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Morphological Adaptation to Climate in Modern Homo sapiens Crania: The Importance of Basicranial Breadth
Wioletta Nowaczewska
Paweł Dąbrowski
Łukasz Kuźmiński
Sažetak
The aim of this study is to investigate whether the variation in breadth of the cranial base among modern human populations
that inhabit different regions of the world is linked with climatic adaptation. This work provides an examination
of two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the correlation between basicranial breadth and ambient temperature
is stronger than the correlation between temperature and other neurocranial variables, such as maximum cranial
breadth, maximum neurocranial length, and the endocranial volume. The second hypothesis is that the correlation between
the breadth of the cranial base and the ambient temperature is significant even when other neurocranial features
used in this study (including the size of the neurocranium) are constant. For the sake of this research, the necessary
neurocranial variables for fourteen human populations living in diverse environments were obtained from Howells’ data
(except for endocranial volume which was obtained by means of estimation). The ambient temperature (more precisely,
the mean yearly temperature) of the environments inhabited by these populations was used as a major climatic factor.
Data were analysed using Pearson correlation coefficients, linear regression and partial correlation analyses. The results
supported the two hypotheses, thus suggesting that ambient temperature may contribute to the observed differences
in the breadth of the cranial base in the studied modern humans.
Ključne riječi
variation in basicranial breadth; adaptation to climate; modern humans
Hrčak ID:
72148
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.9.2011.
Posjeta: 2.012 *