Australian Aboriginal Craniometrics as construed through FORDISC

Introduction

Late Pleistocene human skulls are of immense interest in reconstructing the evolutionary history of our species Homo sapiens. In the 1980s and 1990s, Kamminga and Wright (1988), Wright (1992), Stringer (1994), Howells (1995), Powell and Neves (1999), and others used multivariate statistics to compare the measurements of late Pleistocene skulls, from China, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, against modern human populations as represented by the worldwide survey of William White Howells (see map at the bottom of this page). One general result that emerged, which was then interpreted as evidence for the “Out of Africa” theory on the origins of modern humans, is that the Pleistocene crania frequently did not find their closest affinity with Howells’s recent populations in the same region. For instance, the landmark paper of Kamminga and Wright (1988) concluded that Zhoukoudien Upper Cave 1 could not be considered “Mongoloid” because its craniometrics are very different from those of recent populations in the region such as Chinese and Buriats. Therefore, one component of my The Contribution of South Asia to the Peopling of Australasia project (with Colin Groves) has involved testing Australian fossil crania with FORDISC 2.0 (Ousley and Jantz 1996), a computer program that facilitates multivariate statistical comparisons of individual crania with the 28 populations measured by Howells (1989).

See also this article here. It seems to be somewhat indicative of the effects of aboriginal peoples movements about the world. While most native American groups in the US have been rather quiet and busy making money in their casinos, many primitive groups are very busy with the help of lawyers wiping the archeological records clean of any evidence that they are even remotely less evolved than say– a German — and removing evidence of their past from the Internet and museums. Skulls and photos that could be found on the internet 5 years ago are now gone. It is, to say the least, a very vile form of censorship.

Note the map linking Australia to New Guinea during the height of the last glacial period here.

“This truly unique collection of mineralised skulls and endocasts, the results of over 30 years fieldwork, presents what can only be described as an indisputable case for the evolution of the earliest modern humans [Homo sapiens] in Australia from Homo erectus, prior to the supposed first appearance of modern humans in Africa around 100,000 years ago, and long before the appearance of the earliest Australoids [Aborigines] in Australia by hundreds of thousands of years.

The findings presented here are subject to gradual change through new
discoveries and reinterpretation of the evidence. As the skull-types
demonstrate, the Australian Homo erectus specimens are of both the
earlier flat-cranium ‘archaic’ and receding forehead ‘late’ forms,
followed by both ‘archaic’ and ‘modern’ Homo sapiens.

Three small skull-types may represent a pygmy-size race of Homo
with ‘modern’ features of considerable antiquity.

One skull-type suggests a primate presence in Pleistocene Australia
at a remote period.”

Numerous color photos of skulls:
http://www.theaustr alianyowieresear chcenter. com/main_ thumbnail_ skull_i
ndex.html

From New Zealand evidence of penetration there by Homo erectus is
presented by two skull-types; an endocast of the ‘archaic’, and
mineralised skull of the ‘late’ forms.

A word about the skull-types: These are either of limestone, mudstone
or ironstone mineralisation, and are either endocasts [i.e. internal
casts formed by sediments filling the skull interior which solidified
prior to the loss of the bone covering] or completely mineralised
skulls.

As these skulls have all suffered various degrees of geological
distortion in the early stages of burial beneath varying depths of
sediments, their identification has been arrived at through
reconstruction. In the dating of these skulls these and other
factors, such as the approximate ages of overlying geological
deposits have also been taken into account in arriving at their
various [approximate] ages.

We shall now proceed to study each skull-type in detail….Enter here
for the collection on one page
http://www.theaustr alianyowieresear chcenter. com/main_ thumbnail_ skull_i
ndex.html

1 Response to “Australian Aboriginal Craniometrics as construed through FORDISC”


  1. 1 Dean Edmund

    A work mate said Aboriginal skulls were thicker than white people is this a true statement?

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