Yucatán Paleo Skeleton

[Olden]

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Interesting article from today's Wash. Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/girls-12000-year-old-skeleton-may-solve-a-mystery/2014/05/15/e45a6330-da90-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html?hpid=z1

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/paleoamerican-remains-found-in-the-yucatan/1036/

[gregszybala]

Thanks, very interesting read, of course there's Stanford!

[CMD]

"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."
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All new to me. They are saying evolution in the Americas is why Kennewick Man and other early remains don't look like modern Native Americans. I'm not going to refuse to believe that, but my guess is many people will. Not professionals necessarily but people are going to doubt that part, I've seen it in comments to articles already.

[CMD]

Here's another article with a different video at the start.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023615630_oldestskeletonxml.html

A possible consequence with respect to Kennewick Man:
  "Though the new study didn’t deal directly with Kennewick Man, the findings raise questions about the fate of the skeleton that remains locked away at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum.
After a lengthy custody battle with Northwest tribes and federal agencies, a group of scientists led by Smithsonian anthropologist Doug Owsley was allowed to study the bones in 2005.
Owsley, who declined to comment on the new report, said his team’s book-length manuscript will be published this fall. Owsley is steadfast in his belief, based on physical features, that the ancient man is not genetically linked to the tribes who still hope to lay the bones to rest someday.
Scientists would love to extract DNA from Kennewick Man, but the agencies who control access to the skeleton won’t allow it. Without those results, it’s impossible to know if Kennewick Man would share Naia’s genetic affinity with Native Americans. But the results from Mexico add ammunition to the tribes’ argument that just because his head is shaped differently from theirs, doesn’t mean they aren’t related, Kemp said.
“If DNA is ever obtained from Kennewick Man, my prediction is that he’s Native American,” Kemp said. “I have no reason to believe that he could be anything else.”