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5. MAPPING DENTAL MARKERS IN EURASIAN POPULATIONS: WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN TABLE DATA?

MAPPING DENTAL MARKERS IN EURASIAN POPULATIONS: WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN TABLE DATA?

Kashibadze Vera

Institute of Arid Zones, Southern Scientific Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Kashibadze Vera, e-mail: verdari@gmail.com.

Abstract

The study aims to consider numerous dental data from Eurasian populations in a spatial and temporal context. Mapping dental markers and PC scores as an innovative approach involves 906 samples; 594 of them are living groups and 312 are cranial series dated from the Late Pleistocene to the Early Iron Age. The results highlight the division of the whole area into two main provinces––western and eastern. The distinctive landscape, however, changes dramatically with the chronological depth when gracile lower molars as a distinguishing characteristics of our species are considered. The maps provide the evidence of the four-cusped LM2 to be a constant marker of western Eurasian populations, while the four-cusped LM1 turns to be an eastern trait in the Upper Paleolithic and early Holocene. Since the four-cusped LM1 is generally considered a western feature in recent populations, the discovered phenomenon provides a new view of the population history of the continent. The maps demonstrate the earliest western localization of gracile LM1, followed, in different ratio, by eastern traits (shoveling, dtc, dw) only in the Mesolithic and Neolithic northeastern Europe. The most intense dispersal of a similar combination from Asia to the west is traced in the Early Metal and Bronze Ages, mainly along the steppe belt of the continent. By the turn of the Common Era the landscape takes on essentially modern outlines. The results of the study suggest that LM1 and LM2 evolved independently in Eurasian populations, thus marking two separate ancestral groups. The separate ancestry could result from different tempos of transition of the key tooth role, thus suggesting four-cusped LM1 to be more archaic. In fact, should we admit at last that all the relevant dental traits specified as eastern are basically archaic? Several implications will be discussed.

Keywords

phenogeography, Eurasia, dental markers, lower molars, gracilization, population history

Цит.: Kashibadze Vera MAPPING DENTAL MARKERS IN EURASIAN POPULATIONS: WHAT WAS HIDDEN IN TABLE DATA? // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2014; 3/2014; с. 72-72