The American scholar Edward Sapir proposed that the Na-Dene languages of North America (Haida, Tlingit, Eyak, Athabaskan) are genetically related to the Sino-Tibetan languages of Asia (Sinitic, Karenic, Tibeto-Burman). Sapir and other linguists have found correspondences between the phonetic systems, and more importantly, the grammar and basic vocabulary of both families. It is maintained here that Spair was essentially correct about this genetic connection (“Sino-Dene”), and that there is no evidence that he ever retracted it. Recent research corroborates Sapir's hypothesis and indicates the high probability of a widespread Dene-Caucasian family, which dispersed some 11, 000 years ago. Some new linguistic evidence for this family is also presented here for the first time.

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This paper applies recent archaeological thinking on language dispersal and replacement to Japanese. Based on the principles summarized by Renfrew (1992a), I argue that the Japanese language spread from Kyushu with agricultural colonization in the Yayoi period (ca. 400 B.C.-A.D. 250). Some supporting linguistic evidence for this model is provided by the distribution of Japanese dialects within the archipelago. If correct, the model would seem to rule out any significant process of creolization in the formation of Japanese. Although the continental origins of Japanese are still unclear, the model may also provide linguistic support for the theory of Yayoi immigration espoused by many biological anthropologists.

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Morphological data of human skeletal remains of the prehistoric Okhotsk culture in Sakhalin were presented. The Okhotsk people in Sakhalin are quite similar to the Okhotsk people in Hokkaido in terms of not only cranial metric and nonmetric data but also limb bone measurements. The Sakhalin Okhotsk people show a close affinity in morphology with peoples in the northern Sakhalin and Amur Basin and differ from the Ainu in Hokkaido and Sakhalin.

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To understand the derivation of modern Japanese, tooth crown affinities were evaluated among nine samples. Dental casts from two samples, Pusan and Hiroshima, were added to the materials from the Akita, Tanegashima, Tsushima, Okinawa, and central Taiwan samples of our previous study (Suzuki and Takahama, 1992) as well as those from prehistoric Japanese of the Jomon and Yayoi eras (Brace and Nagai, 1982). Cluster analysis (Ward method) was carried out on the mesiodistal tooth crown diameters of these samples. The relationships among the nine samples resulting from the principal coordinate analysis based on the Mahalanobis' distances were also examined by plotting them on the Euclidean coordinate system and discussed. It was found that the samples were divided into two groups: one group consisted of the Tanegashima, Taiwan, and Jomon samples, and the other consisted of the Tsushima, Hiroshima, Pusan, and Doigahama-Yayoi samples. The result on the Pusan, Tsushima, Hiroshima, and Doigahama-Yayoi samples may support a tentative theory that the people with the Yayoi culture, the major ancestors of the modern Japanese, resulted from a migration from the Korean peninsula to the Kinai area through the Tsushima Island.

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The hypothesis was tested that the observed clines of gene frequencies in the main islands of Japan (Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu) were produced by a two-phase episode of immigration and admixture. In the first phase, an intrusive population occupies the western part of the main islands, causing a temporary discontinuity in the geographical distribution of the gene frequency at each locus. In the second phase, gradual admixture occurs by the random migration of both immigrants and indigenes, leading to the formation of a cline. Under the assumption that the population density is uniform in space at all times, the process is modelled mathematically as a simple diffusion on a finite linear habitat with reflecting boundaries. The discontinuous gene frequency distribution is approximated by a step function. Maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the model are obtained by Marquardt's method, and the chisquare statistic is used to test goodness-of-fit. The model does not give a satisfactory fit at the ABO blood group locus. It does give an acceptable fit at the group-specific component and haptoglobin loci, whether the model fitting is done at each locus separately, or at both loci simultaneously. Moreover, the maximum likelihood estimates of the elapsed time since beginning of admixture are compatible with the proposal that the immigrants arrived at the end of the Jomon period. On the other hand, the maximum likelihood estimates of the eastern limit of initial occupation appear to be too large.

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A survey made in the centres of “Protection Maternelle et Infantile” in France has given successive anthropometric measurements, from the birth to 60 months, of 400 Vietnamese infants born and living in France. At six months, the body mass index (W/H²) becomes lower for the Vietnamese infants than that for the French children, with a more balanced feeding.

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The perspective error in two-dimensional motion analysis based on film and/or video images was theoretically quantified, and the practical effects of the error on the accuracy in two-dimensional kinematic variables were investigated using the data of sprint running. The equations proposed in the present study may be useful for estimating the amount of perspective error and determining appropriate camera distance in two-dimensional motion analysis. In practical analysis of human movement, the error affects translational and rotational kinematics of limb segments. If the optical axis of the camera is perpendicular to the calibration plane and the intersection of the axis and plane can be detected, the effects of perspective error on translational kinematics for the limb segments can be reduced to a certain extent.

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