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MALES ONLY There are 2 biological complexes- Australo-Melanesian and Asian Modern Thai are not especially close to any group outside mainland Southeast Asia. (407) The earliest studies in physical anthropology, primarily exercises in typological racial classification, were unable to adequately document and interpret human biological variability. (407) Heredity studies (e.g., Cheverud, Buikstra, and Twitchell 1979
Sjøvold 1984) have deomonstrated a strong heritability component for many of the traditionally studied aspects of cranial shape. (408) Studies of Craniofacial (Brace, Brace and Leonard 1989
Brace et al. 1990
Brace and Hunt 1990
Brace and Tracer 1992
Hanihara 1985
Hanihara, Hanihara, and Koizumi 1993
Hanihara 1993
Howells 1990
Ishida 1993
Pietrusewsky 1984, 1990a, 1990b, 1992a, 1992b) and dental (Turner 1990, 1992a, 1992b, Brace and Hinton 1981) variation.... (408) One of the major conclusions reached from studies using biological data, both genetic (e.g., Serjeantson and Hill 1989) and nongenetic, is that Southeast Asia rather than Melanesia is the most probable homeland of the Polynesians. (408) Brace and Colleagues, for example, have advanced a provocative scenario linking Austronesian-speaking peoples of Remote Oceania with the prehistoric (Jomon) and more (Ainu) inhabitants of Japan (see e.g., Brace, Brace, and Leonard 1989
Brace and Hunt 1990
Brace et al. 1990
Brace, Tracer, and Hunt 1991). (408) Turner, who has performed numerous dental investigations using skeletal sereis from the same region, also sees a connetiin between Ainu, Jomon, Polynesians, and Southeast Asians. These later are characterized as possessing the Sundadont dental comlex, one that is distinct from a scond complex found among North Asians (Japna, China, Mongolia, Northeast Siberia, and American Indians), the Sinodont dental complex. Unlike Brace, however, Turner does not see prehisotric Japan as the ancestral source of Austronesian-speaking peoples, or more specifically, Polynesians. Rather, more recently, Turner has suggested that Southeast Asia is the possible ultimate homeland of all modern populations (Turner 1992b). This new craniometric analysis expands ealier work (e.g., Pietrusewsky 1984, 1990a, 1990b, 1992b
Pietrusewsky et al. 1992). The major pupose of discriminant analysis is to maximiz the ratio of between-group variance to tatoal variance, while taking into account the inter-correlation of variables, by producing a finite sereis of orthogonal functions. The first few canonical variates, or functions, account for most of the variation among the groups. (410) Although originally designed to assign unknown specimen to one or more groups, discriminant analysis has been shown to be especially useful as a measure of variation between groups (Campbell 1978). (410) The first canonical variate separates most importantly on the basis of the cranial vault length, upper facial height (nasion-prosthion), minimum cranial breadth (at the base of the skull), and biorbital breadth. (413) Cranial series from island and mainland Sotheast Asia form another group that includes the Bronze Age Thai and the Atayal from Taiwan. The modern Chinese series form a tight cluster to which Bronze Age Chinese from Anyang, Korea, Manchuria, and Mongolia are attracted. (414) Polynesians are closest to the Souteast Asian series. (418) A recent study of mt-DNA (Ballinger et al. 1992) has found that the Vietnamese are the most diverse and hence the oldest population in a survey of seven Asian groups. (422) Bronze Age Thai, although marginal, groups with island Southeast Asia, possibly suggestive of an Austro-Tai (or Tai-Kadai) connection. (422) There is no support for a Jomon-Pacific (or Japanese-Austronesian) connection in these results. (422)
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