South American History Is Being Challenged By A New Discovery; Single Wave Of Immigrants May Not Be The Case

The native people of South America are likely to come from more than one place. It has been found from the trio of researchers connected with the institutions coming from Europe, South America and the United States.

André Strauss, Mark Hubbe and Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel described how they used the imaging technology to the skulls that have been unearthed in Brazil and what was revealed by it. The research paper was published in the journal Science Advances.

Phys.org reported that it has been known to many that for many years, it was believed that a single wave of ancient immigrants made their way from Asia to North America and eventually to South America. These immigrants were said to be the first people to exist in the New World.

But the known view was put to challenge in more recent years. In the new research, the experts described the evidence that they have found, which suggests that the first settlers of the New World may have come from more than one place.

To further investigate the ancestry of some of the earliest settlers in South America, the experts used a geometric morphometric. It is a type of imaging technology that enables to create 3-D images of an object, to study the skulls that were found in Lagoa Santa, Brazil.

The prior research had dated the skulls back 7,000 to 10,000 years that places them near the time when the scientists believe that South America was first populated by humans. The researchers reported that the shape of the skull that came from the ancient people differed markedly from those of modern indigenous South Americans. Thus, it suggested that it came from somewhere else.

The study first author Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel told Inverse: "I knew that suggestions about multiple migrations had been made based on the unusual shape of the Paleoamerican skulls, and the wide variation seen in South America - but I approached the project with an open mind."

To date, most in the field believed that at least one wave of immigrants came as Asian people. They then made their way across the Bering Strait, which probably had been frozen over for a time. Though it is not clear where the other immigrants may have come from, some have mentioned that Australia is a likely possibility.