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The value of infracranial nonmetric variation in studies of modern Homo sapiens : An Australian focus
Author(s) -
Donlon D.A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
american journal of physical anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1096-8644
pISSN - 0002-9483
DOI - 10.1002/1096-8644(200011)113:3<349::aid-ajpa6>3.0.co;2-2
Subject(s) - divergence (linguistics) , variation (astronomy) , population , evolutionary biology , biology , geography , homo sapiens , demography , sociology , philosophy , linguistics , physics , archaeology , astrophysics
The value of quantitative infracranial nonmetric variation is examined in the study of population relationships by using samples from populations originating from five major geographic regions: Australia (two populations), Africa, East Asia, Europe, and Polynesia. According to the nonspecificity hypothesis, there are no distinct large classes of genes affecting one group of attributes exclusively; thus infracranial nonmetric traits should compare with other osteologic data sets in addressing questions of population relationships. By using the mean measure of divergence, infracranial nonmetric traits are shown to be useful in separating populations, particularly when using female and pooled‐sex samples. The two Australian female samples (New South Wales coastal Australian and South Australian Aboriginals) are shown to be closer than any other two samples. The picture of intrapopulation and interpopulation variation in infracranial nonmetric traits is extended and clarified. Distance studies with infracranial nonmetric traits are possible but more illuminating if the sexes are first separated. Infracranial nonmetric variation does extend the knowledge of human population studies in yielding biologically meaningful results relating to development and ontogeny. Am J Phys Anthropol 113:349–368, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.