-Caveat Lector- THE SUNDAY TIMES August 22 1999 UNITED STATES Aborigines were the first Americans By Sarah Toyne THE first people to inhabit America were Australian Aborigines - not American Indians. New archeological findings have uncovered evidence that they crossed the Pacific Ocean by boat and settled on the continent long before Siberians trekked across the Bering Straits after the Ice Age. Scientists have reconstructed the skull of a young girl found in Brazil. At 12,000 years old, "Luzia" is the oldest human skeleton yet found on the American landmass. During the past four years 50 other skulls have been discovered in Brazil and Colombia, all predating the invasion of Mongoloid peoples from the north about 9,000 years ago. Luzia's skull was discovered in the early 1970s by a French archeologist in a layer of sediment in Amazonas and was dismissed as insignificant. It was given away to the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, where it remained until a few years ago when Walter Neves, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Sao Paolo, heard about it and realised that it might provide vital clues for solving the mystery of America's anthropological heritage. The procedure has revealed conclusive evidence of Luzia's ancestry. Neves is still shocked by his findings. "When we started seeing the results, it was amazing because we realised the statistics were not showing these people to be Mongoloid; they were showing that they were anything except Mongoloid," he said. Luzia was reconstructed by Richard Neave, a forensic artist from the University of Manchester, for Ancient Voices, a BBC2 documentary to be shown next week. Neave's reconstruction backed up Neves's calculations: "That to me is a negroid face. The proportions of the face do not say anything about it being Mongoloid." Luzia's facial characteristics are similar to those of the people of the islands of southeast Asia, Australia and Melanesia. "They are similar to modern-day Aborigines and Africans and show no similarities at all with Mongoloids from east Asia and modern-day Indians," said Neves. The oldest signs of habitation in north or south America were previously believed to be stone spear points discovered at Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1930s. They were dated at 11,000 years old. Charcoal, a chipped stone stool and scraps of food found recently, however, have been dated at 40,000 years old - the remains, perhaps, of a campfire lit by ancient seafarers from Asia. The theory that Aborigines could have travelled by water to the Americas has been given further credence by the discovery of a painting of an ocean- going vessel in Western Australia, which is 20,000 years old. The 4,000-mile journey between Australia and South America can still be undertaken with relatively short island hops. Dennis Stanford, chairman of the anthropology department at the Natural Museum of History in Washington DC, believes the capability of prehistoric peoples has long been underestimated. "Way back then they weren't really 'cave' people, they were pretty sophisticated," he said. "I think Neolithic people were doing a whole lot more than we give them credit for; they were just as smart as you and I, they just did different things." Further evidence of the fate of the Aboriginal invaders has been provided by computer- imaging technology, used to interpret cave paintings in the Serra da Capivara in northeastern Brazil. The pictures show pregnant women and hunters chasing giant armadillos, as well as what were initially interpreted by archeologists as human figures dancing. After more examination, however, the figures are now thought to be warriors spinning through the air with a spear - illustrating battles between the Aborigines and the invading Mongoloids from the north. The American Aborigines were almost entirely wiped out by the encroaching Mongoloids, but anthropologists believe that some of their descendants, interbred with the Mongoloid peoples who preceded today's South American Indians, survived in Tierra del Fuego. Scientists believe that Aboriginal descendants escaped to this remote island off the southern tip of South America, where they prospered until European settlers migrating to Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century brought stomach illnesses to the area, which wiped out the majority of the remaining native Fuegans. Rows of white crosses mark the graves of the Fuegans, who wore sealskins and lit fires everywhere - even in boats - to protect themselves from the harsh climate. Their skulls have now been analysed to reveal features common to Neves's skulls. Evidence from Father de Agostini, an Italian ethnographer who filmed the Fuegan way of life in the 1930s, reveal similarities with Aboriginal culture in Australia. Only a few Fuegans remain alive today, a fading anthropological link with the first native Americans. http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/ DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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