in
Washington, D.C. visible in this 2015 photograph Her facial features included a narrow, oval cranium, projecting face and pronounced chin, strikingly dissimilar to most Native Americans and their
indigenous Siberian forebears. Anthropologists variously described Luzia's features as resembling those of
Indigenous Australians,
Melanesians and the
Negritos of
Southeast Asia.
Walter Neves, an anthropologist at the
University of São Paulo, suggested that Luzia's features most strongly resembled those of Australian Aboriginal peoples. Neves and other Brazilian anthropologists theorized that Luzia's Paleo-Indian predecessors lived in South East Asia for tens of thousands of years after migrating from Africa and began arriving in the
New World as early as 15,000 years ago. The oldest confirmed date for an archaeosite in the Americas is 18,500 and 14,500 cal BP for the
Monte Verde site in southern Chile. Some anthropologists have hypothesized that a population from coastal
East Asia migrated in boats along the Kuril island chain, the Beringian coast and down the west coast of the Americas during the decline of the
Last Glacial Maximum. In 1998, Neves and archaeologist André Prous studied and dated 11,400 years for the skull of Luzia after naming her. Neves' conclusions have been challenged by research done by anthropologists Rolando González-José, Frank Williams, and William Armelagos, who have shown in their studies that the craniofacial variability could just be due to
genetic drift and other factors affecting craniofacial plasticity in Native Americans. A comparison in 2005 of
Lagoa Santa specimens with modern
Aimoré people of the same region also showed strong affinities, leading Neves to classify the Aimoré as
Paleo-Indian. Researchers recreated the skull of Luzia with
3D printers by studies resumed in a laboratory of the National Institute of Technology (INT) by master's and doctoral students of the
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In November 2018, scientists of the
University of São Paulo and
Harvard University released a study that contradicts the alleged
Australo-Melanesian origin of Luzia. Using
DNA sequencing, the results showed that Luzia was genetically entirely Amerindian. It was published in the journal Cell article (November 8, 2018), a paper in the journal Science from an affiliated team also reported new findings on fossil DNA from the first migrants to the Americas. Lagoa Santa remains from a site nearby to the Luzia remains carry DNA regarded as Native American. Two of the Lagoa Santa individuals carry the same mtDNA haplogroup (D4h3a) also carried by older 12,000+ remains
Anzick-1 found in Montana, mtDNA haplogroup A2, B2, C1d1 and three of the Lagoa Santa individuals harbor the same Y chromosome haplogroup Q1b1a1a1-M848 as found in the
Spirit Cave genome of Nevada. The bust of Luzia displaying
Australo-Melanesian features was created in 1999. André Strauss of the Max Planck Institute, one of the authors of the Journal Science article remarked "However, skull shape isn't a reliable marker of ancestrality or geographic origin. Genetics is the best basis for this type of inference," Strauss explained. "The genetic results of the new study show categorically that there was no significant connection between the Lagoa Santa people and groups from Africa or Australia. So the hypothesis that Luzia's people derived from a migratory wave prior to the ancestors of today's Amerindians has been disproved. On the contrary, the DNA shows that Luzia's people were entirely Amerindian." == Anthropometry ==