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A geometric morphometric approach to the quantification of population variation in sub-Saharan African crania
Daniel Franklin et. al.
email: Daniel Franklin (daniel.franklin@uwa.edu.au)
*Correspondence to Daniel Franklin, Centre for Forensic Science, The University of Western Australia, M420, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Western Australia
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The Bass has the full text to this study and the "East Africans" in that study are Venda, Hutu and Teita, Horners and Nilotic speakers were excluded.
Posts: 2595 | From: Vicksburg | Registered: Feb 2006
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So what is new about our variation. This study affirm my “belief” – Pygmies and Khoisan are an older African group that migrated to West, Central Africa, prior to the more recent E3a. We are new to West and Central Africa. Getting there during the dispersal when the Sahara dried up and the Bantu expansion.
From the study:
Conclusion:
The curvature of the occipital bone and subnasal flatness are two particularly strong southern African population specific features. The most extreme conformations of this morphology are found in the Khoisan, and lesser expressions are seen in southern Bantu-speaking populations. In their study of sub-Saharan African population genetics, Excoffier et al. (1987) proposed that Khoisan peoples, who possessed local specificities, were supposed to have genetically influenced southern Bantu-speaking peoples (Hitzeroth, 1986; Jenkins, 1982; Jenkins et al., 1970). The Khoisan may have greatly influenced the morphology of some of southern African Bantu-speaking populations (Franklin et al., 2007) and in the present study finer details are clarified concerning these morphological contributions and the retention of highly distinctive traits in the Khoisan cranial form. Population differentiation across the sub-Saharan African landmass is the result of the complex interaction of many factors, including local environment, historical associations and recent migrations, and as such the closest relationships are expected between populations in close geographic proximity, and/or those thought to have had historical or more recent contacts (Weber et al., 2000). The common ancestry, close geographic proximity, and considerable cross-cultural contacts of the southern Bantu populations would appear to explain their relatively close morphometric relationships. Their larger morphometric divergence from the Central, West and East African populations could thus largely be due to the substantial time since expanding from the West African Bantu core area (between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago), to population fusion and admixture processes, the different environmental regions settled, and to the large geographical distances now separating them (Excoffier et al., 1987; Newman, 1995; Nurse et al., 1985). The statistical procedures applied in this study afford a powerful and robust means for both quantifying and visualizing the magnitude and pattern of cranial variation between modern human sub-Saharan African populations. Thus, this study has to be regarded as the first step to apply the same techniques to a wider range of comparative populations to further clarify the morphometric relationships of sub-Saharan African populations. Future studies of geographic variation with more precise geographical provenances and environmental data would be both highly desirable and important in helping provide a quantitative explanation of the factors which contribute to cranial size and shape variability in modern sub- Saharan African populations. To that end, we are currently in the process of assembling additional populations from East, West and Central Africa, to facilitate a more comprehensive analysis of cranial morphometric variation in relation to environmental variables. Despite the preliminary nature and the small size of several samples, this first geometric morphometric analysis of human cranial variation in sub-Saharan Africa has produced results which are surprisingly congruent with genetic studies showing high variance within and between African populations.
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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