Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 77. (Budapest 1985)
Tóth, T.: Some anthropological problems of the Mesolithic Europoids, II.
ANNALES HISTORICO-NATURALES MUSEI NATIONALIS HUNGARICI Tomus 77. Budapest, 1985 p. 269-279. Some anthropological problems of the Mesolithic Europoids, II. by T. TÓTH, Budapest Abstract —A short sketch of the paleoecological and paleosomatological relations of skeletalized human populations from different chronological periods and from different geographical subregions is given on the basis of postcranial Osteometrie data. With 2 tables. Material and method More than once have there been attempts over the last two decades to analyse the mankindenvironment connections on the basis of osteological remains originating from populations which lived in dififerent earlier postglacial periods (Mesolithic, Neolithic and later ones). In doing so one must attach great importance to the paleosomatological reconstruction having two parameters {as indirect indicators): stature and body weight. As regards determination of the stature on the basis of the osteological remains of skeletal populations, the whole problem has been recently exposed by FORMICOLA (1983), who relied on the literature in Latin alphabet. DEBETS, on the other hand, attempted on the ground of comparative evaluation to elaborate and apply more effective formula, for which he made use of the conventional index of the skeletal volume (UPOS or ICVS), and that of the length of the legs (UDN) taking into account the correlations between the different extremitysegments (femur and tibia) as well as the relations of the extremities to trunk length (DEBETS 1967, DEBETS-DUERNOVO 1971). He analysed these relations using the data from 22 continental Eurasian as well as Atlantic and Pacific insular populations. According to his opinion group mean is of more informative value than the individual data, but one can make use of these latter values in evaluating the somatological characters of prehistorical and recent populations (DEBETS 1967). It is worth mentioning that he found a very high intergroup correlation (0.91) between body volume and the perimetrics of the extremities. He further improved his method with respect to the relation body weight-stature (DEBETS & DUERNOVO 1971). It deserves attention that the method elaborated by DEBETS —in comparison with the earlier ones —-gives values which are very close to the stature data obtained by the use of the LEE-PEARSON-formula (ALEXEYEVA & KOVALENKO 1980). KHRISANFOVA (1980) on the other hand, analysing in detail a male skeleton from the Upper-Palaeolithic of Sungir, called attention to the fact that reconstruction of the stature using the formulae of DEBETS, TROTTER and GLESER, DUPERTUIS and HAODON all gave the same values. The data from the abovementioned 22 populations have been analysed by DEBETS using the pooled values of the male and female subpopulations with a correction for sexual dimorphism. In the present paper, however, the mean values of the male and female subpopulations or those of the individuals have been taken into consideration. Data were taken from the bones of the right hand side. When having extremities only from the left, special coefficients were used for the femur and the humerus (DEBETS-DUERNOVO 1971). Postcranial Osteometrie data from the Upper-Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic-Aeneolithic were analysed. Medieval and recent osteological series have also been compared with this material (875 male and 565 female skeletons not including the ChatalHiiyiik remains). In addition, to provide a better control, the data from 14 living male and 13 female groups have also been included in our investigations (1104 males and 976 females). These data were taken from samples collected in the developing regions of the world (JELLIFFE 1966) so as to compare total skeletal data with present people of similar nutritional status.
