Different subfield but same sh*t so to speak in regards to findings on human populations as those of genetics. That is there is a bipolar distribution of East Eurasian vs. West Eurasian with the latter including North Africa.
Here are the highlights:
Turner did not analyze African dental patterns as systematically as he analyzed Asian dentition. It was obvious to him, however, that African and Amerindian dentition were very far apart and if there were any pre-Columbian contacts between Africa and the New World (as hypothesized by Ivan van Sertima) they would have been easily discernible (Turner, C. G. 1990. “Dentition is Unsupportive of Prehistoric African Contact with American Indians,” in Para Conocer al Hombre: Homenaje a Santiago Genovés a 33 Años como Investigador en la UNAM. Pp. 249-252. Mexico: UNAM). It took Irish to devote a Ph.D. dissertation (“Biological Affinities of Late Pleistocene through Modern African Aboriginal Populations: The Dental Evidence,” Arizona State University, 1993) to circumscribing the Afridonty, or the “Sub-Saharan African Dental Complex.” He found (“Ancestral Dental Traits in Recent Sub-Saharan Africans and the Origins of Modern Humans,” Journal of Human Evolution 34, 1998, 81-98) that Sub-Saharan Africans are the least derived among modern human populations compared to a sample of archaic hominins and non-human primates. Afridonty tend to show contrasting frequencies in many of the key non-metric traits with Sinodonty (see below, from Irish, J. D. 1998. “Dental Morphological Affinities of Late Pleistocene through Recent Sub-Saharan and North African Peoples,” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 10 (3), 237-272). “The Sub-Saharan Africans are least like Sinodonts despite the fact that both groups have morphologically complex, mass-additive teeth relative to other human populations. Indeed the two appear to be at opposite ends of a dental morphological spectrum for many traits” (Irish 1998, 255).
While Irish argued that dental evidence is consistent with the out-of-Africa model of human evolution, with serial founder effects, resulting in the dramatic alteration of Afridontic frequencies and eventually the development of the Sinodonty treat frequency spectrum, he acknowledged the validity of Turner’s counterargument, namely that African dentition is too specific and divergent in its traits to form a baseline for human dental variation. For instance, the “Bushman” canine, a trait frequent in Africa, especially among Khoisan-speakers, is too rare outside of Africa to support an out-of-Africa model of modern human dispersals. (This problem is similar to the one posed by Khoisan clicks – the unique, highly marked and perceptually salient phonemes that are virtually absent outside of Africa as well as by haploid lineages, mtDNA L0 and Y-DNA A and B) Alternatively, shoveling, a highly pronounced dental trait in Sinodonty, is frequent enough outside of East Asia and the Americas for it to be interpreted as part of a hypothetical “Proto-Homo sapiens sapiens Dental Complex.”...
Kashibadze et al. (2011) is a rare paper coming out of the Russian school of odontology that is available in English. The paper is not globally comprehensive (America is not represented and Africa is represented by populations from Mali and Ethiopia) and operates with a limited set of 8 dental traits (see below, Table 1; comparative data for the other 24 traits from Zubov’s survey program is too fragmentary) but it does deal with continental Eurasia – an important breakpoint zone between the Sinodonty and Afridonty areas of distribution.
Kashibadze et al. (2011) ran Principal Component Analysis (PCA) against the 8 traits and arrived at the conclusion that PC1 explained by far the largest proportion of dental variation.
“All populations under investigation are divided into two main provinces: the western area with high PC1 scores and the eastern one with low scores.”
PC1 reflects the most ancient demographic and geographic split in their dataset. They further note that this division is older than the age of Homo sapiens sapiens.
“Regarding the split in two main provinces it should be noted that this phenomenon in Eurasia can be traced since Homo erectus. Indeed, archaic western forms show a low grade of shoveling and poor differentiation in odontoglyphical patterns on molars versus extremely developed shoveling and richness in odontoglyphics in the eastern province.”
In the light of the current interest in the contribution of Asian hominins to the modern human gene pool, the following observation from Kashibadze et al. (2011) is important:
“…Both western and eastern forms of Homo erectus had five-cusped and six-cusped lower molars, their gracialization is a peculiar characteristic of Homo sapiens, still eastern living populations keep higher frequencies in five-six-cusped lower molars.”
Indeed, LM1 in the above Table V from Irish 1998 shows world-highest 48% in Sinodonty. But for LM2 Irish’s data is more ambiguous. Sub-Saharan Africans and Australians have definitely lower frequencies of this trait than other populations but then it’s North Africans, Sundadonty and Melanesians have the highest frequencies, with North Africans being the richest in this trait.
But when it comes to shovel-shaped incisors, the dental trait prominent in both Neandertals and Asian Homo erectus, their data is more clear-cut: ancient samples from West Eurasia, at least from the Bronze Age on in the Caucasus, show higher frequencies of shoveling – more in line with its frequencies in the “eastern province” (see below, from Kashibadze, The Caucasus in the Anthropological Space of Eurasia. Ph.D. dissertation, 2007, in Russian).
As I blogged before, higher frequencies of shoveling compared to modern West Eurasian populations have also been reported from Gravettian samples and from Catalhoyuk.
Kashibadze et al.’s (2011) overall reading of the data led them to the finding of “diminishing eastern traits frequencies at different grades in different groups of west continental populations.” They are compelled conclude, in a manner contrary to the traditional out-of-Africa scenario, that the data from PC1 is evidence of
“replacement in hominins in the west of the continent and of the hetero-level assimilation in the Eastern province.”
Although Kashibadze et al.’s (2011) do not deal with Africa and Irish’s Afrodonty does not highlight any dental specificity of South African Khoisan, it is worth pointing out that Khoisan dentition is more mass-additive and shows higher frequencies of shoveling and five-cusp UM than neighboring Bantu speakers (Haeussler, A. M., J. D. Irish, D. H. Morris, and C. G. Turner. 1989. “Morphological and Metrical comparison of San and Central Sotho Dentitions from Southern Africa,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78 (1), 115-122), which likely reflects different evolutionary histories of the two groups, and contributes to other Khoisan-specific phenotypical traits (such as epicanthic fold and lighter skin) linking Khoisan to Eurasia to the exclusion of other Africans.
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About the Op Djehuti says: "I highly recommend this article to everyone here who's never read it. It pretty much gives the same inconsistencies and discrepancies as the genetic studies but I will talk more about that in a seperate thread. "
Djehuti is much better than me.. too many red flags and I turn my whole computer off and look forward to tomorrow. I honestly itch when reading certain shit.
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^ I used to have your mindset also but as I got older I've made it a personal point like that of our old mod Ausar, in which you take these findings with a grain of salt or to be more accurately make note of the inconsistencies but also the patterns and don't take the interpretations (conclusions) of the authors as gospel.
quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: So what is your interpretation of the blog post? The author seems not to be a fan of OOA theory.
The author seems to question the OOA theory but he doesn't or is unable to debunk it out right. His point is that the dental metrics points to a bipolar pattern of overall dental morphology that closely aligns to that of the autosomal DNA. He notes Turner's theory of modern human origins in Southeast Asia but then notes that Sub-Saharans possess traits that are closer to archaic Hominins. If he has a personal theory he hasn't outright expressed it, though I have heard folks in the HBD blogs use the same data to suggest modern human origins in Southcentral Asia (Indian subcontinent) or Southwest Asia (Arabia). Those who support the latter theory go for the Nubian Complex of Oman as their "proof".
This makes me wonder about the dental morphology of all these remains that Lazaradis et al. has studied. What kind of odontic features did the "Basal Eurasians" or those closely related to them have?
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: This makes me wonder about the dental morphology of all these remains that Lazaradis et al. has studied. What kid of odontic features did the "Basal Eurasians" or those closely related to them have?
Maybe look up dental anthropology articles on the Natufians since they're supposed to be one of the more Basal Eurasian-influenced populations outside of Africa. This one for instance claims their dental morphology is very distinct from a late Pleistocene (Lower, IIRC) Nubian sample, but they didn't use any other populations for comparison.
posted
There are no Basal Eurasian Remains. IMO the best samples to look at for morphological traits possibly linked to BE are the Belt Cave specimen. Not Natufian.
My reservations against BE aside, I would caution against using any paleolithic African against Natufians to pin point Basal Eurasian Morphological Affinities. We don't truly know which features overlap due to the fact that BE is a statistical possibility based on Genetics and Genetics alone. There are no physical remains and the closest thing we have in terms of an archeological pattern to BE distribution is an expansion Out of North East Africa > 30,000 ya, for which at the time skeletal remains were relatively negroid.
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Tukuler
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Negroid means negro-like. Define negro. Define negroid. Define relatively negroid. Examples of relevant negro, negroid, relatively negroid, non-negroid, non-negro north, northeast, east African populations.
posted
Whatever the white researchers called negroid is what I call negroid for the most part. Of the top of my head from the time periods in question, from Nazlet khater to Natufian etc.
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Tukuler
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Ok so you have no definition and the anthropologists inventors aren't quite in agreement.
So just so I don't make no mistake could you steer me to an anthropologist ethnologist or whatever that gives the typical example what you mean by "relatively negroid."
I just wanna see clearly. I noticed some modern articles define terms. It's just so the reader's idea while reading is inline with the writer's idea.
Unc's question is no deeper than that. BTW no I'm not on the Heirnaux(sp) broad elongated etc train
quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: There are no Basal Eurasian Remains. IMO the best samples to look at for morphological traits possibly linked to BE are the Belt Cave specimen. Not Natufian.
Yes, I know there are no BE remains and that the very concept of BE is derived solely from statistical analysis of aDNA, which is why I wonder about which population or remains thereof are closest. So your answer is Neolithic Iranians. How interesting.
quote:My reservations against BE aside, I would caution against using any paleolithic African against Natufians to pin point Basal Eurasian Morphological Affinities. We don't truly know which features overlap due to the fact that BE is a statistical possibility based on Genetics and Genetics alone. There are no physical remains and the closest thing we have in terms of an archeological pattern to BE distribution is an expansion Out of North East Africa > 30,000 ya, for which at the time skeletal remains were relatively negroid.
Yes, and are you aware that David Reich has postulated a similar ghost population based on the same type of statistical genetic analysis? This one appears to be ancestral to both certain Indigenous Americans as well as some Australasian people. But more on that in a future thread.
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Ok so you have no definition and the anthropologists inventors aren't quite in agreement.
So just so I don't make no mistake could you steer me to an anthropologist ethnologist or whatever that gives the typical example what you mean by "relatively negroid."
I just wanna see clearly. I noticed some modern articles define terms. It's just so the reader's idea while reading is inline with the writer's idea.
Unc's question is no deeper than that. BTW no I'm not on the Heirnaux(sp) broad elongated etc train
Ah yes, the pitfall of racial categorizing. I admit that years back Rasol had me convinced too about Hiernaux's 'elongated African' until I did more research and found out there were too many inconsistencies in his data as well that the concept became debunked. By the way, where are you getting that phrase 'relatively negroid'? I suspect it comes from an author(s) describing certain North African remains probably Nile Valley (?)
But more to the topic, you can see this same type of racialist categorization when it comes to the dental morphology of African peoples. Recall the Joel Irish 1998 study where he pools Sub-Saharans into a category he calls ‘Afridonty’ while North Africans are in another category he says are ‘West-Eurasian-like’.
^ Note that while the Mesolithic Nubians are grouped as Afridonty, they are a literal outlier in the chart. Also, the two samples that are closest to the centroid value point are Senegambia and Tanzania while the North African samples do not come so close with the two samples there that approximate closest are Capsian and Kabyle.
Irish stated: Thus, I proposed (Irish, 1993b, 1998a) that the North African dental trait complex is one which parallels that of Europeans, yet displays higher frequencies of Bushman Canine, two-rooted UP1, three-rooted UM2, LM2 Y- groove, LM1 cusp 7, LP1 Tome's root, two-rooted LM2, and lower frequencies of UM1 enamel extension and peg/reduced or absent UM3. North Africans also exhibit a higher frequency of UM1 Carabelli's trait than sub-Saharan Africans or Europeans.
Not only does this suggest that North Africans occupy an intermediate position between Sub-Saharans and Europeans as Keita postulated with his cranial analysis, but that there was probably North African influence on Europeans as well as Sub-Saharans.
Of course this study was discussed in full in several threads in this forum, but I bring it up again to put it in context of the global studies on dental morphology and more specifically to the theoretical ‘Basal Eurasians’.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: But more to the topic, you can see this same type of racialist categorization when it comes to the dental morphology of African peoples. Recall the Joel Irish 1998 study where he pools Sub-Saharans into a category he calls ‘Afridonty’ while North Africans are in another category he says are ‘West-Eurasian-like’.
^ Note that while the Mesolithic Nubians are grouped as Afridonty, they are a literal outlier in the chart. Also, the two samples that are closest to the centroid value point are Senegambia and Tanzania while the North African samples do not come so close with the two samples there that approximate closest are Capsian and Kabyle.
I was going to say that the SSA cluster in that chart seems to cover a much broader, more dispersed territory than the North African one. I swear, the Tanzanians and Chadians seem to be positioned closer to the North African cluster than they are to the Khoisan peoples of southernmost Africa. It's almost as if SSA itself is not really a singular race.
Tukuler
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posted
@ DJ
Just curious about the exact phenotype of earlier posted Palaeolithics. I remember a couple of reconstructions of various feature sets. Most were like African blacks, some more asmixed looking. Between Ish and Mena many were posted over the years.
I tend to shy away from teeth and head shapes. I used to believe that all long headed African thing. Then one day I saw my brother's head from the top, round. Nope not even mesocephalic, we are round heads, low end brachycephalic. Yet my son is the epitome of Sergi's pentagonoides acutus.
Plus Nordheimers are longheaded. The field shit-listed Dixon's race book. His typology disregarded skin and hair. It strictly used head, face,and nose indices. The results negroidized too many Europeans.
Yeah, I know individuals (and families) can be outside the so-called 'norm'. But, sheesh, nothing beats the genome for bio relationships. Not discounting anything in the trans-discipline arsenal though.
His Ethiopian and Nubian samples are not in that graph and of course he excludes them when discussing Egyptians and "true negro" Africans (which he lumps together as SAF if I remember it right). "Pharoahnic" doesn't distinguish between northern and souhern Egypt either. Does he specify where his samples came from in the study being referenced?
quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: Whatever the white researchers called negroid is what I call negroid for the most part. Of the top of my head from the time periods in question, from Nazlet khater to Natufian etc.
I hate that word with the passion of 100 suns. "Negro" means black. Of all the words they used, they described phenotypes using popular racialized language. But then when things don't go as they want, of course not all the people they treat as black people are accepted as "Negroid." Ethiopians aren't "black." Nubians are also black until they find them to be too close in phenotype to upper Egyptians.
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quote:Originally posted by Tyrannohotep: I was going to say that the SSA cluster in that chart seems to cover a much broader, more dispersed territory than the North African one. I swear, the Tanzanians and Chadians seem to be positioned closer to the North African cluster than they are to the Khoisan peoples of southernmost Africa. It's almost as if SSA itself is not really a singular race.
Yes, well Irish's definitions of Afridonty and 'West Eurasian' are based on certain traits. Certain populations will score for some traits but not others while others may score for both traits and thus give them an ambiguous position i.e. near the centroid value of the multidimensional MMD chart.
Compare Irish's chart to the MMD chart on dental morphology of Asian populations.
The only problem though with maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) which I have pointed out before when applied to cranial morphology, is the sampling size. The obvious reason why the SSA cluster covers a greater area in the chart is that there was a greater number of samples from a wider geographical area compared to the NA sampling. It is sampling bias that can obfuscate the results of a study or as Zarahan puts it "stacking the deck".
That said, I find Tanzania's position on the chart to be interesting considering that unlike Chad or Senegambia, Tanzania is nowhere near North Africa. It makes me wonder about prehistoric population connections to North Africa with fossils like the Kenyan Gamble's Cave and the Naivasha skull. As for SSA not being a singular 'race', well I think that's been established in this forum a while back now and is verified in genetic studies specifically PCA and k values. Which again begs the question of why African populations are still being divided into just the two categories of SSA and NA, especially when there are glaring discrepancies such as one example-- Mesolithic Nubians being geographically North African.
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Just curious about the exact phenotype of earlier posted Palaeolithics. I remember a couple of reconstructions of various feature sets. Most were like African blacks, some more asmixed looking. Between Ish and Mena many were posted over the years.
I tend to shy away from teeth and head shapes. I used to believe that all long headed African thing. Then one day I saw my brother's head from the top, round. Nope not even mesocephalic, we are round heads, low end brachycephalic. Yet my son is the epitome of Sergi's pentagonoides acutus.
Plus Nordheimers are longheaded. The field shit-listed Dixon's race book. His typology disregarded skin and hair. It strictly used head, face,and nose indices. The results negroidized too many Europeans.
Yeah, I know individuals (and families) can be outside the so-called 'norm'. But, sheesh, nothing beats the genome for bio relationships. Not discounting anything in the trans-discipline arsenal though.
His Ethiopian and Nubian samples are not in that graph and of course he excludes them when discussing Egyptians and "true negro" Africans (which he lumps together as SAF if I remember it right). "Pharoahnic" doesn't distinguish between northern and souhern Egypt either. Does he specify where his samples came from in the study being referenced?
The Irish paper I cite is available for public viewing in reasearchgate here.
But for convenience here are snippets of the samples sources:
^ As you can see the "Pharaonic" label is very misleading because it actually refers to a sample from the New Kingdom Egyptian colonial city of Soleb in Upper Nubia!
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: Whatever the white researchers called negroid is what I call negroid for the most part. Of the top of my head from the time periods in question, from Nazlet khater to Natufian etc.
I hate that word with the passion of 100 suns. "Negro" means black. Of all the words they used, they described phenotypes using popular racialized language. But then when things don't go as they want, of course not all the people they treat as black people are accepted as "Negroid." Ethiopians aren't "black." Nubians are also black until they find them to be too close in phenotype to upper Egyptians.
LOL Exactly.
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Afridonty: the “Sub-Saharan African Dental Complex” Revisited: We recognized five major modern dental populations: Western Eurasia (including North Africa and India), sub-Saharan Africa, Sino-America, Sunda-Pacific, and Sahul-Pacific. These divisions have substantial correspondence with linguistic, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic classifications.
Irish's groupings are somewhat arbitrary. I say this because the groupings themselves are based on samples having close proximity which in turn is based on statistical value of nonmetric traits. Yet note how Irish groups the Sahul-Pacific (Australodonty) and Sunda-Pacific (Sundadonty) together in one circle. Such a super grouping though does have a basis since Australodonty is said to be precursory or ancestral to the more derived Sundadonty, and as Turner (1990) noted: The dental pattern characteristic of modern Australian Aborigines resembles sundadonty in seven out of eight key traits (the exception is the low frequency of four-cusped lower second molars).
That said, Irish shows more diversity for his Sahul-Pacific/Australodonty group by having both Australians and Melanesians with the latter being much closer to the Sunda-Pacific cluster than to the former. On the other hand, Sub-Saharans are statistically reduced to one point in the chart despite the diversity that exists within that group! In fact the distance between Sub-Saharans on one side and West Asians and North Africans on the other is not much more than that between Australians and Sundadonts!
What's more is despite the distance between Sub-Saharans and Western Eurasians is the conspicuous proximity Sub-Saharans have with Pacific-Oceania samples.
Irish notes: The sub-Saharan sample is divergent from all others, though it is more or less equidistant between Europe/Mediterranean and Australia/Oceania. Again, known population (pre)history can account for the former association. Any similarity to the latter group may seem unlikely, but it is not anomalous. Many researchers have found seeming skeletal and genetic links among the peoples of these broad geographic regions (discussed in Irish 1993, 1997; HaniharaChapter 19, this volume). Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues (1996) even suggested that after 60,000 BP, Africans developed seagoing skills that allowed them to contact Australia. The sub-Saharan sample is least like the Sinodontsof Northeast Asia/New World, who are at “opposite ends of a dental morphological spectrum” (Irish 1997:462). This divergence is illustrated in a bargraph (Figure 12.2) of SSADC trait presence in the sub-Saharan Africans and a combined Sinodont sample [i.e., group 2 (discussed earlier), using matching ASUDAS breakpoints (refer to Table 12.1 later) based on data from Turner(1985)
We already discussed Turner's findings of bipolar division in dental nonmetrics with Western/Afridonts on one end and Eastern/Sinodonts on the other, but I am more interested in the close affinity seen in Irish's chart between Sub-Saharans and Melanesians. This is not the first time such an affinity was noted. It was first observed by Scott & Turner (1997) 'Worldwide Populations Based on 23 Crown and Root Traits' as shown below.
^ The New Guinea (Highlander) sample shown to be intermediate between West Africans and North Africans, whereas the San of Southern Africa are intermediate between not just the entire Western Pole but also Sahul-Sunda Pacific populations on one hand and Sinodonts on the other hand.
By the way, Roman Schomberg's 2018 thesis paper advised by Dr. Scott, Adrift in Oceania explains why some New Guinea Highlanders exhibit traits associated with Western populations including Western Eurasians.
The only thing missing from Turner & Scott's graph as well as that of Irish are the Indodont populations of India which seems to have a cental or intermediate position between the Western and Eastern poles of dental nonmetrics. But the main point should be the immense diversity of Sub-Saharans which tends to get obfuscated. As Hanihara (2019) said in regards to world dental variation: It now appears that not only do sub-Saharan Africans have greater genetic and morphological diversity than other world populations, but there is in addition a sequential decrease in diversity with distance from Africa – possibly due to iterative bottleneck effects during the process of expansion. If so, the gradients of genetic and phenotypic diversity related to geography among major populations may address the process of occupation of the present range of modern peoples, including East/Northeast Asians.
When Sub-Saharans are not statistically reduced to one point alone but expanded along with North Africans, again we get Irish's 1998 findings
In 1993, I proposed that frequencies of certain nonmetric features of the permanent crowns and roots provide an overall dental characterization of Africans. Specifically, nine high- and two low-frequency traits clearly differentiate sub-Saharan peoples from North Africans (Irish 1997), Europeans, Southeast Asian Sundadonts, Northeast Asian/New World Sinodont, Australians, and Melanesians (Turner 1987, 1992a). In this instance “high” and “low” do not refer to absolute frequencies, but instead are relative to thos eexpressed by other world samples. Therefore, this suite of 11 traits, that is, the SSADC (Irish 1997), includes the highest occurrences of (1) UC Bushmancanine, (2) two-rooted UP1, (3) UM1 Carabelli’s “trait” (i.e., the full range of expression from pit through large cusp on mesiolingual surface), (4) three-rooted UM2, (5) LM2 Y-groove pattern, (6) LM1 cusp 7, (7) LP1 Tome’s root,(8) two-rooted LM2, and (9) UM3 presence, along with the lowest frequencies of (10) UI1 double shoveling and (11) UM1 enamel extensions. The SSADCwas based on pooling several spatially diverse and largely synchronic (i.e.,nineteenth–early twentieth centuries) samples (Irish 1997); as such, it was intended as a preliminary characterization.
By the way, his North African samples include not only Egyptians but Nubians as well. He describes the North African dental complex here:
Dental morphological affinities of Late Pleistocene through recent sub-Saharan and north African peoples Characteristic North African Dental Traits As described by others (Hiernaux, 1975; Excoffier et al., 1987; Roychoudhhury and Nei, 1988; Lipschultz, 1996; among others) and as noted in this and previous studies (Irish, 1993b, 1997, 1998a), North Africans are genetically and phenetically allied with Europeans and Western Asians. North African dental frequencies are similar to those of Europeans, except for some traits that show apparent Sub-Saharan influence. Such a North/Sub-Saharan combination is also evident in many genetic systems (e.g. Roychoudhhury and Nei, 1988) Thus, I proposed (Irish, 1993b, 1998a) that the North African dental trait complex is one which *parallels that of Europeans*, yet displays higher frequencies of Bushman Canine, two-rooted UP1, three-rooted UM2, LM2 Y- groove, LM1 cusp 7, LP1 Tome's root, two-rooted LM2, and lower frequencies of UM1 enamel extension and peg/reduced or absent UM3. North Africans also exhibit a higher frequency of UM1 Carabelli's trait than sub-Saharan Africans or Europeans.
^ So North Africans (not just Egyptians but Nubians and Maghrebis) possess 6 of the 11 traits that characterize Sub-Saharans but other than that parallel Europeans and West Asians, thus intermediate.
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^ Yes indeed, in fact I cited it in the Irish al-Khiday thread here!
Haddow whose study focused on non-metric dental traits included samples from Ethiopia (including Eritrea) and found this:
4.5.3.2 Hierarchical cluster analysis of MMD values Hierarchical cluster analysis is used to compare MMD values for the Kellis assemblage and comparative groups. Ward’s linkage (Ward 1963) is the cluster method employed for this analysis. Figure 4.17 presents the dendrogram and it is immediately evident that there is a clear divide between the Sub-Saharan Africans and the Egyptian, Nubian and other North African groups. The Kellis assemblage clusters with the latter grouping. The exceptions to this geographic split are the Final Neolithic Upper Egyptian Gebel Ramlah group which clusters with the Sub-Saharan African groups, and the Ethiopian sample which clusters with several of the Nubian groups. While Irish (1993) includes the Chad group in the North African sample, Chadian peoples are typically classified as a Sub-Saharan population, so it is unsurprising that this group clusters with the other Sub-Saharan African comparative groups.
Our old troll Parahu in his blog commented on the data matrix result:
"Dental non-metric analysis of ancient and modern African populations. The Ethiopia sample has closest biodistance values with the North African samples, particularly the Carthaginian (0.000), Badarian Egyptian (0.001), Pharaonic Nubian (0.002), Kabyle Berber (0.003), and A-Group Nubian (0.005) samples. Other Horn of Africa and North Africa samples in non-metric analyses have instead shown Sub-Saharan ties, which reflects the spurious nature of non-metric analysis as compared to the consistent and genetically-controlled metric analysis (Haddow 2012)."
LOL Parahu has it backwards-- it is nonmetric data that is genetically correlated NOT metric data which is more specious. What he views as "spurious" may very well reflect genetic relation mediated by geneflow. Note the Maghrebi samples like the Kabyle. We know Maghrebis have a higher frequency of Sub-Saharan influence than Northeast Africans and apparently even Ethiopians!
Here are images from the 2012 Haddow study:
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^ The above photo reminds me of something. This is not to take away from Irish's analysis much less his results, but it appears he missed one trait in his assessment of SSADC which is the cruciform or + shaped groove pattern that occurs in the 3rd molar of Africans. According to anthropologists like Ashley Montague and J. Lawrence Angel this dental trait is a paedomorphic one that is common among Sub-Saharans but apparently is featured in Haddow's Egyptian sample as well.
What's more, I think that just as important as dental morphological features are dental growth patterns and configurations. This is something you hear very little about in current bioanthropology.
As for dental configuration, this was something touched on a couple of times before in this forum regarding P. K. Manansala's observation of Harris & Wente's findings: Harris and Wente note the prevalence of dental prognathism among Nubians. Often this is combined with malocclusion. Similar incidence can be found in other African peoples. For example, one study found that a sample taken from the Kenya showed 61.3% of Maasai had diastema; 84% of Kikuyu had overbite and 99% had overjet; and 24% of Kalenjin had anterior open bite. (J. Hassanali, GP Pokhariyal, "Anterior tooth relations in Kenyan Africans, Archives of Oral Biology 38 [Apr 1993] 337-42). Although these dental traits can often be acquired through habits like thumb-sucking, as noted by Harris and Wente, the high frequency in the royal mummies indicates a genetic origin as found in Africans
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