Biological relationships derived from morphology of permanent teeth: recent evidence from prehistoric India.

Morphological variation in permanent teeth of prehistoric populations yields clues to their relationships with other prehistoric and living people. This paper documents variation in fourteen variants of the permanent tooth crown for the late Chalcolithic skeletal series from Inamgaon (1600-700 BC), an early farming settlement in western India. In comparison of the dental morphology profile at Inamgaon with American Indians and American Whites, the people of Inamgaon were found to more closely resemble American Whites. However, specific traits deviated in the direction of Amerindian dental trait frequencies, suggesting gene flow from north and east Asian populations. The dental morphology of the Inamgaon sample is similar to dental patterns characteristic of prehistoric Pakistani samples from Sarai Khola and Timargarha. However, Inamgaon and Timargarha exhibit somewhat more complex crown morphology than the Sarai Khola sample, suggesting a closer relationship between them and greater antiquity of residence in the subcontinent, in contrast to Sarai Khola sample.