At the bottom of a water - filled cavern in Mexico , archaeologists have discovered a turn of skull that are challenging what we know about the first humans in North America . It turns out , these people were perhaps right smart more diverse than we antecedently adopt .
research worker from The Ohio State University have recently take four ancient skull that were found in the cave system at Tulum in Mexico ’s Yucatán Peninsula . The skull belonged to people who lived 9,000 to 13,000 years ago , a time when hoi polloi lived in the caves before they became flooded with water .
Reporting their findings in the journalPLOS ONE , the researchers hit the books the structure and physical body of these skull with the aim of pick up more about these mystifying people . By compare the skull ’ word structure to a dataset of worldwide modern human populations , they find these former Americans were unmistakably divers , bearing similarities to different population that know across a wider stretch of Europe and Asia .
The oldest skull partake close similarities with modern native Americans in Greenland and Alaska , while the second - honest-to-goodness skull was more similar to modern European populations . Another display close connection with Asiatic and Native American chemical group and the final skull had a mix of lineament seen in Arctic populations and some modernistic South American populations .
“ The first Americans were much more complex , much more diverse than we thought , ” Mark Hubbe , co - lead author of the discipline and professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University , say in astatement .
This suggest that the multitude who arrived in North America from Asia were not simply a consistent group from the same background . Instead , they were a diverse bunch who perhaps had origins in other far - flung corners of Eurasia . However , the diversity look to have become belittle by the time human beings dispel into South America , for obscure intellect .
“ We always wear that what was happening in South America was reliable in North America . Now we need to revise that , ” said Hubbe .
“ We involve to stop talking about the closure of the Americas . We should talk about the settlement of North America and the settlement of South America as very different .
“ Whatever we think about the settlement of the Americas is in all likelihood not the whole tarradiddle . We still have a lot to study , ” he concluded .
Mexico ’s Yucatán Peninsula is full of underwater cave systems that are like atreasure trovefor archaeologists . diver have evendiscovered the toothof an extinct megalodon shark in one of these inland caves .
One of the most incredible discoveries was the remains of a 14,000 - year - honest-to-god woman dubbed theEve of Naharon , thought to be the oldest human skeleton found in the Americas yet . Researchers have even constructedthe grimace of a young char , providing some fascinating insights into what this highly important person might have looked like .
