05/08/2020

"America has been discovered many times," says Viana in Folha.

Foto: Pxfuel

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

"It takes a brutal effort of imagination to try to understand the significance of the arrival of the first Homo sapiens to the piece of land that, tens of thousands of years later, would be called the American continent. No human being has even come close to experiencing anything similar." Thus begins chapter 1 of the book "1499," by Reinaldo Lopes.

Until the end of the 20th century, the prevailing idea, known as the Clovis theory, was that the arrival of Native Americans occurred in a single wave, about 13,000 years ago, across Beringia, a land bridge that then connected Siberia to Alaska and is now submerged beneath the Bering Strait. Native American populations were believed to be related to Siberian peoples, a fact supported by genetic evidence.

But the real story is much richer. Not only do we have evidence of much earlier human presence, including in South America, but we also know that the continent was occupied by other peoples with very distinct characteristics.

Luzia, the oldest human fossil in South America, lived 11,500 years ago. At the end of the 20th century, her features were reconstructed by computer, revealing to everyone what Brazilian researchers had noticed long before: Luzia's appearance is much closer to the African or Australian Aboriginal pattern than to the Asian type of current native Brazilian peoples. Other fossils found, especially in the Lagoa Santa region (MG), confirm this: the oldest known Brazilians were "black".

Where did Luzia's people come from, when and how did they arrive here, and where did they go? It has been suggested that they came from Africa or Oceania, crossing the Atlantic or Pacific by boat, but there are other possible explanations.

We know that, as they spread across Europe, Asia, and Oceania, the different groups of Homo sapiens maintained original African characteristics for a long time, before local conditions imposed diversifications. It is possible that the first to cross Beringia were from this phase, and that the transition to the Asian type occurred later, accentuated by new migrations from Siberia. If so, the current Luzia people are us.

In any case, it is now clear that the colonization of the Americas is much older than previously thought. An article published on July 22 in the journal Nature presents evidence of human presence in the Chiquihuite cave in northern Mexico between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago, indicating that human occupation of the region may date back 33,000 years.

To read the full text, visit the newspaper's website.