Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1: Morphological affinities of the earliest knownAmerican

Several studies concerning the extra-continental morphological affinities o f Paleo-Indian skeletons, carried out independently in South and North Amer ica, have indicated that the Americas were first occupied by non-Mongoloids that made their way to the New World through the Bering Strait in ancient times. The first South Americans show a clear resemblance to modern South P acific and African populations, while the first North Americans seem to be at an unresolved morphological position between modern South Pacific and Eu ropeans. In none of these analyses the first Americans show any resemblance to either northeast Asians or modern native Americans. So far, these studi es have included affirmed and putative early skeletons thought to date betw een 8,000 and 10,000 years B.P. In this work the extra-continental morpholo gical affinities of a Paleo-Indian skeleton well dated between 11,000 and 1 1,500 years B.P (Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1, or "Luzia") is investigated, u sing as comparative samples Howells' (1989) world-wide modern series and Ha bgood's (1985) Old World Late Pleistocene fossil hominids. The comparison b etween Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 and Howells series was based on canonical Variate analysis, including 45 size-corrected craniometric variables, whil e the comparison with fossil hominids was based on principal component anal ysis, including 16 size-corrected variables. In the first case, Lapa Vermel ha IV Hominid 1 exhibited an undisputed morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the second compar ison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities wit h early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The resul ts obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology .