Canary islands-north African population affinities: measures of divergence based on dental morphology

Authors: Guatelli-Steinberg D.¹; Irish J.D.²; Lukacs J.R.³

Source: Homo, Volume 52, Number 2, December 2001 , pp. 173-188(16)

Publisher: Urban & Fischer

Abstract:

This investigation addresses two related questions about the origins and biological affinities of the Canary Islands' aboriginal inhabitants. First: With which North African populations do the pre-conquest inhabitants of the Canary Islands have their greatest affinities? Second: Does inter-island biological variability among the Canary Islanders, as has been suggested by other researchers (Hooton 1925, Schwidetzky 1963), imply that potentially different founding populations remained distinct during the pre-conquest period? This study employs dental morphology data derived from pre-conquest skeletons to answer these questions. Non-metric dental traits appear to be controlled by polygenic systems with a low to moderate environmental contribution to the resulting phenotype (Berry 1978, Harris & Bailit 1980, Nichol 1990) and can thus be assumed to reflect genetic relationships. The dental morphology of a sample of Canary Islanders (n = 397) is compared to that of Northwest African samples of Algerian Shawia Berbers (n = 26), Kabyle Berbers (n = 32), Bedouin Arabs (n = 49) and Punic Carthaginians (n = 28) as well as to six samples from Northeast Africa (n = 307) included for the purpose of understanding Canary Islanders' affinities within a wider context. The analysis employs 28 dental traits, quantifying differences in their expression among the various samples through a summary statistic, CAB Smith's Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD). The MMD analysis indicates that the Canary Island sample is most similar to the four samples from Northwest Africa: the Shawia Berbers, Kabyle Berbers, Bedouin Arabs and Carthaginians, less similar to the three Egyptian samples and least like the three Nubian samples. An intra-island comparison among samples from La Gomera, Gran Canaria and Tenerife reveals low, insignificant MMD values in all cases, implying that inter-island dental morphology differences are not so great as to require hypotheses of separate founding populations.

Language: English

Document Type: Original article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1078/0018-442X-00027

Affiliations: 1: The Ohio State University, Newark OH, USA 2: University of Alaska, Fairbanks AK, USA 3: University of Oregon, Eugene OR, USA

Publication date: 2001-12-01

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• In this Subject: Anthropology & Archeology
• By this author: Guatelli-Steinberg D. ;  Irish J.D. ;  Lukacs J.R.

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