Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Cerca Grande, Lagoa Santa, Central Brazil, and the origins of the first Americans

Abstract

We present the results of comparative multivariate morphological analyses based on nine skulls from Cerca Grande. The site is in the Lagoa Santa karst in Central Brazil, a key area for understanding the peopling of the Americas. The region has several archaeological sites with excellent preservation of late Pleistocene and early Holocene material culture and human skeletal remains. Stratigraphic association and direct dating of the Cerca Grande human skeletons place them definitely in the Early Holocene (c. 9000 bp uncalibrated). Principal components analysis and Mahalanobis distances reveal that these skeletons have no morphological affinities with present-day Native Americans or East Asians. These results agree with other studies and suggest that the skeletons may derive from a wave of migrants that entered the New World before the characteristic 'Mongoloid' morphology spread throughout East Asia. Keywords: Peopling of the AmericasPaleoamericansPaleoindian morphologyskeletal multivariate analyses