An Analysis of the Paleoindian Double Burial from Horn Shelter No.2, In Central Texas

Unexpected malocclusion in a 13,000-Year-old Late Pleistocene young woman from Mexico

To analyze the etiological factors behind the malocclusion of a Late Pleistocene woman (named Naia), who is the best-preserved of the earliest individuals of the American continent. The examination of Naia’s malocclusion was performed through cephalometric and occlusal analyses, and by measuring her mandible. Her data were then compared to published data for modern, medieval, and postmedieval samples and seven Late Pleistocene individuals. Naia presented her permanent dentition fully erupted, except for the impacted mandibular third molars. She presented a class II molar malocclusion with crowding. The dental widths and mandible measurements were similar to or smaller than modern standards. The degree of dental wear was light. The cephalometric analysis confirmed a skeletal class II relationship, with a retrusive mandible and protruded upper incisors. Naia’s mild level of dental wear is consistent with a low masticatory force, in a time when the norm was a high amount of grinding. The low masticatory forces help explain Naia’s small jaws and crowding. However, it does not clarify Angle’s class II relationship. Naia is an example that environmental factors are insufficient to explain the onset of malocclusions and emphasizes the importance of understanding hereditary factors’ role.

Female hunters of the early Americas

Sexual division of labor with females as gatherers and males as hunters is a major empirical regularity of hunter-gatherer ethnography, suggesting an ancestral behavioral pattern. We present an archeological discovery and meta-analysis that challenge the man-the-hunter hypothesis. Excavations at the Andean highland site of Wilamaya Patjxa reveal a 9000-year-old human burial (WMP6) associated with a hunting toolkit of stone projectile points and animal processing tools. Osteological, proteomic, and isotopic analyses indicate that this early hunter was a young adult female who subsisted on terrestrial plants and animals. Analysis of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene burial practices throughout the Americas situate WMP6 as the earliest and most secure hunter burial in a sample that includes 10 other females in statistical parity with early male hunter burials. The findings are consistent with nongendered labor practices in which early hunter-gatherer females were big-game hunters.

Late Pleistocene human skeleton and mtDNA link Paleoamericans and modern Native Americans

Because of differences in craniofacial morphology and dentition between the earliest American skeletons and modern Native Americans, separate origins have been postulated for them, despite genetic evidence to the contrary. We describe a near-complete human skeleton with an intact cranium and preserved DNA found with extinct fauna in a submerged cave on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. This skeleton dates to between 13,000 and 12,000 calendar years ago and has Paleoamerican craniofacial characteristics and a Beringian-derived mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup (D1). Thus, the differences between Paleoamericans and Native Americans probably resulted from in situ evolution rather than separate ancestry.