NEVES,Walter Alves

Biological Anthropology and Human Evolution

Professor Doutor, Department of Biology, IB-USP

PhD.(1984) IB-USP, Professor Doutor,(1992) IB-USP

My research interests center on three different main lines: the origin and spreading of man in the Americas; the recovering of past life styles based on osteological information; and present human biological and social adaptation to the Amazon Basin. In April, 1995 I openned the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies, at Departament of Biology, Bioscience Institute of University of São Paulo, where several other fields of evolutionary anthropology are also investigated by undergraduate and graduate students, in close contact with Department of Ecology and Department of Anthropology of University of São Paulo. The major current project refers to the extra-continental affinities of the first known Americans. I have shown in several publications co-authored with colleagues from Argentina and Brazil, that the first americans are not of mongoloid ancestry, but ,indeed, show an astonishing resemblance with the South Pacific prehistoric and modern populations. These results call for a more complex model to explain human origins in the New World.

Selected Publications

Munford D.; Zanini M.C. & Neves,W.A. (1995) Human cranial variation in South America: Implications for the settlement of the New Word. Brazilian Journal of Genetics, 18:673-688.

Silva HP; Crews D.E. & Neves W.A. (1995) Subsistence Patterns and Blood Pressure Variation in Two Rural Caboclo Communities of Marajó Island, Pará, Brasil. American Journal of Human Biology, 7:535-542.