THE first humans to arrive in the New World may have come from Japan and
other Pacific islands, not mainland Asia as many researchers supposed.
A team led by Loring Brace of the University of Michigan measured the
dimensions of more than 1800 prehistoric and modern skulls from major regions of
the Old World, the Pacific and the New World.
They conclude that the first New World inhabitants, who arrived some 15,000
years ago, resembled people in Japan and Polynesia (PNAS Early Edition,
vol 98, no 16).
The study is an important step towards understanding the origins of…
