Abstract
In this paper several dental characteristics of the Micronesians were compared with those of three other populations-Pashtuns, Hawaiians and Japanese-the data of which were obtained by one of the present authors, T. SAKAI. The materials used in this study were 194 skulls housed in the Bishop Museum, Honolulu. The Hawaiian samples used for comparison were obtained from the skulls in the same museum. The Japanese and Pashtun samples were the plaster casts obtained from those living in Japan and Afghanistan. The results are briefly summarized as follows:
1. Fifteen non-metric crown characters were observed and comparisons between Micronesians and the other populations were carried out on the basis of their frequency distributions. According to this comparative study, the frequency distributions of the Mongoloid dental complex and its related dental characteristics in the Micronesians are generally higher than in the Pashtun, lower than in the Japanese, and similar to the Hawaiians.
2. The incidence of reduced molars in the Micronesians and the Hawaiians was clearly less than in the other two populations.
3. Distance coefficients devised by SMITH were used as a tool for the comparison between these populations. Micronesians are biologically similar to Hawaiians and dissimillar to Pashtuns. The distance between Micronesians and Japanese is small. Based on SMITH'S distance, the following clusters seem to be distinguished: Micronesian-Hawaiian cluster, Japanese cluster and Pashtun cluster.
