Grim find ... divers Alberto Nava (left) and Susan Bird transport the Hoyo Negro skull to an underwater turntable so that it can be photographed in order to create a 3-D model on June 15, 2013. Picture: Paul Nicklen Source: AFP
A SKELETON of a teenager more than 12,000 years old with a facial structure resembling that of an indigenous Australian is offering new clues about the origins of the first Native Americans.
Named “Naia” by scientists after the water nymphs of Greek mythology, the skeleton of the girl who fell into a hole in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula is among the oldest known and best preserved in the Americas.
Her remains were found in 2007, submerged in an underwater cave along with the bones of sabre tooth tigers, giant sloths and cave bears, some 41 metres below sea level.
At the time she fell, some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, the area, called Hoyo Negro, or Black Hole in Spanish, was dry and above ground.
Underwater grave ... diver Susan Bird works at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped cave in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula on June 15, 2013. Picture: Paul Nicklen Source: AFP
Melting glaciers caused a sea level rise that covered the pit with water for the past 8000 years.
The girl was aged 15 to 16 and may have slipped into what appeared to her to be a watering hole.
Her pelvis appears to have broken on impact, suggesting she died quickly after her fall, said Jim Chatters, an archaeologist and forensic anthropologist in Bothell, Washington.
Her skull shows she had a small, narrow face, wide-set eyes, a prominent forehead and teeth that jutted outward.
Her appearance was “about the opposite of what Native Americans look like,” Chatters told reporters on Thursday.
Historical find ... the human skull discovered by the Tulum Speleological Project inside a cave in the area called Hoyo Negro (Black Hole), in Tulum, Quintana Roo State, Mexico. Picture: Roberto Chavez Arce Source: AFP
Instead her facial structure resembles a modern African, indigenous Australian or Pacific Islander, the scientists said.
Such differences have fuelled theories that these first paleo-Americans and modern Native Americans have no kinship.
But a genetic marker found in the girl’s rib bone and tooth shows that her maternally inherited lineage was the same as that found in some modern Native Americans.
The report in the journal Science suggests she descended from people who migrated from Asia across the Bering Strait, over a land mass that was known as Beringia.
Into the blue ... divers of the Tulum Speleological Project exploring a cave in the area called Hoyo Negro (Black Hole), in Tulum, Quintana Roo State, Mexico. Picture: Roberto Chavez Arce Source: AFP
“What this study is presenting for the first time is the evidence that paleo-Americans with those distinctive features can also be directly tied to the same Beringian source population as contemporary Native Americans,” said Deborah Bolnick, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
That goes against theories held by some experts that Native Americans were descendants of people who migrated later, perhaps from Europe, southeast Asia or Australia.
Tough job, but someone’s got to do it ... a diver of the Tulum Speleological Project exploring a cave in the area called Hoyo Negro (Black Hole), in Tulum, Quintana Roo State, Mexico. Picture: AFP/INAH/Roberto Chavez Arce. Source: AFP
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