title: The cranial morphology of the Botocudo Indians, Brazil.
abstract: 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. Moreover, recently, some of the Botocudo remains have been shown to have mitochondrial and autosomal DNA lineages currently found in Polynesian populations. Here, we explore the morphological affinities of Botocudo skulls within a worldwide context. Distinct multivariate analyses based on 32 craniometric variables show that 1) the two individuals with Polynesian DNA sequences have morphological characteristics that fall within the Polynesian and Botocudo variation, making their assignation as Native American specimens problematic, and 2) there are high morphological affinities between Botocudo, Early Americans, and the Polynesian series of Easter Island, which support the early observations that the Botocudo can be seen as retaining the Paleoamerican morphology, particularly when the neurocranium is considered. Although these results do not elucidate the origin of the Polynesian DNA lineages among the Botocudo, they support the hypothesis that the Botocudo represent a case of late survival of ancient Paleoamerican populations, retaining the morphological characteristics of ancestral Late Pleistocene populations from Asia.
authors: Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
authors: André
authors: A
authors: Strauss
authors: Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.|Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo, Universidad Católica del Norte, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.
authors: Mark
authors: M
authors: Hubbe
authors: Laboratório de Estudos Evolutivos Humanos, Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors: Walter A
authors: WA
authors: Neves
authors: Instituto de Ciências Humanas e da Informação, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Rio Grande, Brazil.
authors: Danilo V
authors: DV
authors: Bernardo
authors: Laboratório de Estudos Evolutivos Humanos, Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors: João Paulo V
authors: JP
authors: Atuí
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000885:Anthropology, Physical; D001938:Brazil; D002508:Cephalometry; D063426:Human Migration; D007199:Indians, South American / Q000235:genetics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011114:Polynesia; D012886:Skull / Q000033:anatomy & histology
keywords: Lagoa Santa; Paleoamerican; cranial morphology; settlement of the Americas