Walter Alves Neves (
Três Pontas
Três Pontas (; , ''Three Tips'') is a municipality located in southern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. It's a city with about all streets of urban zone paved and services of water and sewage to all people. The municipality has about 57 thousand inhab ...
, October 17, 1957)
is a Brazilian
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in ...
,
archeologist,
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
and a retired professor from the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology of the . He was responsible for the study of
Luzia, the oldest human skeleton on the American continent that was discovered by French archaeologist
Laming-Emperaire during the 1970s, and the oldest rock inscription on the American continent,
phallocentric Phallocentrism is the ideology that the phallus, or male sexual organ, is the central element in the organization of the social world. Phallocentrism has been analyzed in literary criticism, psychoanalysis and psychology, linguistics, medicine and h ...
.
[
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History
Neves was born in Três Pontas, Minas Gerais, the second son of a bricklayer father and a saleswoman mother, and moved to São Bernardo do Campo
São Bernardo do Campo () is a Brazilian Municipalities of Brazil, municipality in the state of São Paulo.
It is part of the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The population is 844,483 (2020 est.) in an area of .
History
The city was founded b ...
in 1970. His first job was as a general helper at the Primicia Suitcase factory, and later at the Rolls-Royce airplane turbine factory in São Bernardo, where he worked for ten years.[ He has been an open ]homosexual
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
since the 1980s and was married to the publicist Wagner Fernandes (died of AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
in 1992).[
He graduated in Biological Sciences from USP, graduating in (1981), completed his pre-doctorate (there was no sandwich doctorate - Capes' scholarship program is called the Sandwich Doctorate Program) at ]Stanford
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...
and Berkeley Universities in (1982), D. in Biological Sciences from USP in (1984), post-doctoral fellowships at the Center for American Archeology, University of Illinois, in (1985) and at the Department of Anthropology of USP (1991–92), Lecturer in Human Evolution at the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology of USP (2000). During pre-doctoral training he was supervised by Prof. Cavalli-Sforza
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian geneticist. He was a population geneticist who taught at the University of Parma, the University of Pavia and then at Stanford University.
Works
Schooling and po ...
who studied human evolution from molecular markers. Neves worked with craniometric markers for six months under the supervision of Prof. Cavalli-Sforza.
He is a full professor (2008 - 2017), associate (2000 - 2008) and PhD (1992 - 2000) of the USP's Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology, where he founded and coordinates the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies, the only one of its kind in Latin America. Has scientific production since 1980 and advises undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of ecological anthropology, biological anthropology, prehistoric archaeology, human ecology, and evolutionary psychology during his ties with USP and the Goeldi Museum in Pará (1988 - 1992).[ He teaches two courses at the Institute of Biosciences at USP, biological and evolutionary implications of human behavior (for graduate studies) and evolutionary biology (for undergraduate studies).
His model of two main biological components is often adopted for the understanding of the origin and dispersion of anatomically modern humans in the American continent. Other significant contributions were in the study of Amazonian populations, where he was responsible for several studies related to diet and health of riverine populations together with Prof. Rui Murrieta (IB-USP), his supervisor at the time.
It is especially interested in the investigation of the origin of man in America, and is also dedicated to scientific dissemination, promoting and conducting lectures, museum exhibits, and articles,] being the coordinator of the permanent exhibition "From ape to man" at Catavento Institute (2014 - ). Since 2013 he is responsible for the project "Biocultural hominin evolution in the Zarqa River Valley, Jordan: a paleoanthropological approach", in Jordan, seeking to study the records of the first humans who left Africa towards Asia.
He was honored in a special session at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2014) with addresses by Prof. Jane Buikstra (Arizona State University) and Prof. Darna Dufour (University of Colorado - Boulder). He was also honored by his academic pupil, Prof. Mark Hubbe, in the journal PaleoAmericam (2015).
In an interview for Piauí magazine, he said that he had retired due to being diagnosed with burnout syndrome
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), occupational burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic work-related stress, with symptoms characterized by "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s ...
.[
In ]2018
File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...
he ran for federal deputy for São Paulo, for the Free Fatherland Party (PPL), representing the Engaged Scientists alongside Mariana Moura, as state deputy, for the same party, and received 0.05% of the votes.
Luzia
Walter Neves was not the discoverer of the fossil of Luzia, but he was the one who had access to the skull, which was in the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, and who prepared more detailed studies of the piece. It was he who baptized the archeological find of Luzia, previously called only the skeleton of Lapa Vermelha IV, in reference to the archeological site where it was found, excavated by the French-Brazilian mission, coordinated by Annette Emperaire.
Controversy over human occupation in Brazil
Neves has been engaged in an academic discussion with archaeologist Niéde Guidon over the last few decades regarding the dating of man's arrival in America. While he defends an arrival between 20 thousand and 12 thousand years ago, Guidon defends the theory that man may have arrived around 70 or 80 thousand years ago, because of the remains of a campfire and stone pieces found at the Boqueirão da Pedra Furada archeological site, in Piauí, in 1978. Guidon's theory was widely rejected by scientists from the United States, and also by Neves. In 1990 American archaeologist Tom Dillehay of the University of Kentucky saw the instruments and recognized that some of them looked like they were made by humans. In 2006, two scientists, Eric Boeda, from the University of Paris, and Emílio Fogaça, from the Catholic University of Goiás, released the results of their analysis, and concluded that the stone pieces were indeed man-made, with dates between 33,000 and 58,000 years old. After the results were released, Neves said, "From my point of view, this is incontrovertible evidence that the artifacts were made by humans",(...) "She deserves this credit". In 2012 Neves said that after having access to the lithic material that Niéde herself made available, he believes 99.9% that she is correct, but still not totally convinced.
Areas of dedication
* Biological anthropology
* Ecological anthropology
* Archaeology of hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
* Human evolution
*Speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...
Scientific publications
;Book
*“Antropologia Ecológica. Um Olhar Materialista Sobre As Sociedades Humanas”, São Paulo (SP): Cortez, 1996, v.1. p. 86.
;Most important articles
*“O modelo dos dois componentes biológicos principais: sua inserção nos eventos expansionistas do final do pleistoceno e suas implicações para a origem do Homo sapiens” in O Carste. Belo Horizonte (MG): , v.14, n.1, p. 42 - 49, 2002.
*“Fuegian cranial morphology: the Haush” in Ciência e Cultura. São Paulo (SP): , v.53, n.2, p. 69 - 71, 2001
*“The Buhl burial” in American Antiquity. Estados Unidos: , v.65, n.-, p. 191 - 193, 2000.
See also
* Models of migration to the New World
* Luzia Woman
References
''Curriculum vitae - Portuguese''
*Neves, W. A., J. F. Powell, A. Prous, E. G. Ozolins, M. Blum – 1999 "Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid I: morphological affinities of the earliest known American." Genetics and Molecular Biology 22(4) 461–469
*Neves, Walter A. and João Paulo V. Atui 2004 O mito da homogeneidade biológica na população paleoíndia de Lagoa Santa: implicações antropológicas Rev. Antropol. 47(1) 159-20
*Rohter, Larry - "An Ancient Skull Challenges Long-Held Theories." New York Times, October 26, 199
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neves, Walter
Living people
Brazilian archaeologists
1957 births
Brazilian biologists
Brazilian anthropologists
University of São Paulo alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of Illinois alumni
University of São Paulo faculty
Free Fatherland Party (Brazil) politicians
LGBT writers from Brazil