Extra-continental morphological affinities of Palli Aike, Southern Chile

Morphological comparative studies conducted over the last ten years have de monstrated that the first Americans cannot be described as Mongoloids. In f act the cranial morphology of the Paleoindian skeletons show a clear tenden cy to cluster with Australians and Africans instead of with Asians and mode rn Amerindians in different multivariate analyses. This has been demonstrat ed for both South and North America. Regarding South America, most of the s tudies conducted up to the present have concentrated on skeletal remains fr om central Brazil, a tropical area. In this paper, we add to the current re search on Paleoindian morphology by analyzing and individual of late Paleoi ndian age from the site of Palli Aike, Tierra del Fuego, and area of South America characterized by very low temperatures. The results show that the e arly Fuegians also did not present any morphological affinity with Mongoloi ds. Similar to the Paleoindian skeletons from Central Brazil and Sabana de Bogota, in Colombia, the Palli Aike specimen shows a marked affinity with A fricans and Australians.