Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1998

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

Andrew Kramer

Committee Members

Richard Jantz, Lyle Konigsberg, John W. Philpot

Abstract

Upper Cave 101 and Upper Cave 103 (UC 101 and UC 103), the much argued over Homo sapiens fossils from Zhoukoudian, China, figure prominently into discussions of modem human origins. Adherents to the Multiregional model see the Zhoukoudian fossils as exhibiting some of the same Asian characteristics that can be seen in modern Asian populations. On the other hand, proponents of the Out-of-Africa model see anything and everything but Asian features, frequently pointing out African characteristics which they claim are retentions of features from the initial exodus of modern humans.

UC 101 and UC 103 were compared to Howells' modern human groups and unpublished measurements of Paleoindian and Archaic Indian crania using unweighted, unrestricted canonical variate analysis (CVA) and associated Mahalanobis Distance Analysis. Results indicate that it is unlikely that these two fossils represent the same population, however the archaeological context seems to preclude any such inference. If UC 101 and UC 103 are from the same contemporaneous group, it may be inferred that ancient East Asians exhibit much more variation than modern populations, an idea postulated by Franz Weidenreich in the late 1930s.

These two fossils likely represent the robust ancestors of several modern, more homogenous groups. While UC 101 is classified as Easter Island in the Distance Analysis, its similarities to European, Eskimo, African, and Archaic Indian populations can be seen in the CVA plots. It also shows some similarities to Peru and Buriat populations. UC 103, on the other hand, is much more of an outlier to modern populations. Although the CVA allies this fossil most closely with Archaic Indians, the Lime Creek Paleoindian, and Easter Island, the Distance Analysis consistently classifies it as Australo-Melanesian. However, UC 103's position as an outlier, combined with its extremely low typicality probabilities, indicates that this specimen is outside the range of variation present in the modern populations utilized.

No overriding support for either school of modern human origins is found. The time depth involved between the postulated exodus of modern humans from Africa 200 ka and the reliably dated 29 to 24 ka Upper Cave fossils disallows any African morphological similarities to be interpreted as lending support to the Out-of-Africa model. On the other hand, the findings presented here also give no strong support to the Multiregional school since no close affiliation is seen between these two fossils and modern East Asians. However, if the fossils are truly contemporaneous, the Pleistocene population of East Asia was much more heterogeneous than today's populations, leaving open the very real possibility that the Zhoukoudian fossils are actually ancestral to modern East Asians. The morphological variability present in the Asian Pleistocene needs to be fully appreciated in order to adequately assess Pleistocene hominid fossil affinities.

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