A new perspective of human origin and dispersals derived from the microevolution of teeth.
Recent genetic studies have heightened the expectation that the origin of modern humans will be defined, but one clear vision has yet to be developed. The study of teeth has historically been an informative means to help define human dispersals. Quantitative tooth data is presented encompassing worldwide human populations. A null hypothesis phylogeny developed from the multivariate analysis of the microevolution of the dental phenotype was interpreted to be broadly in accord with the dominant interpretation of genetic, archaeological, and other dental data by showing that the first division in the dispersion of extant humanity was within sub-Sahara Africans; i.e., San, and Western Africans and Bantu. This "out-of-Africa" interpretation of the graphical results suggests that the first modern human African emigrants not to go extinct were Southeast Asian Negritos. All Eurasians then emerged and expanded through a series of extinct antecedent populations branching from the short lineage extending from Negritos to Australian aborigines. Caucasoids were the first group to fission from this stock. Under this hypothesis, the next to have emerged were antecedent Southeast Asians, from which present Southeast Asians and then antecedent east Central Asians then diverged. Independently, people from the region of Mongolia and all Native Americans arose as daughter populations from antecedent east Central Asians. The broad outline of humanity studied here cannot disprove the equally explanatory protean multiregional hypotheses, but with the inclusion of hominids and further modern human populations either parts of the multiregional hypothesis or the outlined more linear evolutionary scenario likely can be refuted.
Shields
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Department of Oral Biology, Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. shields@med.mcgill.ca
D005075:Biological Evolution; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009811:Odontometry; D010161:Paleodontology; D010641:Phenotype; D010802:Phylogeny; D044469:Racial Groups; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology*