quote:The skeletal remains of Pleistocene anatomically modern humans are rare in island Southeast Asia. Moreover, continuing doubts over the dating of most of these finds has left the arrival time for the region's earliest inhabitants an open question. The unique biogeography of island Southeast Asia also raises questions about the physical and cultural adaptations of early anatomically modern humans, especially within the setting of rainforest inhabitation. Within this context the Deep Skull from the West Mouth of the Niah Caves continues to figure prominently owing to its relative completeness and the greater certainty surrounding its geological age. Recovered along with this partial cranium in 1958 were several postcranial bones including a partial femur which until now has received little attention. Here we provide a description and undertake a comparison of the Deep Skull femur finding it to be very small in all of its cross-sectional dimensions. We note a number of size and shape similarities to the femora of Indigenous Southeast Asians, especially Aeta people from the Philippines. We estimate its stature to have been roughly 145–146 cm and body mass around 35 kg, confirming similarities to Aeta females. Its extreme gracility indicated by low values for a range of biomechanical parameters taken midshaft meets expectations for a very small (female) Paleolithic East Asian. Interestingly, the second moment of area about the mediolateral axis is enlarged relative to the second moment of area about the anteroposterior axis, which could potentially signal a difference in activity levels or lifestyle compared with other Paleolithic femora. However, it might also be the result of sexual dimorphism in these parameters as well as possibly reflecting changes associated with aging.
And from the text of the paper itself:
quote:For the Deep Skull femur, we used two sets of equations to estimate its stature: 1) the population-specific formula for modern Thai people of Mahakkanukrauh et al. (2011; Eqs. 5e7 in Table 2); and 2) the ‘pygmies’ equations of Hens et al. (2000; Eqs. 8e11 in Table 2). The second set of prediction formulae was selected because of the possibility that the Deep Skull individual possessed aspects of a tropical phenotype as seen today in some Indigenous groups such as the Aeta, Andaman Islanders and Efe, which includes short stature and short distal limb segments (Stock, 2013; Curnoe et al., 2016). In the absence of formulae for tropical Indigenous iSEA, the African ‘pygmy’ equations provide an alternative model for stature that takes account of this distinctive phenotype. Although, we acknowledge that there is phenotypic variation among ‘pygmy’ populations (Stock, 2013), which may not be adequately captured through the application of models developed from African people to samples drawn from Southeast Asian populations.
quote:Because the femoral head is missing from the Deep Skull, maximum femur length was estimated from biomechanical length. In the absence of regression models based on Indigenous Southeast Asians, we estimated stature using two sets of published equations but argue there are compelling reasons for favoring the results based on an African ‘pygmy’ rather than a modern Thai sample. As noted already, the Deep Skull femur shows many phenotypic resemblances to Aeta femora, consistent with anearlier finding by us about its cranium (Curnoe et al., 2016), and islikely on the basis of current population genetics to have been more closely related to them than recent Thai populations...
quote:The narrow subtrochanteric ML diameter indicates that the Deep Skull individual would have possessed a narrow bi-iliac breadth (or body width) and therefore a small body mass (Ruff, 1994; Weaver, 2003). This further supports the hypothesis of a tropically adapted body form in the Niah Caves individual. With an estimated body mass of 35 kg (±2 kg) the Deep Skull femur is only slightly larger than the mean for Casiguran Agta females (34 kg) but 6 kg smaller than males (41 kg; Wastl, 1957). Thus, estimated body mass confirms that its strongest affinities are likely with female Aeta (Curnoe et al., 2016). It is noteworthy in this regard that the Bayesian modeled date of 30e39 ka for the Deep coincides with molecular dates for the origins of the Aeta population of ca. 38 ka (Jinam et al., 2017) and that some contemporary Indigenous populations in Borneo such as the Bidayuh possess a ‘Negrito’ genomic component, their ancestry (Lipson et al., 2014).
TL;DR: The Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of Borneo would have been short-statured, dark-skinned "Negrito" people like these.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: And this is something new or surprising? LOL
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Thanks, exactly what I have been claiming for years.
And who has claimed otherwise??!
Ah, sorry, I meant elsewhere, at other forums.
I usually use the term Pygmy for the earliest residents though. Negritos of SEAsia, & KhoiSan of Southern Africa were among early expansive waves of Pygmies outward from the African tropical rainforest belt.
So the Deep Cave Skull is an ancestral 'Aeta' or aboriginal.
I am more curious about the heterogeneous nature of aboriginal populations today and their relation to peoples on the continent like the Hoabinhian.
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: And this is something new or surprising? LOL
[QUOTE]Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Thanks, exactly what I have been claiming for years.
[QUOTE]And who has claimed otherwise??!
Ah, sorry, I meant elsewhere, at other forums.
I usually use the term Pygmy for the earliest residents though. Negritos of SEAsia, & KhoiSan of Southern Africa were among early expansive waves of Pygmies outward from the African tropical rainforest belt.
So the Deep Cave Skull is an ancestral 'Aeta' or aboriginal.
I am more curious about the heterogeneous nature of aboriginal populations today and their relation to peoples on the continent like the Hoabinhian.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: And this is something new or surprising? LOL
quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: Thanks, exactly what I have been claiming for years.
And who has claimed otherwise??!
So the Deep Cave Skull is an ancestral 'Aeta' or aboriginal.
I am more curious about the heterogeneous nature of aboriginal populations today and their relation to peoples on the continent like the Hoabinhian.
I'm sure the various "Negrito" peoples would have genetically differentiated from one another over the last fifty to forty millennia since their ancestors settled in Southeast Asia. But what do you mean by "heterogeneity" here?
As for the Hoabinhian, this study might be of interest to you.
quote:The Negrito divergence time is consistent with archeological findings regarding the advent of Hoabinhian culture in Mainland SEA (Bellwood 2007). The genetic evidence supports the view that Malaysian Negritos are descendants of Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers who occupied northern parts of Peninsular Malaysia during late Pleistocene.
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