Toward the anthropology of aboriginal population of Tierra del Fuego

The article focuses on the morphological type of Fueguians - aborigines of Tierra del Fuego. Three crania - two female and one male - stored at the New York Museum of Natural History provided the basis for the study, and the article presents full anthropological characteristics of these, as well as a more general ethnological and anthropological description of the local population. A review of modern literature on the topic gives three main hypotheses that account for the specificities of the Fueguian morphological complex: dissimilar ancestry, adaptation to the harsh environment, and functional response to masticatory stress. A comparison with craniological samples of the Greenland Eskimos and with some other groups from the region in question suggests that the Fueguian craniological type (especially the nose dimensions) is so specific due to the ancient Paleo-American substratum, on the one hand, and cold adaptation, on the other.

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