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Related Experiment Videos

Variation among early North American crania.

R L Jantz1, D W Owsley

  • 1Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0720, USA. jantz@utkux.utk.edu

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
|February 15, 2001
PubMed
Summary
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Ancient American crania show significant variability, not a single group. Early populations differed morphologically from recent Native Americans, suggesting diverse origins and recent cranial variation patterns.

Area of Science:

  • Physical anthropology
  • Paleoanthropology
  • Bioarchaeology

Background:

  • Previous morphometric studies treated early American crania as a homogenous group.
  • Limited research has explored the variability within ancient American skeletal remains.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate significant morphometric variability among early to mid-Holocene American crania.
  • To determine if ancient American crania represent a single, uniform population.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of 22 cranial measurements from 11 early to mid-Holocene North American crania.
  • Calculation of Mahalanobis distances to assess relationships between crania.
  • Comparison of fossil crania to a worldwide recent sample, including additional American Indian groups.

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Main Results:

  • Cranial data suggest at least three distinct groups among early American crania.
  • Most fossil crania showed greater similarity to European, Polynesian, or East Asian populations than to recent Native Americans.
  • Distinctive cranial morphologies were observed in Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, and Lime Creek specimens.

Conclusions:

  • Early American crania exhibit significant heterogeneity, precluding their treatment as a single group for morphometric analysis.
  • The observed cranial variation challenges ancestor-descendent relationship hypotheses between early and late Holocene American populations.
  • Cranial variation patterns in the Plains region appear to be of recent origin.