ANCESTRAL DENTAL TRAITS IN RECENT SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS AND THE ORIGINS OF MODERN HUMANS

Assuming that phenetic expression approximates genetic variation, prev ious dental morphological analyses of Sub-Saharan Africans by the auth or show they are unique among the world's modern populations. Numerica lly-derived affinities, using the multivariate Mean Measure of Diverge nce statistic, revealed significant differences between the Sub-Sahara n folk and samples from North Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, Northeas t Asia and the New World, Australia/Tasmania, and Melanesia. Sub-Sahar an Africans are characterized by a collection of unique, mass-additive crown and root traits relative to these other world groups. Recent wo rk found that the most ubiquitous of these trains are also present in dentitions of earlier hominids, as well as extinct and extant non-huma n primates; other ancestral dental features are also common in these f orms. The present investigation is primarily concerned with this latte r finding. Qualitative and quantitative comparative analyses of Plio-P leistocene through recent samples suggest that, of all modern populati ons, Sub-Saharan Africans are the least. derived dentally from an ance stral hominid state; this conclusion, together with data on intra-and inter-population variability and divergence, may help provide new evid ence in the search for modern human origins. (C) 1998 Academic Press L imited.