Abstract
In an effort to demonstrate the microevolutional history of the Japanese populations from the viewpoint of dental morphology, metrical and nonmetrical crown traits were investigated for eight population samples from various periods in Japan, extending from the prehistoric Jomon period to the present. The results were compared with those found in other East Asian populations, to clarify the question of the ancestry of the Japanese populations. Several statistical analyses on metrical and nonmetrical traits demonstrated that the modern Japanese populations were descended from two major groups. One group is the indigenous prehistoric Jomon people, which was ancestral to the modern Ainu. The second group is the Aeneolithic Yayoi immigrants from the Asian Continent, which passed into the post-Yayoi Japanese. Relative tooth size and most nonmetrical traits are quite stable throughout the two microevolutionary lineages from the Jomon to the Ainu and from the Yayoi to the post-Yayoi Japanese.
