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Correlation between cranial form and geography in Homo sapiens : CRANID – a computer program for forensic and other applications
Author(s) -
Wright R.V.S.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
archaeology in oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1834-4453
pISSN - 0728-4896
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4453.1992.tb00296.x
Subject(s) - crania , cave , homo sapiens , skull , geography , archaeology , paleontology , evolutionary biology , geology , biology
The paper studies the correlation between cranial form and geography. It uses 2524 crania from around the world, measured by W.W. Howells. The first two principal components of cranial shape are rotated to maximum congruence with the world map. A correlation of 0.451 is found with longitude and 0.637 with latitude. A better (albeit unquantified) correlation is found when 20 components of shape are used, and the results portrayed as a dendrogram. The author describes a computer program CRANID, which allows the user to clarify the origin of an unknown cranium by assisting its comparison with the shape of the 2524 crania. Forensic applications of CRANID are suggested. Application to the Late Pleistocene Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103 specimen supports the conclusion of a previous study on Upper Cave 101. Both crania resemble African/Australian/Melanesian crania rather than Asiatic/New World. The significance of this morphological result to the out‐of‐Africa theory is discussed, with special reference to recent proto‐Mongoloid assertions by the multiregional school of human evolution.