The Study Of Non-metric Cranial Traits In The Northern Chinese Of Ancient Times

A comparative study of non-metric cranial variation within the Northern Chinese of ancient times revealed population affinities among the Northeast, East, Central Asians and Europeans.This thesis is composed of four sections:Chapter 1. Preface: Introduce the concept of non-metric traits, and the development of this research method, and then talk about the classification of non-metric traits.Chapter 2. Materials and methods: Three cranial series (total 366) collected from Northern China, ranging in age from Neolithic Age to Wei-Jin Period. Each groups separately represented Modern East Asia Mongoloids, Modern North Asia Mongoloids and the Europeans. And other 15 series of cranial non-metric traits data were chose to analysis. The principal coordinate analysis as well as SMITT's Mean Measure of Divergence (MMDs) and the cluster analysis were used to calculate the biological distances among these groups.Chapter 3. Results: The characteristics of cranial non-metric traits of the ancient Northern Chinese were revealed from these analyses. The frequency of parietal notch bone, occipito-mastoid wormians, precondylar tubercle, tympanic dehiscence, transverse zygomatic suture vestige in the ancient East Asian group is considerably higher; conversely, the frequency of ossicle at the lambda,...