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The value of quantitative infracranial nonmetric variation is examined in the study of population relationships by using samples from populations originating from five major geographic regions: Australia (two populations), Africa, East Asia, Europe, and Polynesia. According to the nonspecificity hypothesis, there are no distinct large classes of genes affecting one group of attributes exclusively; thus infracranial nonmetric traits should compare with other osteologic data sets in addressing questions of population relationships. By using the mean measure of divergence, infracranial nonmetric traits are shown to be useful in separating populations, particularly when using female and pooled-sex samples. The two Australian female samples (New South Wales coastal Australian and South Australian Aboriginals) are shown to be closer than any other two samples. The picture of intrapopulation and interpopulation variation in infracranial nonmetric traits is extended and clarified. Distance studies with infracranial nonmetric traits are possible but more illuminating if the sexes are first separated. Infracranial nonmetric variation does extend the knowledge of human population studies in yielding biologically meaningful results relating to development and ontogeny.

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD.

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