Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
J Anat. 2024 Nov;245(5):699-724. doi: 10.1111/joa.14115. Epub 2024 Aug 26.
Understanding the impact that climate had in shaping cranial variation is critical for inferring the evolutionary mechanisms that played a role in human diversification. Here, we provide a comprehensive study aiming to analyze the association between climate and cranial variation of high latitude populations living in temperate to cold environments of Asia, North America, and South America. For this, we compiled a large morphometric dataset (N = 2633), which was combined with climatic and genomic data. We tested the influence of climate on the facial skeleton, nasal protrusion, and cranial vault and through multiple statistical tests at two geographical scales: intracontinental and intercontinental. We show that populations living in cold areas share a morphological pattern characterized by an increase in nasal height, facial and orbital heights and widths, a decrease in facial protrusion, and larger, longer, and lower cranial vaults. There are also distinctive features; populations from north Asia present the tallest noses, largest faces, and cranial vaults of the whole sample. Nasal breadth dimensions show small values in Asians, large values in South Americans, and non-significant changes in arctic North America. The morphological pattern in populations living at high latitude may be the result of parallel adaptation, as supported by physiological, morphometric, ecological, and genetic explanations, while the differences in magnitude and phenotypic expression could be due to the diverse population histories, severity of climate, and cultural strategies. Overall, our study shows that climate is a relevant factor shaping modern human morphology and it should be considered when studying modern human evolution and diversification.
了解气候对颅骨变异的影响对于推断在人类多样化中起作用的进化机制至关重要。在这里，我们提供了一项全面的研究，旨在分析生活在亚洲、北美和南美温带至寒冷环境中的高纬度人群的气候与颅骨变异之间的关联。为此，我们编制了一个大型形态计量数据集（N=2633），并结合气候和基因组数据进行分析。我们测试了气候对面部骨骼、鼻部突出和颅穹窿的影响，并在两个地理尺度上进行了多种统计检验：洲际和大陆内。我们发现，生活在寒冷地区的人群具有相似的形态特征，表现为鼻高、面高和眶宽增加，面突度减小，颅穹窿增大、变长和变低。此外，还有一些独特的特征；北亚人群的鼻子最高，面部和颅穹窿最大。亚洲人的鼻宽尺寸较小，南美人的鼻宽尺寸较大，北极地区的变化不显著。生活在高纬度地区的人群的形态模式可能是平行适应的结果，这得到了生理学、形态计量学、生态学和遗传学解释的支持，而在幅度和表型表达上的差异可能是由于不同的人口历史、气候严重程度和文化策略所致。总的来说，我们的研究表明，气候是塑造现代人类形态的一个重要因素，在研究现代人类进化和多样化时应考虑到这一因素。
