Dental morphology of the Dawenkou Neolithic population in North China: implications for the origin and distribution of Sinodonty.
We compare the incidence of 25 nonmetric dental traits of the people of the Neolithic Dawenkou culture (6300-4500 BP) sites in Shandong Province, North China with those of other East Asian populations. The Dawenkou teeth had an overwhelmingly greater resemblance to the Sinodont pattern typical of Northeast Asia than to the Sundadont pattern typical of Southeast Asia. Multidimensional scaling using Smith's mean measure of divergence (MMD) statistic place the Dawenkou sample near the Amur and the North China-Mongolia populations in the area of the plot indicating typical Sinodonty. The existence of the Sinodont population in Neolithic North China suggests a possible continuity of Sinodonty from the Upper Cave population at Zhoukoudian (about 34000-10000 BP) to the modern North Chinese. The presence of Sinodonty in Shandong Province shows that the Japan Sea and East China Sea were strong barriers to gene flow for at least 3000 years, because at this time the Jomonese of Japan were fully Sundadont. In addition, we suggest that the descendants of the Dawenkou population cannot be excluded as one of the source populations that contributed to sinodontification in Japan.
Manabe
Yoshitaka
Y
Department of Developmental and Reconstructive Medicine, Course of Medical and Dental Sciences, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki 852-8588, Japan. manabe@net.nagasaki-u.ac.jp
Oyamada
Joichi
J
Kitagawa
Yoshikazu
Y
Rokutanda
Atsushi
A
Kato
Katsutomo
K
Matsushita
Takayuki
T
D005075:Biological Evolution; D002681:China; D005580:Fossils; D006801:Humans; D009811:Odontometry; D010161:Paleodontology; D011157:Population Dynamics; D014070:Tooth / Q000033:anatomy & histology*