Female craniometrics support the \u2018two-layer model\u2019 of human dispersal in Eastern Eurasia

Hirofumi Matsumura,Shih-Chiang Huang,Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen,Thi Nga Nguyen,Guangmao Xie,Xuan Tinh Ho,Lan Cuong Nguyen,Zhen Li,Tsunehiko Hanihara,Hsiao-Chun Hung

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-00295-6

Abstract

This study reports a cranio-morphometric analysis of female human remains from seven archaeological sites in China, Vietnam and Taiwan that date between 16,000 and 5300 BP. The aim of the analysis is to test the “two-layer” model of human dispersal in eastern Eurasia, using previously unanalysed female remains to balance the large sample of previously-analysed males. The resulting craniometric data indicate that the examined specimens all belong to the “first layer” of dispersal, and share a common ancestor with recent Australian and Papuan populations, and the ancient Jomon people of Japan. The analysed specimens pre-date the expansion of agricultural populations of East/Northeast Asian origin—that is, the “second layer” of human dispersal proposed by the model. As a result of this study, the two-layer model, which has hitherto rested on evidence only from male skeletons, is now strongly supported by female-derived data. Further comparisons reveal that the people of the first layer were closer in terms of their facial morphology to modern Africans and Sri Lankan Veddah than to modern Asians and Europeans, suggesting that the Late Pleistocene through Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers examined in this study were direct descendants of the anatomically modern humans who first migrated out of Africa through southern Eurasia.

Highlights

This study reports a cranio-morphometric analysis of female human remains from seven archaeological sites in China, Vietnam and Taiwan that date between 16,000 and 5300 BP
In a previous study on the dispersal process of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in eastern Eurasia, we proposed the two-layer model based on cranial data-sets of male specimens[1]
We proposed that the Late Pleistocene AMH colonizers in southern China and Southeast Asia—akin to the ancestors of current Indigenous Australo-Papuans—were encountered during the Holocene by a second layer of migrants from northern Eurasia who possessed morphological characteristics adapted to a cold climate

Summary

Introduction

This study reports a cranio-morphometric analysis of female human remains from seven archaeological sites in China, Vietnam and Taiwan that date between 16,000 and 5300 BP. Analysis of cranio-morphometric patterns in eastern Eurasian and Sahul specimens (approximately 800 skeletons from late Paleolithic through Iron Age contexts) strongly supported the “two-layer model” of AMH dispersal in these regions[1]. According to this model, the “first layer”, the original Late Pleistocene AMH colonizing population, shared a direct ancestry with present-day Indigenous Australians and Papuans. We regarded the agricultural populations who cultivated rice (Oryza sativa; and some cultivated millets) as the “second layer”, who brought northeast Asian cranial features into Southeast Asia during the Neolithic period (from ca. 4000 BP)

Methods

Results

Conclusion