The morphometric relationship of Upper Cave 101 and 103 to modern Homo sapiens

Since the discovery of the Homo sapiens crania from the Upper Cave of Zhoukoudian in northern China (UC 101, UC 102, and UC 103), no clear consensus has arisen regarding their affinities with modern populations. We use linear craniofacial measurements to compare UC 101 and UC 103 to a worldwide sample of H. sapiens that includes Paleoamericans and Archaic Indians, and employ Mahalanobis distance analysis and associated unweighted, unrestricted canonical variate analysis for the comparisons. Analyses indicate that UC 101 has consistent affinities with Easter Island and European populations, whereas UC 103 has more tenuous similarities with Australo-Melanesian groups. Both fossils exhibit some similarities to certain Paleoamerican and Archaic Indian individuals, but rarely cluster together. Upper Cave 103 is more of an outlier to modern populations than is UC 101. The fossils are not representative of any group to which they have been compared, but may be part of the generalized population that was ancestral to Paleoamericans.