2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Geographical Variation of craniofacial characteristics in major human populations
| Project/Area Number |
09839003
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
自然史科学
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| Research Institution | Saga Medical School (1999-2000)
Tohoku University (1997-1998) |
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Principal Investigator |
HANIHARA Tsunehiko Saga medical school, Dept.Anatomy, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (00180919)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 2000
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| Keywords | crania / variation / interpopulation relationship / origin of modern humans / nonmetric / morphology / Anthropology |
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| Research Abstract |
In the present study, the frequency distributions of 20 discrete cranial traits in 70 major human populations from around the world were analyzed. The presentation of regional morphologies confirms that recent population groups show different pattern of the variations and their level of distinctiveness. This indicates that human differentiation may have occurred at different rates and to different extents in different groups. The significant interregional and to a lesser extent intraregional differences can be detected in Subsaharan Africans, supporting their distinctiveness on a world scale. The varying degrees of the restriction of gene flow and genetic drift together with the local adaptation would determine the maintenance of distinctive morphological patterns in the peripheral or outlier populations in the pan-Pacific regions. The principal co-ordinate and neighbor joining results of applying Smith's MMD to the frequencies of the traits indicate that the clustering pattern is quite parallel to those based on the genetic study. These lines of evidence suggest that 1) founder's effect, genetic drift, and population structure are at least in part the underlying cause for interregional variations of the discrete cranial traits ; and 2) the diversity of the discrete cranial traits in recent human population groups may be attributed to the differential retention or specialization from an ancestral pattern. The results presented here may provide additional evidence in the investigation for the origins of recent human populations.
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