What kind of hominin first left Africa?

Recent discoveries of stone tools from Jordan (2.5 Ma) and China (2.1 Ma) document hominin presence in Asia at the beginning of the Pleistocene, well before the conventional Dmanisi datum at 1.

An anthropological analysis about primatology - Reports of a particular human-animal relationship with Capuchin monkeys.

This ethnography is about a particular human-animal relationship based on primatological research on groups of wild robust capuchin monkeys living in Parque Estadual Carlos Botelho (Brazil), one of the largest preserved areas of Atlantic Tropical Forest in the world. It emphasizes the complex situations that highlight the difficulty of making this research. This space integrates administrative, scientific and local interests, producing a unique cartography.

Lagoa Santa's contribution to the origins and life of early Americans.

The region of Lagoa Santa, Central-Eastern Brazil, provides an exceptional archeological record about Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene occupation of the Americas. Since the first interventions made by the Danish naturalist Peter Lund in the 19th century, hundreds of human skeletons have been exhumed in the region. These skeletons are complemented by a rich botanic, faunal, technological, and geomorphological archeological record.

Brief communication: A re-evaluation of the health index of southern Brazilian shellmound populations.

Objectives: The southern Brazilian shellmounds provide archaeological evidence of prolonged human activity in the coast from approximately 6000 to 1000 BP. Shellmound building populations exploited the rich coastal estuarine zones, and the human remains recovered from them are important sources of information on health and overall lifestyle of these mid-Holocene groups. Therefore, they were included in the Western Hemisphere Global History of Health project.

Morphological affinities of Homo naledi with other Plio-Pleistocene hominins: a phenetic approach.

Recent fossil material found in Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa, was initially described as a new species of genus Homo, namely Homo naledi. The original study of this new material has pointed to a close proximity with Homo erectus. More recent investigations have, to some extent, confirmed this assignment.

Dental caries at Lapa do Santo, central-eastern Brazil: An Early Holocene archaeological site.

The origin and dispersion of the first Americans have been extensively investigated from morphological and genetic perspectives, but few studies have focused on their health and lifestyle. The archaeological site of Lapa do Santo, central-eastern Brazil, has exceptionally preserved Early Holocene human skeletons, providing 19 individuals with 327 permanent and 122 deciduous teeth dated to 9,250 to 7,500 years BP. In this study, we test whether the inhabitants of Lapa do Santo had high prevalence of dental caries as previous studies of Lagoa Santa collection have indicated, using individual and tooth as units of analyses.

Early South Americans Cranial Morphological Variation and the Origin of American Biological Diversity.

Recent South Americans have been described as presenting high regional cranial morphological diversity when compared to other regions of the world. This high diversity is in accordance with linguistic and some of the molecular data currently available for the continent, but the origin of this diversity has not been satisfactorily explained yet. Here we explore if this high morphological variation was already present among early groups in South America, in order to refine our knowledge about the timing and origins of the modern morphological diversity.

The Oldest Case of Decapitation in the New World (Lapa do Santo, East-Central Brazil).

We present here evidence for an early Holocene case of decapitation in the New World (Burial 26), found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in 2007. Lapa do Santo is an archaeological site located in the Lagoa Santa karst in east-central Brazil with evidence of human occupation dating as far back as 11.7-12.

The cranial morphology of the Botocudo Indians, Brazil.

The Botocudo Indians were hunter-gatherer groups that occupied the East-Central regions of Brazil decimated during the colonial period in the country. During the 19th century, craniometric studies suggested that the Botocudo resembled more the Paleoamerican population of Lagoa Santa than typical Native Americans groups. These results suggest that the Botocudo Indians might represent a population that retained the biological characteristics of early groups of the continent, remaining largely isolated from groups that gave origin to the modern Native South American variation.

Two ancient human genomes reveal Polynesian ancestry among the indigenous Botocudos of Brazil.

Understanding the peopling of the Americas remains an important and challenging question. Here, we present (14)C dates, and morphological, isotopic and genomic sequence data from two human skulls from the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, part of one of the indigenous groups known as 'Botocudos'. We find that their genomic ancestry is Polynesian, with no detectable Native American component.

Cranial morphological diversity of early, middle, and late Holocene Brazilian groups: implications for human dispersion in Brazil.

The history of human occupation in Brazil dates to at least 14 kyr BP, and the country has the largest record of early human remains from the continent. Despite the importance and richness of Brazilian human skeletal collections, the biological relationships between groups and their implications for knowledge about human dispersion in the country have not been properly explored. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the morphological affinities of human groups from East-Central, Coastal, Northeast, and South Brazil from distinct periods and test for the best dispersion scenarios to explain the observed diversity across time.

Dental health in Northern Chile's Atacama oases: evaluating the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000) impact on local diet.

As one of the few areas apt for horticulture in Northern Chile's arid landscape, the prehistory of the Atacama oases is deeply enmeshed with that of the inter-regional networks that promoted societal development in the south central Andes. During the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000), local populations experienced a cultural apex associated with a substantial increase in inter-regional interaction, population density, and quantity and quality of mortuary assemblages. Here, we test if this cultural peak affected dietary practices equally among the distinct local groups of this period.

Rock art at the pleistocene/holocene boundary in Eastern South America.

Background: Most investigations regarding the first americans have primarily focused on four themes: when the New World was settled by humans; where they came from; how many migrations or colonization pulses from elsewhere were involved in the process; and what kinds of subsistence patterns and material culture they developed during the first millennia of colonization. Little is known, however, about the symbolic world of the first humans who settled the New World, because artistic manifestations either as rock-art, ornaments, and portable art objects dated to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition are exceedingly rare in the Americas.

Methodology/principal Findings: Here we report a pecked anthropomorphic figure engraved in the bedrock of Lapa do Santo, an archaeological site located in Central Brazil.

Testing evolutionary and dispersion scenarios for the settlement of the new world.

Background: Discussion surrounding the settlement of the New World has recently gained momentum with advances in molecular biology, archaeology and bioanthropology. Recent evidence from these diverse fields is found to support different colonization scenarios. The currently available genetic evidence suggests a "single migration" model, in which both early and later Native American groups derive from one expansion event into the continent.

Cladistic analysis of continuous modularized traits provides phylogenetic signals in Homo evolution.

Evolutionary novelties in the skeleton are usually expressed as changes in the timing of growth of features intrinsically integrated at different hierarchical levels of development. As a consequence, most of the shape-traits observed across species do vary quantitatively rather than qualitatively, in a multivariate space and in a modularized way. Because most phylogenetic analyses normally use discrete, hypothetically independent characters, previous attempts have disregarded the phylogenetic signals potentially enclosed in the shape of morphological structures.

East-West cranial differentiation in pre-Columbian populations from Central and North America.

In a recent study we found that crania from South Amerindian populations on each side of the Andes differ significantly in terms of craniofacial shape. Western populations formed one morphological group, distributed continuously over 14,000km from the Fuegian archipelago (southern Chile) to the Zulia region (northwestern Venezuela). Easterners formed another group, distributed from the Atlantic Coast up to the eastern foothills of the Andes.

Brief communication: "Zuzu" strikes again--morphological affinities of the early holocene human skeleton from Toca dos Coqueiros, Piaui, Brazil.

The Serra da Capivara National Park in northeastern Brazil is one of the richest archaeological regions in South America. Nonetheless, so far only two paleoindian skeletons have been exhumed from the local rockshelters. The oldest one (9870 +/- 50 BP; CAL 11060 +/- 50), uncovered in Toca dos Coqueiros and known as "Zuzu," represents a rare opportunity to explore the biological relationships of paleoindian groups living in northeastern Brazil.

Human skeletal remains from Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia: a case of Paleoamerican morphology late survival in South America?

Human skeletal remains of the first Americans are scarce, especially in North America. In South America the situation is less dramatic. Two important archaeological regions have generated important collections that allow the analysis of the cranial morphological variation of the Early Americans: Lagoa Santa, Brazil, and Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia.

Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Sumidouro Cave, Lagoa Santa, Brazil: history of discoveries, geological and chronological context, and comparative cranial morphology.

In this work, we present new evidence supporting the idea that the first Americans were very distinct from late and recent Native Americans and Asians in terms of cranial morphology. The study is based on 30 early Holocene specimens recovered from Sumidouro Cave (Lagoa Santa region, central Brazil) by Peter Lund in 1843. Sumidouro is the largest known collection of Paleoindian skulls deriving from a single site.

East-West cranial differentiation in pre-Columbian human populations of South America.

South Amerindians are frequently thought of as a rather biologically homogeneous megapopulation. However, when native South Americans are assessed by information coming from DNA variability analysis, they resolve into two, major distinct entities of Eastern and Western zones. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the same dual pattern emerges from craniometric data.

Cranial morphology of early Americans from Lagoa Santa, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World.

Comparative morphological studies of the earliest human skeletons of the New World have shown that, whereas late prehistoric, recent, and present Native Americans tend to exhibit a cranial morphology similar to late and modern Northern Asians (short and wide neurocrania; high, orthognatic and broad faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses), the earliest South Americans tend to be more similar to present Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans (narrow and long neurocrania; prognatic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits and noses). However, most of the previous studies of early American human remains were based on small cranial samples. Herein we compare the largest sample of early American skulls ever studied (81 skulls of the Lagoa Santa region) with worldwide data sets representing global morphological variation in humans, through three different multivariate analyses.

A new early Holocene human skeleton from Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World.

Increasing skeletal evidence from the U.S.A.

Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Santana do Riacho, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World.

In this study we compare the cranial morphology of several late Paleoindian skeletons uncovered at Santana do Riacho, Central Brazil, with worldwide human cranial variation. Mahalanobis Distance and Principal Component Analysis are used to explore the extra-continental morphological affinities of the Brazilian Paleoindian sample. Santana do Riacho is a late Paleoindian burial site where approximately 40 individuals were recovered in varying states of preservation.

Subsistence patterns and blood pressure variation in two rural Caboclo communities of Marajó Island, Pará, Brazil.

Blood pressure (BP) increases with age in westernized societies, is higher in men, and is correlated with the body mass index (BMI). Traditional societies present more variable patterns of BP. In 1991, BP and anthropometric data from two "Caboclo" (rural populations of mixed ancestry) groups from Marajó Island, Brazil, were collected: The Paricatuba group, (N = 20;12 women), with a subsistence base of fishing, collection of palm fruits, and traditional gardening; and the Praia Grande group (N = 26; 14 women), where subsistence is based on mechanized agriculture.