Non-metric Dental Characters in Papua New Guinea Highlanders with Special Reference to Other Asia-Pacific Populations

Abstract

It has been suggested that the dental characteristics of Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlanders are unique. For example, the frequency of shovel shaped incisor is relatively low, but that of tubercle-shaped incisors is high. Also their dental arches are shorter and broader compared with other Pacific populations. They are considered to be closely related to Aboriginal Australians on the basis of genetic and archaeological studies. However, their dental characters are distinctively different to those of Australians. The purpose of this study is to describe the frequencies of these dental characters and to compare them with other Asian and Pacific peoples. Materials were dental impressions of 111 young adults from Kasi village, Wabag, Enga Province, PNG. Characters used in this study comprised 17 dental traits that were recorded using Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. Conspicuous characters in PNG include : low frequency of shoveling and double-shoveling of maxillary incisors ; Cusp 6 in mandibular first molar ; Carabelli's trait ; high frequencies of hypocone reduction in maxillary second molars ; Cusp 5 in maxillary first molars ; protostylid in mandibular first molars ; and 4-cusped mandibular second molars. It is suggested that this unique set of dental characters in PNG was acquired by morphological reduction from the original Australian type of dental characters and by admixture with south Asian and Pacific peoples. The principal coordinate plot for these 17 sets of scores, based on Smith's MMDs and standard deviations, showed that the PNG Highlanders belong to the Sundadont group and were located in an extreme position on the right of the first axis and in relatively lower position in the second axis.