The new face of South American people

A study by 72 researchers from eight countries concludes that the Lagoa Santa people are descendants of Clovis culture migrants from North America. Distinctly African features attributed to Luzia were wrong.

Over 17,000 years ago this original contingent crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska and began peopling the New World. Fossil DNA shows an affinity between this migratory current and the populations of Siberia and northern China. Contrary to the traditional theory it had no link to Africa or Australasia.

The new study also reveals that once they had settled in North America the descendants of this ancestral migratory flow diversified into two lineages some 16,000 years ago.

The members of one lineage crossed the Isthmus of Panama and peopled South America in three distinct consecutive waves.

The first wave occurred between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago. The second took place at most 9,000 years ago. There are fossil DNA records from both migrations throughout South America. The third wave is much more recent but its influence is limited as it occurred 4,200 years ago. Its members settled in the Central Andes.

According to the researchers' findings, the lineage that made the north-south journey between 16,000 and 15,000 years ago belonged to the Clovis culture, named for a group of archaeological sites excavated in the western US and dating from 13,500-11,000 years ago.