The name
American Aborigines has been proposed by some archaeologists and anthropologists for hypothetical peoples who lived in
the Americas prior to the arrival of the ancestors of the
Paleo-Indians.
This theory is mainly supported by a number of archaeological finds, the dates and anatomical features of which do not fit into the more established Siberian migration or "
Clovis First" theories. On the basis of that evidence, it has been speculated that those hypothetical American Aborigines could have been the descendants of
Proto-Australoids or early East Asians coming to the Americas from various points of origin, including
Oceania or southeast
Asia. According to the hypothesis, this population was nearly exterminated or assimilated by the ancestors of today's
Amerindians. However, this theory is still somewhat controversial, and the evidence is still being analyzed and published.
The proposed name collides with other established uses of "Aborigine" in American contexts; see
American Aborigines (disambiguation).
History
Asian nomads are thought to have entered the Americas via the
Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), now the
Bering Strait and possibly along the Northwest coast. Genetic evidence found in
Amerindians' maternally inherited
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) supports the theory of multiple genetic founding populations migrating from Asia, although it does not rule out a single migration. Over the course of millennia, people spread throughout
North America and
South America. Exactly when the first group of people migrated into the
Americas is the subject of much debate.
Alledged evidence
Cave paintings of Serra da Capivara
Cave paintings at Serra da Capivara
One indication of possible American aboriginal settlement of South America came from
cave paintings in
Serra da Capivara National Park in
Brazil. The paintings, which some archaeologists claim are older than the supposed date of arrival of the Siberian migrations to the area, are in a style not seen elsewhere in native American
art. Researchers also point to both the physical traits of human remains found at the sites and tool-making technology as highly distinct from that associated with the
Clovis culture.
The elaborate ritual costumes shown in the paintings exhibit similarity to those used by
Australian Aborigines as well as those used by the
Fuegians, the natives of
Tierra del Fuego. According to some researchers, such as
Walter Neves of the
University of Sao Paulo, the Fuegians (who were reduced to only one woman as of 2004) may be descendants of intermixing between American Aborigines and American Indians, and therefore the last surviving remnants of the original settlers.
Monte Verde
Monte Verde is an
archaeological site in south-central
Chile that pre-dates the earliest known
Clovis culture site of
Clovis, New Mexico, by 1000 years. One layer at Monte Verde is estimated to date to 12,500 years before present, making it one of the earliest documented sites of human occupation in
the Americas. At that time, the Bering Strait route was blocked by huge glaciers, suggesting that Monte Verde's inhabitants arrived long prior to dates associated with the Clovis culture, or via a different route. Another layer at Monte Verde has been
radiocarbon dated to 33,000 B.P., although some archaeologists have questioned the methodology used to determine the older date.
Lagoa Santa
More solid evidence was found in the 1970s by anthropologist
Annette Laming-Emperaire. In
limestone caves of
Lagoa Santa region in eastern Brazil, she unearthed the skeleton of a 20-year old, 1.50 m tall woman, later nicknamed "
Luzia" (or Lucia), a reference to the famous African hominid skeleton known as "
Lucy". Laming-Emperaire died before she had a chance to study it. Some 20 years later,
Walter Neves found the skull in the
Quinta da Boa Vista National Museum in
Rio de Janeiro, and found that its measurements were quite different from those of the later peoples descended from the Siberian migration(s), and more similar to those of
Australian Aborigines,
Melanesians, and
Negritos. This find, dated between
10,500 and
9,500 BC, was greeted with much skepticism by the anthropological community. The find was eventually confirmed by remains of over 70 individuals with similar characteristics found in that same region. The authors of the study conclude that with the Monte Verde dates, their suggestion that "populations colonizing the New World may have crossed the Bering Strait earlier than previously thought" becomes more plausible, and that "the Americas could ultimately be seen as part of the first expansion of anatomically modern humans out of Africa, which started during the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene."
Physiology, genetics and culture
The Pericúes
Anthropologist
Rolando González-José of the
University of Barcelona demonstrated that the remains of the
Pericúes, a tribe that lived in
Baja California Sur until the 18th century, were morphologically more similar to the Lagoa Santa finds than to any other group tested, and both were closer to the Australian Aborigines and Melanesians than to Siberians. The explanation they give is that "Climatic changes during the Middle Holocene probably generated the conditions for isolation from the continent, restricting the gene flow of the original group with northern populations, which resulted in the temporal continuity of the Palaeoamerican morphological pattern to the present." DNA testing has shown that "the group had just the normal haplogroups found in the modern Native American Indians suggesting the possibility of processes of in situ differentiation for this extinct group.
Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man, whose remains were found along the
Columbia River in
Washington state in July 1996, does not resemble today's Amerindians. Anthropologist Joseph Powell concluded in his official report that "Kennewick appears to have strongest morphological affinities with populations in
Polynesia and southern Asia, and not with American Indians or Europeans in the reference samples."
Recent DNA Research and a single founding population
A 2008 article in the
American Journal of Human Genetics states, "Here we show, by using 86 complete
mitochondrial genomes, that all Native American haplogroups, including haplogroup X, were part of a single founding population, thereby refuting multiple-migration models." It also states that "Under our model, three periods that may define a date for the peopling of the Americas can be delineated: (1) the colonization of Beringia (because about half of it was “America” at that time) by the founding population; (2) the movement out of Beringia—characterized by the fast colonization of the continental Pacific coastal plain—south of the ice sheets; and (3) the more recent and more extensive colonization of inland continental masses."
See also
