Archaeologica.org

That's a pretty good trip down the coastline if you believe what has been described as the most probable route from Europe.

"We've got to start investigating the peopling of the Americas as a process and not an event," says University of Tennessee archaeologist David Anderson. "The more we know, the more we realize how complex the situation is. The fact is we don't have a simple story to tell. That's what makes this an exciting time in archaeology."

"Luzia" of Brazil


A skull belonging to a roughly 20 year old woman was unearthed in Brazil by the French archaeologist Annette Amperaire in 1971. She died before before being able to do any work on her dicovery. The skull was later "re-discovered" on a museum shelf by Brazilian Prof. Walter Neves and recognized for what it was. In a brilliant popularization of his find, he named the ancient lady "Luzia" (in analogy to the famous and much older African "Lucy") - the press and a wider public could not be troubled with the skull's official designation "Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1".

The face of "Luzia" was reconstructed using modern forensic methods and its morphology painstakingly analyzed by craniometric measurements. The reconstruction brought to light and and the measurements confirmed that "Luzia" was not a mongoloid Amerindian but had features indicating a possibly Australoid or southeast Asian ancestry. When it was dated to around 11,500 to 12,500 years ago (the oldest human remains found so far in the Americas), the sensation was perfect.

Since Luzia's discovery, at least 50 similarly un-mongoloid Palaeoamerican remains have been found in the Lagoa Santa area near where "Luzia" herself was found. They all seem to have been buried within a small area that may have been a cemetery. This rises the intriguing question of whether the Lagoa Santa population at this early time was perhaps already settled in a specific area and perhaps even no longer just hunter-gatherers. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the Lagoa Santa people that cry out for further research.

The New York Times, October 26, 1999

An Ancient Skull Challenges Long-Held Theories

By LARRY ROHTER

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A human skull that is prominently displayed at the
National Museum here has been attracting crowds and controversy in equal
measure since it was first unveiled early this month. After two decades in
storage, the fossilized cranium has now been identified by Brazilian
scientists as the oldest human remains ever recovered in the Western
Hemisphere.



The New York Times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The skull is that of a young woman, nicknamed Luzia, who is believed to have
roamed the savannah of south-central Brazil some 11,500 years ago. Even more
startling, a reconstruction of her cranium undertaken in Britain this year
indicates that her features appear to be Negroid rather than Mongoloid,
suggesting that the Western Hemisphere may have initially been settled not
only earlier than thought, but by a people distinct from the ancestors of
today's Indian peoples of North and South America.

Beagle wrote:http://www.allendale-expedition.net/pre ... 117pr.html


The dig at the Topper site ends today. I hope some news will soon be forthcoming. Frank, you may be closer to this than most of us. Let us know if you hear anything please.