INSIGHTS sciencemag.org SCIENCE 390 25 JULY 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6195 Early Americans: Misstated results IN THE 16 MAY ISSUE of Science, we were part of a research team that reported the analysis of a late Pleistocene–age human skeleton found below sea level within a cave on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula (1). Mitochondrial DNA extracted from this individual’s tooth identified a subhap- logroup that is found today only among Native Americans. Based on our findings, we hypothesized that the morphological differences between these early people and modern Native Americans resulted from in situ evolution rather than separate ancestry. In the accompanying News & Analysis story “Bones from a watery ‘black hole’ confirm first American origins” (16 May, p. 680), M. Balter quoted J. C. Chatters discussing ideas that are his alone. Chatters is quoted as characterizing early Native Americans “with their large skulls and more forward-projecting faces” as a “human ‘wild type’” distinct from modern Native Americans “with rounder and flatter faces” that “reflect a more ‘domestic’ form.” The quoted comments do not reflect the research results and interpretations reported in our paper, and we do not endorse the ideas presented in this section of the News article. Our study has no bearing on the sociobehavioral life of ancestral Americans or other human populations. We joined the Hoyo Negro project because of our interest in under- standing the physical, cultural, and genetic diversity of human beings through time and across space. Douglas J. Kennett, 1 * Yemane Asmerom, 2 Brian M. Kemp, 3 Victor Polyak, 2 Deborah A. Bolnick, 4 Ripan S. Malhi, 5 Brendan J. Culleton 1 1 Department of Anthropology and Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. 2 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131–0001, USA. 3 Department of Anthropology and School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA. 4 Department of Anthropology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. 5 Institute of Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA. *Corresponding author. E-mail: djk23@psu.edu REFERENCE 1. J. C. Chatters et al., Science 344, 750 (2014). Early Americans: Respecting ancestors AS ANTHROPOLOGISTS, archaeologists, and biologists, and as members of the National Academy of Sciences, we were startled to read J. C. Chatters’ statement that the cranial morphology of early Native Americans “represented a human ‘wild type,’” whereas more recent Native American cranial morphology reflected a “domesticated” form (“Bones from a watery ‘black hole’ confirm first American origins,” M. Balter, News & Analysis, 16 May, p. 680).  We are deeply offended by Chatters’ implicit comparison of early Americans to the wild ancestors of today’s domesticated animals. We are disheartened to learn that there are those who continue to believe that cranial morphology carries implications of a presumed “wild” state. By so doing, they demean the very people they attempt to understand. D. K. Grayson, 1 * D. J. Meltzer, 2 J. E. Buikstra, 3 K. V. Flannery, 4 C. S. Fowler, 5 J. Marcus, 4 J. F. O’Connell, 6 D. R. Piperno, 7 J. A. Sabloff, 8 B. D. Smith, 9 D. H. Thomas, 10 E. Willerslev, 11 M. A. Zeder 9 1 Department of Anthropology and Quaternary Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98185, USA. 2 Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275, USA. 3 School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. 4 Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. 5 Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA. 6 Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. 7 Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama), National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA. 8 Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA. 9 Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA. 10 Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA. 11 Centre for GeoGenetics, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, DK-1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark. *Corresponding author. E-mail: grayson@uw.edu Response THE IDEAS I DISCUSSED with Balter, which were abbreviated in the story, are excerpted from a peer-reviewed article by me titled “Wild-type colonizers and high frequencies of violence among the Paleoamericans” (1). Domestication is not a foreign concept in discussions of human evolution. Literature on human self-domestication includes, among oth- ers, contributions by Leach (2) and Taylor (3). It is important to remember that, as Darwin effectively demonstrated more than 140 years ago in his Descent of Man (4), humans are subject to the same evolu- tionary processes as other species. James C. Chatters Applied Paleoscience, Bothell, WA 98011, USA. E-mail: paleosci@gmail.com REFERENCES 1. J. C. Chatters, in Violence and Warfare Among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: Re-examining a Pacified Past, M. Allen, T. Jones, Eds. (Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA, 2014), pp. 70–96. 2. H. M. Leach, Curr. Anthropol. 44, 349 (2003). 3. J. Taylor, Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes that Make Us Human (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2009). 4. C. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, London, 1871). Published by AAAS