Cranio-Facial Morphology: Scenario in the Indian Sub-Continent and Future Plan for Study of Prehistoric Population of Thailand

By : Worrawit Boonthai, Subhash R. Walimbe

Page No: 1-17

Abstract
The pre-agricultural phase represents a brief span of a few thousand years between the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic stages and can be taken as a transitory phase from a food-gathering to a food-producing society. Widespread use of microliths and regular use of the bow and arrow indicate more intensive exploitation of natural resources of localised ecological niches, a subsistence based on hunting, gathering and fishing. On the other hand, the Neolithic, Metal age, and chronologically later sites which flourished in Thailand after c. 5000 BCE marks the beginning of sedentism. For these societies, subsistence was primarily based on agriculture, supplemented by stock-raising and hunting-fishing. The food economy was based on a combination of agricultural products and aquatic and land-animal food including both domestic and wild. The change from nomadic hunting-gathering to settled or semi-settled agriculture and/or pastoral lifeways was a major cultural change observed by human societies after the Neolithic transition. Human morphology especially cranio-facial, responded to this cultural change and the human skeletal remains recovered from this time frame are worth studying to examine bodily impact of the cultural change. In addition, higher morbidity in the settled early farming communities might also have contributed to the comparatively delicate built. This hypothesis has been successfully tested for sites in the Indian sub-continent. In future such parallel attempt is worth trying in Thailand. In the larger interest it would be beneficial to judge the importance of Thailand prehistoric skeletal features in prospective evolutionary studies by observing the microevolutionary trends in cranio-facial and post-cranial evolution that are accepted on global scale.    

Authors : 
Worrawit Boonthai
Laboratory of Physical Anthropology and Ethnology,
Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology Thammasat University,
Thailand

Subhash R. Walimbe
Department of Anthropology
University of Pune
Pune, India