How long has human history existed?

[prozak at anus.com]

(CNN) -- Researchers said it may be the oldest skull ever found in 
the Americas: an elongated-faced woman who died about 13,000 years 
ago. 

But perhaps more significant than the age, researchers said, is that 
the skull and other bones were found while digging a well near Mexico 
City International Airport. Because the remains were discovered 
outside the United States, scientists will be able to study the DNA 
and structure of the skeleton without the objection of Native 
American groups, who can claim and rebury ancestral remains under a 
1990 U.S. law. 

"Here Mexico is providing the opportunity to see what clues these 
bones can yield about man's arrival in the American continent," 
Mexican anthropologist Jose Concepcion Jimenez Lopez said. 

The oldest skull up to now, believed to be that of "Buhl Woman," was 
found in 1989 at a gravel quarry in Idaho. Scientists said it dates 
back 10,500 to 11,000 years. But researchers scarcely studied those 
bones before the Shoshone-Bannock tribe claimed and reburied them. 

The "Peñon Woman III" -- which scientists believe is now the oldest 
skull from the New World -- has been sitting in Mexico City's 
National Museum of Anthropology since 1959. 

At the insistence of geologist Silvia Gonzalez, who had a hunch that 
the bones were older than previously thought, the remains were taken 
to Oxford University to be carbon-dated. And indeed, tests proved 
Gonzalez's assertion. 

Scientists said they believe that the Peñon Woman died anywhere from 
12,700 to 13,000 years ago at the age of 27. 

Did man arrive in the Americas by boat?

Geologist Silvia Gonzalez studies an ancient cranium. 



Emboldened by her finding, Gonzalez will try to prove her theory that 
the bones of the Peñon Woman belong not to Native Americans, but to 
descendants of the Ainu people of Japan. 

She said she bases her hypothesis on the elongated, narrow shape of 
the Peñon Woman's skull. Native Americans, she said, are round-faced 
with broad cheeks. "Quite different from Peñon Woman," she said. 

She said she believes descendants of the Ainu people made their way 
to the New World by island hoping on boats. 

"If this proves right, it's going to be quite contentious," said 
Gonzalez, who teaches at John Moores University in England and 
received a grant last week from the British government to conduct her 
research. "We're going to say to Native Americans, 'Maybe there were 
some people in the Americas before you, who are not related to you.' 
" 

Gonzalez's theory is controversial but gaining credence in scientific 
circles, where up to now many believed hardy mammoth hunters were 
first to arrive in the Americas 14,000 to 16,000 years ago by 
crossing into Alaska from Siberia. 

Gonzalez and other scientists said they believe people may have 
arrived in America as much as 25,000 years ago. She points to 
evidence of camps -- man-made tools, a human footprint and huts 
dating back 25,000 years -- that have been found in Chile as evidence 
of man's imprint on the Americas long before mammoth hunters. 

Searching for answers to coastal migration
Gonzalez will embark on a three-year journey to prove her theory. As 
part of that journey, she will travel to Baja California to study the 
Pericue people, who shared the same elongated faces of the Peñon 
Woman. She said she believes that the Pericue, who for unknown 
reasons went extinct in the 18th century, may hold the answers to 
coastal migration of man from Asia to America. 

The bones of the Peñon Woman will have DNA extracted to compare it 
with genetic matter 
of the Pericue, she said. Scientists also said they hope to study 
clothes fibers found near the 
skeleton and try to piece together how the woman died. Gonzalez said 
the skeleton does not show any wounds or obvious injuries. 

"We still have a long way to go," she said. "But we have a good 
start." 

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/03/oldest.skull/index.html
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