Variation in Morphological traits of the modern human dentition : assessing the affinities of the Boring collection at the San Diego Museum of Man

The dentitions of76 skulls from the Boring Collection at the San Diego Museum of Man were examined for twelve morphological crown traits. According to the accession records, the Boring Collection originated from India. Using the twelve traits observed, frequencies for the Boring Collection were calculated and then compared to frequencies of various worldwide samples, in particular Scott and Turner (1997) and Hawkey (1998) in order to determine if the Boring Collection indeed originated from India. Non-statistical comparisons were made with samples recorded prior to the inception of the ASUDAS and then statistical analyses were conducted with samples utilizing this standardized system. Statistics used here include chi-square analysis multidimensional scaling and k-means cluster analysis. The results demonstrate that the Boring Collection does have affinities to India, in particular South India, but that it also shows strong affinities to some samples from New Guinea, Melanesia, North Africa and Northern Europe. These results suggest that the classification system of Scott and Turner (1997) has much validity to it. The short distances obtained for New Guinea, Western Eurasian and Indian samples, provide evidence supporting Scott and Turner's (1997) theory that archaic populations of Homo sapiens were characterized by a proto-Sundadont dentition and that diversification over the past several millennia gave rise to the modem variations seen in humans today. These results also indicate that the methods employed in prior research using morphological traits of the teeth to assess population affinities can be successfully used to determine the regional origins of unknown samples of humans.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-110)California State University, Northridge. Department of Anthropology