AMERICAL JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 82:341-360 (1990) A Nonracial Craniofacial Perspective on Human Variation: A(ustralia) to Z(uni) C. LORING BRACE AND KEVIN D. HUNT Museum o Anthropology, University of Michi an, Ann Arbor, Michigan Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138 (K.D.H.) 48109 (C. L .B.); Department of Anthropology, flarvard University, KEY WORDS Dental measurements, Race, C scores ABSTRACT Dental and craniofacial measurements were collected for 57 samples from Asia, the Pacific, the aboriginal western hemisphere, and Europe. The craniofacial dimensions include many that are not obviously under the control of specific selective forces. Similar configurations for these in different samples should yield indications of recency of common ancestry according to the logic expressed by Darwin and evident in the relationships indicated by nuclear DNA comparisons. Dental dimensions, however, vary according to the length of time that different intensities in selective forces have been in operation. The craniofacial measurements were transformed into C scores and used to generate Euclidean distance dendrograms. When all the material was used to generate a single dendrogram, the European and Amerindian samples sorted into two regionally identifiable clusters, and the Asian and Pacific material sorted into the three clusters identified in separate previous studies: a Mainland Asian cluster, a Jomon-Pacific cluster and an Australo-Melanesian cluster. Since these clusters are based on variation in traits that are basically nonadaptive in nature, no hierarchical ranking is possible. The clusters simply reflect degree of relationship. This technique holds forth the promise of producing a nonracial assessment of the relation- ships of all the peoples of the world, past and present. There is a spectrum of variation in what is confusingly labeled “anatomically modern” Homo sapiens that is rarely taken into ac- count in ap raisals of human evolution in general an 8 individual fossil specimens in articular. In tooth size alone, the difference getween the average condition in Australia and that in Euro e (or China) would satisfy ence (Gingerich, 1974,1979,1980; Gingerich and Schoeninger, 19791, yet there is obvi- ously no reproductive barrier between Aus- tralians and anybody else in the world. All living human beings are demonstrabl mem- are average visible differences between the various geogra hically situated populations of the world. #he spectrum of variation is there, however, and it should be possible to deal with it in such a fashion that we can determine how much of it is due to differ- ences in the intensity of s ecific selective of time since the groups being compared the criterion use a to indicate specific differ- bers of the same species even thoug E there forces and how much of it is B ue to the length shared a common ancestor. There is almost certainly some ethnocentrism inherent in viewing the s ectrum as running from Eu- rope to Austrayia, but this quite literally does extend from one geographical extreme of the earth to the other, and, dentally at least, the Australian aborigines can legitimately stand for a morphological extreme in contempo- rary H. sapiens and Europeans come quite close to representing their antithesis (Brace, 1980; Brace et al., in press b). The aboriginal inhabitants of Australia have been a continuing source of fascina- tion for anthropologists and the general public alike ever since they were first en- countered by itinerant Europeans almost 400 years ago. With the addition of an evolu- tionary perspective developed by Charles Darwin after his visit there a century and a half ago, that fascination invested them with more than just the status of benighted sav- agery that had previously prevailed. To be Received June 23, accepted July 3,1989. @ 1990 WILEY-LISS, INC.