The Ancestry of North America:

A statistical craniomorphic comparison of paleoindian skulls

by

J. Chad Jones

Abstract

The relationship between prehistoric skull measurements, the 9,500 year-old remains of Kennewick Man, Buhl Woman, Sprit Cave Man, Skull 101, and numerous skulls from the Windover Site in Florida, and the Jomon populations all dating about the same time period, is explored. Based on approximately 16 measurements, an attempt to find out how closely related these skulls are made. A multivariate analysis (One-sample Hotelling T² test and Neighbor Joining tree based on Euclidean distance) will show that these specimens may or may not be from the same ancestry. Data is extrapolated and used to make assumptions about the peopling of North America. By comparing the measurements of skulls from the same time period separated geographically an attempt to discover if these skulls were from one major migration into North America or if unrelated, they were part of separate small migrations that lead to the peopling of North America. Previous results have shown that these skulls are dissimilar to current Native American populations and that the Paleo-Indian skulls studied most likely died or intermixed with current populations. New evidence shows that while these skulls are not the oldest or “first Americans” we can still learn much about the way North America was populated. This study will provide insight into the question that has plagued anthropologists and archaeologists for over half a century: “Who were the Paleoindians?” and “Did they populate North America in one major migration or successive waves of smaller migrations during the late Pleistocene.”