Craniodental Affinities of Southeast Asia's “Negritos” and the Concordance with Their Genetic Affinities

Abstract

Genetic research into Southeast Asia's "negritos" has revealed their deep-rooted ancestry, with time depth comparable to that of Southwest Pacific populations. This finding is often interpreted as evidence that negritos, in contrast to other Southeast Asians, can trace much of their ancestry directly back to the early dispersal of Homo sapiens in the order of 70 kya from Africa to Pleistocene New Guinea and Australia. One view on negritos is to lump them and Southwest Pacific peoples into an "Australoid" race whose geographic distribution had included Southeast Asia prior to the Neolithic incursion of "Mongoloid" farmers. Studies into Semang osteology have revealed some hints of Southwest Pacific affinities in cranial shape, dental morphology, and dental metrical "shape." On the other hand, the Andamanese have been shown to resemble Africans in their craniometrics and South Asians in their dental morphology, while Philippine negritos resemble Mongoloid Southeast Asians in these respects and also in their dental metrics. This study expands the scope of negrito cranial comparisons by including Melayu Malays and additional coverage of South Asians. It highlights the distinction between the Mongoloid-like Philippine negritos and the Andamanese and Semang (and Senoi of Malaya) with their non-Mongoloid associations. It proposes that the early/midHolocene dispersal of the B4a1a mitochondrial DNA clade across Borneo, the Philippines, and Taiwan may be important for understanding the distinction between Philippine and other negritos.

Contrasting maternal and paternal genetic variation of hunter-gatherer groups in Thailand

“…The indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia (SEA) are often referred to as “negritos” because of their differences in phenotypic appearances, i.e. on average shorter stature, frizzier hair, and darker skin color 1 , 2 . The phenotypic resemblances of SEA negritos and African pygmies initially suggested a separate origin in Africa, although convergent evolution now seems more likely (for reviews see Détroit et al .…”

The Spice Islands in Prehistory: Archaeology in the Northern Moluccas, Indonesia

“…The affinities of the male Moluccan crania were also explored using the anatomical characters defined by Larnach and Macintosh (1966). The characters of relevance here are those that I have found to be consistently recorded by different observers and also useful in discriminating 'Indo-Malay' crania (recent Island Southeast Asia crania northwest of eastern Indonesia) from both Australian Aboriginal and Melanesian crania (Bulbeck 2013). The Boolean expressions evaluate as 'True' for Indo-Malay crania and 'False' for Australian crania (Table 11.2) and Melanesian crania (Table 11.3).…”

“…The measurements reported here are those defined by Howells (1973b), excluding radii and cranial fractions. This allows statistical comparison with the populations measured by Howells (1989) as well as six series from India measured by Pathmanathan Raghavan terra australis 50 (Bulbeck 2013). In addition, I recorded male and female crania with 'circumferential deformation' (Lindsell 1995) from Malekula Island, Vanuatu, Melanesia.…”