Luzia Woman (Portuguese pronunciation: [luˈzi.ɐ]) is the name for an Upper Paleolithic period Paleo-Indian woman whose skeletal remains were found in a cave in Brazil. The 11,500-year-old skeleton was found in a cave in the Lapa Vermelha archeological site in Pedro Leopoldo, in the Greater Belo Horizonte region of Brazil, in 1974 by archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire. The nickname Luzia was chosen in homage to the Australopithecus fossil Lucy. The fossil was kept at the National Museum of Brazil, where it was shown to the public until it was fragmented during a fire that destroyed the museum on September 2, 2018. On October 19, 2018, it was announced that most of Luzia's remains were identified from the Museu Nacional debris, which allowed them to rebuild part of her skeleton.
Identity and description The woman who became known as Luzia, a nickname chosen in homage to the Australopithecus fossil Lucy, was a young Homo sapiens woman who died in her early twenties. She stood just under 1.5 m tall and was a member of a group of hunter-gatherers. Her skull had a narrow, oval cranium, a projecting face, and a pronounced chin. When Luzia's remains were first studied in the late 1990s, these features appeared unlike those of later Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Instead, they were interpreted as more closely resembling those of present-day Indigenous Australians, Melanesians, and Negrito peoples of Southeast Asia. This interpretation led to the proposal that Luzia's ancestors represented an earlier migration into the Americas than the ancestors of later Indigenous American populations. Ancient DNA studies published in 2018 told a different story. Genetic analysis showed that Luzia was genetically Amerindian and found no evidence of a close genetic relationship between the people of Lagoa Santa and populations from Africa or Australia. These findings did not support the earlier hypothesis of a separate Australo-Melanesian migration into the Americas.
Discovery Luzia's remains were discovered in 1974 during excavations at Lapa Vermelha IV, a rock shelter near Pedro Leopoldo, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The excavation was led by French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire as part of a joint French–Brazilian research expedition. The remains were recovered from a sedimentary deposit approximately 12 metres (40 ft) below the surface of the shelter. The skull had become separated from the rest of the skeleton before excavation, but was reported to be in good condition when recovered. Approximately one-third of the skeleton survived, and no other human remains were found at the site. Charcoal was recovered from the same deposit as the skeleton, and flint tools were found nearby. Unlike later formal burials from Lagoa Santa, Luzia's body appears to have been laid in an extended position within a protected niche in the rock shelter rather than placed in a prepared grave.
Dating Luzia's remains have been dated several times since they were discovered. An early estimate published in 1998 suggested that she lived about 11,400 years ago. In 2013, researchers re-examined charcoal recovered from the same layer of sediment as the skeleton using radiocarbon dating. The charcoal was dated to 10,030 ± 60 radiocarbon years before present, corresponding to a calibrated age of 11,243–11,710 years before present. Luzia is one of the oldest human skeletons discovered in the Americas.
Preservation and reconstruction After her discovery in 1974, Luzia's remains were displayed at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro for more than four decades, where they became one of its best-known exhibits. In 1999, a facial reconstruction based on her skull was created. The reconstructed bust was widely reproduced in books, museums, documentaries, and news reports. On 2 September 2018, a fire destroyed the National Museum of Brazil, leading museum staff to fear that Luzia's remains had been lost. More than six weeks later, on 19 October 2018, museum researchers announced that approximately 80 percent of her skull had been identified among the rubble, together with part of her femur and fragments of the storage box that had housed the fossil. Although fragmented by the fire, the recovery of most of the skull made its reconstruction possible. In the years before the fire, staff at the National Institute of Technology (INT), working with master's and doctoral students from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, had created detailed digital records of Luzia's skull using photogrammetry. These data were used to produce three-dimensional models and 3D-printed replicas of the fossil for research and public education.
Phenotypical analysis and genotype
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