Foundation and Frontier – Centenary Path of Dental Anthropology in China

Abstract

Dental anthropology has been developed for 100 years in China. In this paper, the author reviews the articles on dental anthropology related to Chinese materials in the past one hundred years and briefly introduces the issues involved such as human evolution, and the interaction of different populations in historical periods. Results and discussion. The work of foreign scholars has been the foundation of Chinese paleoanthropology and dental anthropology since the discovery of the Hetao human teeth and the Zhoukoudian site. Since then, dental anthropology in China has gone through a phase of material accumulation, a phase of introducing the American ASUDAS in the 1990s, and a phase of prosperity in the last 30 years. The numerous discoveries and the application of new techniques have brought Chinese dental anthropology to an international level. Until now, there are more than 70 human fossil sites in China, over 60 of which contain human dental remains. Less material has been found from the early Pleistocene, and there is some controversy on whether they belong to the genus Homo. While early Middle Pleistocene Homo erectus teeth show primitiveness and some special features, the late Middle Pleistocene human teeth show greater variability, and mosaic features, and there is some controversy on whether some fossils belong to early Homo sapiens or other taxa. The Late Pleistocene human dentition is related to the question of how and when early modern human appeared in China and the evolution of early modern humans. However, due to the incompleteness of the material, the question of human origins is a matter of multidisciplinary and comprehensive interpretation. About 10 sites were studied from Neolithic to modern human dentition using the American ASUDAS. These results show the consistency of non-metric traits in teeth and skulls, display differences between northern and southern Chinese populations, and reveal the exchange between northwestern Chinese and western populations. Some of these results have been confirmed by paleogenomics. Conclusion. Anthropologists began to pay more attention to the morphology of modern human teeth. In the future, the application of new methods and the collection of modern human materials will help us better understand the evolution of ancient humans, population interaction.