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W W Howells

Publications and source records attributed to W W Howells.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1976

Physical variation and history in Melanesia and Australia.

Local biological variation is marked in Melanesia. Some of it may result from gene flow from Micronesia, but the essential variation appears to result from isolation due to social fragmentation, and to genetic drift in place. In different regions, the variation may correspond well with language relationships, and probably constitutes differentiation which has been preserved over a considerable period, especially since the arrival of horticulture and development of village farming. However, none of this patterning suggests distinct waves of migration into Melanesia. Variation among Australian aboriginal groups is smaller, though far from absent. It may reflect a hunting culture together with social customs allowing more intertribal marriage than is typical of Melanesia. While phenotypically Australians and Melanesias differ, cranially they are closely allied, as against other major human groups. It is suggested that the genetic and phenotypic variety is old, that it existed in the previous home of the Australo-Melanesians (Old Melanesia, comprising present Indonesia and the Phillipines) at least back to 40,000 years ago, and that much of the variation in Melanesia and Australia, including their differences, results from the sampling process involved when different groups out of the original populations made early corssings of the water barriers from Old Melanesia.

Black People↗
PubMed1967

Hominid humeral fragment from early Pleistocene of northwestern Kenya.

The distal end of a hominoid humerus was recovered from early Pleistocene sediments in the Kanapoi drainage near the southern end of Lake Rudolf. Lava capping the sediments yielded a potassium/argon date of 2.5 million years. The fragment can be distinguished on inspection from gorilla and orangutan; discriminate analysis of humeri of Homo and Pan assigns it as hominid. From other evidence we consider it more likely to represent Australopithecus s.s. than Paranthropus.

Anatomy, Comparative↗
PubMed1966

Homo erectus.

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Anthropology↗