The timing, route and point of origin of the first colonization of the Americas remains a most arguable topic in human (47)______. However, a new theory claimed that a "LOST TRIBE" that reached America from Australia may have been the first Native Americans. If proved by DNA evidence, the theory will shatter long (48)______ beliefs about the southerly (49)______ of people who entered America across the Bering Strait, found it empty and occupied it. On this theory rests the authority of Native Americans (previously known as Red Indians) to have been the first true Americans. To a European, this may seem like an academic (50)______, but to Americans it is a philosophical question about (51)______, Silvia Gonzales, of Liverpool John Moores University said. She argued that there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups. Her claims are based on (52)______ found in the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico that have skulls quite unlike the broad Mongolian features of Native Americans. These narrow-skulled people have more in common with southern Asians, Aboriginal Australians and people of the South Pacific Rim. The bones, stored at the National Museum of Anthropology (人类学) in Mexico City, have been carbon-dated and one is 12,700 years old, which places it several thousand years before the arrival of people from the North. But comparisons based on skull shape are not considered (53)______ by anthropologists, so a team of Mexican and British scientists, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council, has also (54)______ to extract DNA from the bones. Dr Gonzales declined yesterday to say exactly what the results were, as they need to be checked, but indicated that they were (55)______ with an Australian origin. She believes that they arrived by boat, settled in what is now Mexico and at other points along the Pacific coast, and survived for thousands of years. The first Spanish colonists and missionaries (传教士) described the people they found in the area, the Pericue, as slim hunter-gatherers. They lacked much culture, but did have burial customs in which bodies were laid out in the sun before being painted with ochre and buried. The Spanish collected the people into their religious missions, where they (56)______ in the 18th century. Word Bank A) ancient B) skeletons C) dispute D) evolution E) research F) consistent G) liberty H) argument I) identity J) conclusive K) migration L) attempted M) properly N) established O) died out