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I still see the same problem as prior studies.

Posted by Salsassin on 15 Jun 2010 at 19:46 GMT

Drs. Neves and Hubbe has been proponents of this belief for a long time. These claims have been made before and challenged before. Genetics
of recent Native Americans with Paleo-American facial traits still match the genetics of other modern Native Americans. This could easily be explained by polytopicity, as discussed by Dr. Keita. Various articles I have saved that mention this variability:
https://docs.google.com/f...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
http://docs.google.com/fi...
https://docs.google.com/f...

I think all these articles should be addressed, especially Dr. Gonzalez-Jose, and either proven wrong, shown as compatible with their claims or differentiated before such claims are made as fact. Of course the criticism goes more toward the brief Yahoo article. Drs. Armelagos and Williams have also questioned the phylogenetic value of some of these craniofacial studies when craniofacial plasticity may be much higher than believed before. I see the article makes brief mention of various of these studies, but does not address them fully. The study is fully one dimensional in that it is a mathematic grouping of craniofacial traits, and does not explore genetic compatibility like Dr. Gonzalez-Jose did.

I'm am also surprised Dr. Neves has not addressed the cranial features and genetics of the recent native populations sampled by Dr. Veranzani Atui in his thesis, which would seem to indicate craniofacial variation concordant with that of Paleo Americans with similar genetic make up to that of other modern Natives. This would expand the parameters of what Native American craniofacial traits are, well beyond the Howellian data set being used. I addressed that in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/wa...

No competing interests declared.