The primary Paleolithic Indian stock which spread across North America from the Pacific Coast of Southern California and Baja to the Gulf Coast of Texas, south into Central America and Mexico, was a long-headed or dolichocephalic, small statured, non-mongoloid population.²¹³ These Paleolithic people had features similar to the Melanesian tribes in the South Pacific, and physiologies similar to the extinct Pericue from Lower California.²¹⁴ The Pericues exhibited Australasian and Melanesian traits as did the Jomon-Ainu maritime voyagers.²¹⁵ These people could be the genetic influence of the Hokan genetic stock which was split into Eastern and Western divisions by the southern descent of the genetically diverse Uto-Aztecans.

 

It has been proposed that an ancient brachycephalic population known as the Teules-Chichimecos, who supported themselves by hunting small game and foraging, were the inhabitants at the fringes of the Sierra Madre Occidental.²¹⁶ This suggests that mixed Afro-Asian, Mongoloid, or Melanesian groups carrying mtDNA “A, B, C, or D” traveling from Mesoamerica, who lived much like the Hokan, Coahuiltecans or Teo-Chichimec maintained the foothills of the Gran Chichimeca.

 

The dolichocephalic male skull from Union Lake in Oakland County, Michigan dated 5000 BC is classified under Newmann’s Otamid variety and possesses a long  head, low rising frontals, and a prominent occipital protuberance.²¹⁷ Haury²¹⁸ stated that the original or Paleo-Mogollon physical type was derived from the dolichocephalic hunting and foraging groups of the Plains. Spinden²¹⁹ stated that some tribes from northern Mexico were originally dolichocephalic. This suggests that the premier dolichocephalic hunters, who would have been hybrid remnants of mtDNA “X” Clovis/Folsom tribes such as certain Paleolithic Uto-Aztecans who still wished to remain isolated as they enjoyed their protected, traditional mountain caves.

 

However, there appears to have been a significant change in physical type between the original Mogollon cave and pithouse dwellers and those of the later pueblo stages, suggesting “…that the Mogollon people, in Southwestern New Mexico represent an intermediate type between the dolichocephalic Basketmakers and the deformed brachycephalic Pueblos.”²²⁰

 

Because of the diversity in cranial measurements taken from the Mogollon of Starkweather Ruin, Nesbitt²²¹ proposed that “…two individual types…” of people made up the Mogollon population. Haury²²² also concluded that two different waves of mongoloid people with cranial deformation influenced the melting pot of the Mogollon territory. He postulated that the brachycephalic, low-vaulted people entered from the southeast, and mixed with and replaced the original dolichocephalic hunting people. Cranial deformation seems to have been one of the newcomers’ traits.

 

Olmec or Mayan pilgrims who claimed Uto-Aztecan descent, and who were driven out of Chiapas after El Chichón erupted,²²³ or farmers from of the Valley of Mexico may have journeyed north when Popocatépetl and Xitli volcanoes exploded around 153 BC.²²⁴