A morphometric study of the Thingbu-pa and population comparison with neighbouring Monpa tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, India

In the present study an attempt has been made to examine the morphometric characteristics of the adult males of the Thinbu-pa and the nature and extent of morphometric variation among four neighbouring Monpa groups of Arunachal Pradesh (India), namely the Panchen-pa, Dirang Monpa, Tawang Monpa and Kalaktang Monpa. For the sake of investigation altogether 14 anthropometric measurements (11 pertaining to head and face and 3 on the body as a whole) have been taken and 5 indices have been calculated. To obtain the distance values the methods of Penrose (1947, 1954) and El-Najjar (1978) have been followed. It is observed that the Thingbu-pa maintain far distance with the four neighbouring Monpa groups as well as the Panchen-pa also maintain far distance with the other four groups, while the Dirang Monpa, Tawang Monpa and Kalaktang Monpa maintain close distance among each other.