山顶洞人与现代华北人头骨非测量性特征比较及中国更新世晚期人类演化的一些问题

The Comparisons of Cranial Non-metric Features between Upper Cave Skulls and Modern North Chinese Populations, and Late Pleistocene Human Evolution in China

山顶洞人化石是迄今在东亚地区发现的数量最为丰富、保存状态最为完好的更新世晚期人类化石。多年来,山顶洞人作为东亚地区更新世晚期人类的代表,在研究东亚地区现代蒙古人种及美洲印第安人起源方面发挥着重要作用。随着对现代人起源与演化研究的深入,学术界对更新世晚期人类演化及现代人群形成过程的许多细节及演化机制予以了越来越多的注意,提出了现代人群出现时间及现代人群分化时间的概念。一些研究对山顶洞人的演化程度及其在东亚地区现代人群形成上的作用也提出了不同看法。为了深入探讨这些问题,本文对12项颅骨非测量特征在山顶洞人与现代中国人的表现情况进行了对比研究。发现有8项特征在山顶洞人与现代中国人之间具有不同的表现,作者认为山顶洞人在颅骨特征表现上较现代中国人具有更多的原始性。在此基础上,作者就更新世晚期人群内部变异、现代人群特征标准等问题进行了讨论。

The human remains recovered from Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian are the richest and best preserved late Pleistocene human fossils ever found in east Asia. For decades, as the representative of the late Pleistocene human in east Asia, the Upper Cave skulls have played an important role in research on the origins of modem Mongoloids and American Indians. Recently, more attention has been paid to the details and mechanisms for late Pleistocene human evolution and the formation of modem human populations. Both the origin and diversification of modem humans have been stressed in research. Some studies further the debates on the evolutionary position of Upper Cave Man and this group＇s role in the formation of modem human populations in east Asia. To further explore these problems, we examined and compared 12 non-metric features on three Upper Cave skulls and modem Chinese unearthed from two archaeological sites in North China. Our results indicate that 8 features are expressed differently between Upper Cave Man and modem Chinese. We believe that more primitive characteristics define Upper Cave Man when compared to modem Chinese populations. These findings and some problems on late Pleistocene human evolution including intra-group variation and the standard for modem human populations, are discussed.