The Late Pleistocene through Recent Peoples of Northeast Africa: Measures of Affinity based on Dental Evidence

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Who were the post-Pleistocene peoples of Egypt, Nubia, and Africa's Horn? How closely related were they? Were they native to northeast Africa, immigrants, or both? Is there continuity with recent peoples? These, and other long-standing questions have been asked by countless African researchers. Yet, despite many archaeological and a lesser number of biological-based studies, particularly among Dynastic populations, there has been little agreement regarding the answers. The proposed project is intended to build upon these previous studies and, specifically, several dental investigations by J Irish -- in which 36 dental traits in samples throughout North and sub-Saharan Africa (n= 1,625 individuals) were compared. The objectives of the new project are to address the more specific, region-oriented questions in three ways. First, up to 5,000 dentitions in a cross-section of northeast Africans (and comparative West Asian and European samples), will be examined for the same traits, plus 32 dental measurements. This work will be done to discern collective traits across time/space beyond what little is known, and identify trends in occurrence. Second, those groups most dentally alike will be identified using inferential statistics. It is widely held that dental similarity approximates genetic relatedness. These numerically-derived affinities can then test existing hypotheses concerning population origins, relationships, migration, and microevolution. Previously, such hypotheses were derived and tested via artifactual evidence, or biological data subject to environmental and methodological bias. Dental anthropology is a proven field that minimizes these factors. Third, the findings will be contrasted with published genetic, linguistic, cultural, and other data to test for concordance among methods. These objectives, when met, will provide a better understanding of diachronic population history in a region that fostered some of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known.