. Bulletin of the Natural Histort Museum. Geology series. 40 HOLLIDAY AND CHURCHILL Body Linearity Relative to Mass Another body shape feature known to covary with climate is relative body linearity. In living populations, the weight: height, orponderal, index is used as a measure of this relationship (, Newman, 1961; Schreider, 1964, 1975; Eveleth, 1966; Hiernaux etal, 1975). This relationship is most easily quantified skeletally via relative femoral head size (, antero-posterior femoral head diameter/femoral bicondylar length x 100). This index should reflect relative linea
. Bulletin of the Natural Histort Museum. Geology series. 40 HOLLIDAY AND CHURCHILL Body Linearity Relative to Mass Another body shape feature known to covary with climate is relative body linearity. In living populations, the weight: height, orponderal, index is used as a measure of this relationship (, Newman, 1961; Schreider, 1964, 1975; Eveleth, 1966; Hiernaux etal, 1975). This relationship is most easily quantified skeletally via relative femoral head size (, antero-posterior femoral head diameter/femoral bicondylar length x 100). This index should reflect relative linearity, since the femoral head is highly correlated with body mass, while femoral length is highly correlated with stature. This skeletal index was (not surprisingly) found to vary significantly between males and females, with males possessing relatively larger femoral heads than females (two-tailed / test, p < ), and thus Gough's Cave 1 is compared only to other males for this trait. Table 6 reports the summary statistics for this trait among the comparative samples and the Cheddar specimen. Within the recent humans, there is a clear clinal pattern from Sub-Saharan Africa through North Africa and into Europe, such that the femoral head becomes relatively larger with increasing latitude (see also Ruff, 1994). With regard to fossil humans, note the extremely high indices exhibited by the male Neandertals. For this index, both Neandertal males (La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 and La Ferrassie 1) fall beyond the 99th percentile of recent European males (n = 134). The other European fossils, including the Mesolithic males and the Gough's Cave 1 specimen himself are virtually identical to recent Europeans for this trait. Only the EUP sample slightly deviates from the European pattern of relatively large femoral heads; they are more similar to recent North Africans in that their femoral heads are somewhat smaller (although not as small as those of the Sub-Saharan Africans). Body Brea
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