Paleoindians from Mexico: What Do They Tell Us about the Early Peopling of the Americas?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mexico is important in the debate on the early peopling of the Americas because several well-preserved Paleoindian/Preceramic individuals with ages between 13,000 and 8,000 years have been found in lake sediments/volcanic deposits surrounding a Late Pleistocene Lake in Central Mexico and in submerged caves (cenotes) in the Yucatán Peninsula, flooded about 8,000 years ago. We will discuss their stratigraphy and dating together with information on the skeletal variation found in Mexico. We then will compare their craniometric information against other Preceramic human populations in Mexico (e.g., Ancient Californians from Baja California Peninsula, Coahuiltecans) and elsewhere in the Americas (e.g., Kennewick Man, Prehistoric Chumash from the Channel Islands in the USA, Lagoa Santa, in Brazil) to establish connections and migration pathways across the American Continent. Our data strongly support a Pacific Coast migration route passing through Mexico but also a different one following the Golf Coast of Mexico.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36052.0