Effects of forced running exercise on serial cross-sectional properties along the diaphysis of femur were studied in growing male rats. From 30 to 110 days of age, exercise group was trained to run for 20 minutes a day at a maximum speed of about 40m/min on a newly devised treadmill which seemed to burden the rat with minimal stresses. The cross-sectional properties varied with characteristic patterns along the femoral diaphysis from proximal to distal. The forced running exercise had the following effects on the cross-sectional properties in the proximal half of the femoral diaphysis; internal rotation of the principal axis, i. e. the direction of the maximum area moment of inertia; flattening of the cross-section so that its diameter was greater along the principal axis; increase in the cross-sectional area, area moment of inertia, and polar moment of inertia, which indicatesstrength of the femoral diaphysis against axial, bending, and torsional load, respectively.

View full abstract

Anatomical and developmental characteristics of the supraorbital foramen and hypoglossal canal bridging were reviewed. Scoring of the foramen on the supraorbital margin opening to the orbital cavity as the supraorbital foramen was recommended in order to simplify the criterion for trait judgement. The two traits were classified in the hyperostotic category on the basis of their developmental nature. Incidence data of the two traits were compared among 38 Mongoloid, 37 Caucasoid, 4 Negroid, and 13 Oceanian samples. It was confirmed that the occurrence of supraorbital foramen is more frequent in Mongoloids than in Caucasoids, Australian Aborigines, and Negroids, while that of hypoglossal canal bridging is less frequent in Australian Aborigines, Negroids, and Asian Mongoloids than in Caucasoids and North American Mongoloids. The combination of incidences of the two variant traits appeared to be effective in discriminating the major racial varieties of man. Incidence data for Japanese pre- and protohistoric samples indicated that the Yayoi series of Doigahama type as well as those of the Kof un have a close resemblance to the modern Japanese samples and little resemblance to the Jomon series. From these results, it was inferred that the Jomon genetic contribution to the modern Japanese is slight and the modern Japanese consist mainly of the descendants of neo-Mongoloid immigrants from the Asian continent.

View full abstract

Seven metric and six nonmetric traits have been used to describe and discriminate mandibular characteristics of six non-tribal populations of India. Analyses of the six samples indicate that while metric traits possess a slightly better discriminating power than nonmetric traits in differentiating populations in the present investigation, both kinds of traits reveal a similar pattern of interpopulation differences. It is felt that both metric and nonmetric traits should be utilized, whenever possible, to derive maximum information in population studies.

View full abstract

Sex differences of physical traits can be regarded as population characteristics, and the analysis of their interpopulation vari ation is relevant to phylogenetic studies as well as to the evaluation of factors operative on sex differences. Since interpopulation variations of sex differences tend to be small, attention should be paid to distinguish them from sampling errors. The author proposed a multivariate statistical method for the significance test and description of the interpopulation variation of sex differences. The method is essentially a factorial discriminant analysis, but allows the inequality of sample sizes and the use of the basic statistics commonly reported in anthropological works. By this method, the sex differences of the total of 22 measurements of humerus, radius, ulna, femur, and tibia were compared among the Modern Japanese consisting of five regional populations, the prehistoric Yayoi (Doigahama), Earliest/Early Jomon, Late/Latest Jomon, the modern Sakhalin Ainu, Koreans, and Indians with reference to "size" and "shape".
The interpopulation variation of sex differences was statistically highly significant in multivariate comparison while it was non-significant for most of the variables in univariate comparison. And the most part of the multivariate interpopulation variation of sex differences was attributed to "shape".
No statistically significant difference was detected between the sex difference of Indians and that of Modern Japanese. This raises the possibility of cross-racial application of the common discriminant function coefficients to the sex determination from long bone measurements. But its use in the field of forensic anthropology requires some restrictions since the sex difference of Modern Japanese exhibited a statistically significant geographic variation.
The total interpopulation variation is expressed by the sum of two terms; the sexcommon term or the interpopulation variation common for both sexes and the sex difference term or the interpopulation variation of the male mean minus female mean. A Parallelism was found for the interpopulation relationships between these two kinds of variations. The humeral robustness was greater in Late/Latest Jomon than in Earliest/Early Jomon for both terms of interpopulation variation, in other words, the humeri of the later Jomon periods were more robust than those of the earlier periods, and the difference was greater for males. This may be interpreted by some ecological change in the subsistence of the Jomon people. Sakhalin Ainu shared some traits with Jomon populations, but showed a resemblance to Koreans and Modern Japanese. A possible interpretation for this is to assume the existence of common NeoMongoloid genes for these populations introduced independently through two different routes from the Asian continent. The Doigahama population of the Yayoi period showed a close similarity to Koreans for both terms of interpopulation variation. This seems to reflect the genetic affinity between them.

View full abstract

An examination of the vertebrae of the early recent Japanese (in the 17th century) from Hitotsubashi Metropolitan High School Site, Tokyo, revealed that wedge-shaped vertebral bodies were sometimes found at the lower thoracic and upper lumbar, especially at the lowermost thoracic and uppermost lumbar, in males. The wedging of the vertebral bodies was, however, rarely present at those in females. The wedge-shaped vertebrae in question would commonly accompany a fixed thoraco-lumbar kyphosis in the living body, and possibly were caused by it. Such a thoraco-lumbar kyphosis might be a very common, localized form of adolescent kyphosis or SCHEUERMANN's disease. It was suggested that the wedging of the vertebrae in males were probably caused by resting and working in the cross-legged sitting or sartorial posture, which was commonly assumed only by males in the recent Japan. A few occurrence of the wedging in females would be due to some postural defects, such as sway back and round back.

View full abstract

Human skeletal remains from the late-Edo period (18-19c.) were excavated from Tenpukuji site, Fukuoka city in 1983-1984. In northern Kyushu and Yamaguchi Prefecture, from which many important human skeletal remains have been found, the Tenpukuji materials are to date the only remains of Edo-era. Of the 200 human skeletons excavated at this site, 38 well preserved materials in each sex were selected for study. In a comparative analysis of the materials with other representative populations, the main findings are as follows:
Neurocranium : Length-breadth indices of the vault are 76.0 for males and 76.5 for females (mesocranic). They are one of the most dolichocephalic among the Edo-era populations, except for Tsubue and Kuwashima. In basio-bregmatic height and the indices (hypsi- and acrocranic), there is no evident difference among the medieval (Yoshimohama), recent (Tenpukuji) and modern populations from this region.
Facial skeleton : The facial skeleton as a whole is large and particularly high, except for measurements of the orbit. For example, upper facial height reaches 74.5 mm in males and 68.8 mm in females and KOLLMANN'Supper facial indices are 54.4 in males and 54.3 in females (mesenic). The nasal bridge shows a relatively sharp inflection in comparison with findings in the medieval and modern populations who lived in this prefecture. Muscle attachment areas are relatively well developed.
Reconstructed stature, calculated by PEARSON'S method, are 159.4cm for males and 146.5cm for females. They are similar to those seen in the Yoshimohama medieval population, but are apparently lower than the average statures of the Yayoi population (3c. B. 0.-A. D. 3c.) and Kofun population (4c.-7c. A. D.) from this prefecture.
In general, our findings in Tenpukuji show characteristics relatively similar to the Edoera populations excavated from Tokyo and Osaka, though they do exhibit regional characteristics concerning the dolichocephalic cranium. Furthermore, the characteristics in features of the nasal root and facial size and proportions show discontinuous changes in the course of time from medieval to modern periods. The various possibilities seemingly related to this findings, for example, so-called "urbanizationstrauma", gracilization, heterosis effect and so on, were discussed.

View full abstract

This paper describes a human skeletal remain from the Himrin basin of Iraq affected by tumor-like lesions localized in the skull, mandible, scapulae, humeri, ribs, sternum, vertebrae including sacrum, hip bones, and femora.
After anthropological, anatomical, and roentgenological observations and comparison with various diseases resulting in osteolytic destructive lesion with characteristic features, the authors conclude that a slow-growing benign tumor involved the skeleton because of the age at death, the multifocal osteolytic lesions in a number of the bones and their distribution, the appearances and size of the lesions, and the slight sclerotic reaction.
Not only this paper is the first paleopathological description on the disease in Iraq, but also the case is rare and valuable to the paleopathological field.

View full abstract

On the basis of the finger prints of 213, 138 Japanese females collected by the research group of Japanese dermatoglyphics from 169 sites covering almost all Japan during 1952 to 1955, local variations and a geographical cline of Japanese were ascertained. The percentile frequencies of four pattern types, B, S, ODS and OW, according to KOIKE (1949), and the value of pattern intensity were used in the present study. Although a finegeo graphical cline is not necessarily observed in the finger prints of Japanese females, it is possibly found as follows; two geographical areas are divided, namely 1) the Tohoku and Ura-Nippon (the Japan Sea Coast) and 2) the Kyushu, Setouchi (the Inland Sea Coast) and Kinki districts. The former shows a greater frequency of types B and ODS and a lesser one of type OW than the latter. The Ainu is more closely related to the nearest, Tohoku district.

View full abstract

The polymorphism of α₂HS-glycoprotein (α₂HS system) was stu diedin a total of 95 unrelated Egyptian individuals living in Tanta city, Gharbiya province, Nile Delta of Egypt, using isoelectric focusing in thin-layer polyacrylamide gel and immunofixation. Three common phenotypes, α₂HS¹, 2-1 and 2 were demonstrated and the estimated allele frequencies were α₂HS¹=0.86 and α₂HS²=0.14.

View full abstract