Department of Medical Genetics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
PLoS One. 2010 Jan 20;5(1):e8783. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008783.
Completion of a survey of dermatoglyphic variables for all ethnic groups in an ethnically diverse country like China is a huge research project, and an achievement that anthropological and dermatoglyphic scholars in the country could once only dream of. However, through the endeavors of scientists in China over the last 30 years, the dream has become reality. This paper reports the results of a comprehensive analysis of dermatoglyphics from all ethnic groups in China. Using cluster analysis and principal component analysis of dermatoglyphics, it has been found that Chinese populations can be generally divided into a southern group and a northern group. Furthermore, there has been considerable debate about the origins of many Chinese populations and about proper assignment of these peoples to larger ethnic groups. In this paper, we suggest that dermatoglyphic data can inform these debates by helping to classify a Chinese population as a northern or southern group, using selected reference populations and quantitative methods. This study is the first to assemble and investigate dermatoglyphics from all 56 Chinese ethnic groups. It is fortunate that data on population dermatoglyphics, a field of physical anthropology, have now been collected for all 56 Chinese ethnic groups, because intermarriage between individuals from different Chinese ethnic groups occurs more frequently in recent times, making population dermatoglyphic research an ever more challenging field of inquiry.
完成像中国这样的多民族国家所有族群的皮纹变量调查是一个庞大的研究项目，也是该国人类学和皮纹学者曾经梦寐以求的成就。然而，通过中国科学家在过去 30 年中的努力，这一梦想已经成为现实。本文报告了对中国所有族群皮纹的综合分析结果。通过皮纹的聚类分析和主成分分析，发现中国人群一般可以分为南方群体和北方群体。此外，关于许多中国人群的起源以及将这些民族正确分配到更大的民族群体的问题，一直存在相当大的争议。在本文中，我们建议皮纹数据可以通过使用选定的参考人群和定量方法，将皮纹数据作为一种分类方法，帮助将中国人群分为北方或南方群体，从而为这些争论提供信息。本研究首次对中国 56 个民族的皮纹进行了收集和研究。幸运的是，由于近年来不同民族的个体之间通婚更加频繁，人口皮纹学这一人类学领域的数据已经收集到了中国的 56 个民族，这使得人口皮纹学研究成为一个更具挑战性的研究领域。
