Sexual dimorphism in human skulls. A comparison of sexual dimorphism in different populations

Application and comparison of sex discriminant functions in different populations led to the conclusion that a certain combination and weighting of a few sex dimorphism variables (in this study we only used craniometric variables) can give a good discrimination between male and female individuals, independent of the racial group to which this function is applied. In our study, the sex-discriminatory power of five discriminant functions which were based on different ordination and selection procedures (e.g. professional knowledge, stepwise discriminant analysis, literature) of the cranial variables is compared. These discriminant functions were applied to three different data sets, the first being skull measurements from an Amsterdam series (Europids), the second skull measurements of a Zulu series (Negrids) and the third skull measurements of a Japan series (Mongolids). Our decision as to whether a function is a good or less good sex-discriminating function is determined by the Dt values (these values give an idea about the discriminatory value of the discriminant function when applied to a new test sample), the number of variables necessary to obtain this Dt and the location of the sectioning point (i.e. comparison between the estimation of the sectioning point and the ”real” sectioning point). These discriminant functions were compared withGiles Elliot's (1962, 1963) “race-independent” sex function.