A Statistical Analysis of Geographical Variation in Dental Size

Research Project

Project/Area Number	61540604
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Anthropology
Research Institution	National Science Museum, Tokyo.
Principal Investigator	MIZOGUCHI Yuji National Science Museum, Tokyo, 人類研究部, 研究官 (00110106)
Project Period (FY)	1986 – 1987
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1987)
Budget Amount *help	¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000) Fiscal Year 1987: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000) Fiscal Year 1986: ¥300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥300,000)
Keywords	Permanent Teeth / Mesiodistal Crown Diameters / Buccolingual Brown Diameters / Multivariate Analysis / Biological Distances / human Populations / Georgaphical Variation / 食性 / 歯冠近遠心径 / 歯冠頬舌径
Research Abstract	The purposes of this project are to descride the geographical variation of dental size in modern human populations world-wide and to examine how the dental size variation has been affected by such factors as food habits. The data on the means and standard deviations of the mesiodistal and buccolingual crown diameters of permanent teeth were collected from the literature, resulting in the accumulation of the data for 152 male and 113 female samples. These data are kept in the form of datasets on the life of the HITAC M-680H computer of the computer centre, the University of Tokyo,and permitted for all users of this computer to use. On the basis of the above data, the patterns of variation in the proportion of dental size through the dentition were examined by cluster analysis using penrose's shape distance. This analysis suggested that the dental size variation was influenced by some factors such as food habits which were associated with the way of life. In the next place, therefore,ecological correlations between dental size and foodstuff intakes were estimated. As a result, relatively high positive correlations were found between several mesiodistal crown diameters on the one hand and on the other hand,potatoes or something like that as well as beef,and relatively high negative ones were recognized between the buccolingual crown diameters of some premolars and molars and wheat as well as mutton. These facts suggest an important role of food habits in determining dental size.