise to
the Native American populations encountered by European settlers centuries ago. But therein lies a puzzle: "Modern Native Americans closely resemble
people of China, Korea, and Japan… but the oldest American skeletons do
not," says archaeologist and paleontologist James
Chatters, lead author on the study and the owner of Applied Paleoscience, a
research consulting service based in Bothell, Washington. The small number of early
American specimens discovered so far have smaller and shorter faces and longer
and narrower skulls than later Native Americans, more closely resembling the
modern people of Africa, Australia,
and the South Pacific. "This has led to speculation that perhaps the first Americans and Native
Americans came from different homelands," Chatters continues,
"or migrated from Asia at different
stages in their evolution." The newly discovered
skeleton—named Naia by the divers who discovered her, after the Greek for
water—should help to settle this speculation. Though her skull is shaped like
those of other early Americans, she shares a DNA sequence with some modern
Native Americans. In other words, she’s likely a genetic great-aunt to
indigenous people currently found in the Americas...more
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