Continental Survivors: Baja skulls shake up American ancestry
By Bruce Bower
Around 600 years ago, the Pericú people roamed the southern tip of what is now Mexico’s Baja peninsula, a finger of land that extends below California. Although the Spanish conquest spelled their demise in the 16th century, the Pericú were living links to America’s first settlers, according to a new anthropological study.
Pericú skulls closely resemble 8,000- to-11,000-year-old human skulls unearthed in Brazil, say Rolando Gonzlez-José of the University of Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues. The Brazilian skulls look strikingly like those of today’s Australian aborigines (SN: 4/7/01, p. 212: Early Brazilians Unveil African Look). Moreover, the scientists contend, the data indicate that the Pericú were unrelated to modern Native American and eastern Asian groups.