DNA Study of Mexican Cave Find

[shawomet]

A 12,000-13,000 year old skull supports a single founding population arriving from Beringia:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... ml?hpid=z1

From which:

"A paper published Thursday online in the journal Science argues that the discrepancy in appearance between the Paleoamericans and later Native Americans is most likely the result of recent, and relatively rapid, human evolution — and not the result of subsequent migrations of people into the Americas."

"Tests on mitochondrial DNA taken from Naia show that she had a genetic marker common today across the Americas, one that scientists say evolved in a prehistoric population that had been isolated for thousand of years in Beringia, the land mass between Alaska and Siberia that formed a bridge between the continents during the Ice Ages.

Thus, according to the report, the Native Americans and the Paleoamericans are the same people, descended from the same Beringia population. They just look different because of recent evolution.".........


".........Chatters, the lead author, said he is working on another paper in which he will lay out his theory of the “Human Wild Style” population.

He believes that these early migrants were an aggressive breed — risk-takers and novelty-seekers. They chased wild game, including megafauna such as mastodons and saber-toothed cats, into unpopulated lands far from their ancestral hunting grounds.

But later, as their descendants settled down and adopted agriculture, natural selection favored a gentler sort of personality, and men and women took on softer, more feminine features, Chatters argues. This tendency toward “neotony,” or natural selection of more childlike features, has been seen across much of the world, he said."

[Minimalist]

But later, as their descendants settled down and adopted agriculture, natural selection favored a gentler sort of personality

Huh?

[shawomet]

But later, as their descendants settled down and adopted agriculture, natural selection favored a gentler sort of personality

Huh?

New to me as well, but apparently not to evolutionary biologists. I don't know if it applies to psychology though-our personalities? At any rate, can't prove it from our history!!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

"Many prominent evolutionary theorists propose that neoteny has been a key feature in human evolution. Stephen Jay Gould believed that the "evolutionary story" of humans is one where we have been "retaining to adulthood the originally juvenile features of our ancestors".[18] J.B.S. Haldane mirrors Gould's hypothesis by stating a "major evolutionary trend in human beings" is "greater prolongation of childhood and retardation of maturity."[5] Delbert D. Thiessen said that "neoteny becomes more apparent as early primates evolved into later forms" and that primates have been "evolving toward flat face."[19] However, in light of some groups using arguments based around neoteny to support racism, Gould also argued "that the whole enterprise of ranking groups by degree of neoteny is fundamentally unjustified" (Gould, 1996, pg. 150)."

[Minimalist]

I guess it is the notion that agriculturalism is somehow "gentler" than hunting and gathering.

The Romans would be surprised to learn that.

[kbs2244]

There are three stories on this on the News page.

The eureka alert story says

“the girl's skeleton is between 13,000 and 12,000 years old and establishes a shared ancestry between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans. “

That sounds like two different DNA groups to me.

So, at the least, two different migration groups that intermingled.
Maybe like the human/Neanderthal mixing?

[Frank Harrist]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 142756.htm