Brief Communication: Ancient Remains and the First Peopling of the Americas: Reassessing the Hoyo

OBJECTIVE: A noticeably well-preserved 12.500 years-old skeleton from the Hoyo Negro cave, Yucat � an, Mwas recently reported, along with its archaeological, genetic and skeletal characteristics. Based exclusively on an anatomical description of the skull (HN5/ 48), Chatters and colleagues stated that this specimen can be assigned to a set of ancient remains that differ from modern Native Americans, the so called "Paleoamericans". Here, we aim to further explore the morphological affinities of this specimen with a set of comparative cranial samples covering ancient and modern periods from Asia and the Americas. METHODS: Images published in the original article were analyzed using geometric morphometrics methods. Shape variables were used to perform Principal Compo- nent and Discriminant analysis against the reference samples. RESULTS: Even thought the Principal Component Analy- sis suggests that the Hoyo Negro skull falls in a subregion of the morphospace occupied by both "Paleoamericans" and some modern Native Americans, the Discriminant analyses suggest greater affinity with a modern Native American sample. These results reinforce the idea that the original population that first occupied the New World carried high levels of within-group variation, which we have suggested previously on a synthetic model for the settlement of the Americas. Our results also highlight the importance of developing formal classificatory test before deriving settlement hypothesis purely based on macroscopic descriptions. Am J Phys Anthropol 000:000-