The Modern Inhabitants of Island Southeast Asia: a Craniometric Perspective

In this study, stepwise discriminant function analysis and Mahalanobis' generalized distance are applied to 27 landmark measurements recorded in 2,595 male crania representing 56 near modern cranial series from Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), Mainland Southeast Asia (SEA), East Asia, Australia. and the Pacific. This new analysis examines models (e.g., agricultural colonization and continuity models) based on archaeological, historical linguistic, and biological data for understanding the modern inhabitants of ISEA and the adjoining regions beginning approximately 40,000 years ago. The results, including the inspection of jackknifed classification results, canonical plots, and the construction of diagrams of relationship based on Mahalanobis' distances, indicate: The primary division is one between Asian-Pacific and Australian-Melanesian series. With the exception of the Southern Moluccas series, cranial series from ISEA form a separate branch that is closest to Mainland SEA series. Cranial series representing East and North Asia occupy a branch well separated from Southeast Asia, an association that argues for long term continuity within these regions rather than intrusion or replacement in Southeast Asia. ISEA is the likely homeland for the ancestors of the Polynesians and other inhabitants of Remote Oceania. Several interesting associations (e.g., New Zealand Maori and Southern Moluccas) between Remote Oceania and ISEA are discussed. This study demonstrates that human skeletal and dental remains are an important source of information for evaluating models based on archaeological and historical linguistic data and for evaluating the hotly debated LS1 hominin from Liang Sua Cave on Flores Island, Indonesia.