Dental wear patterns in early modern humans from Skhul and Qafzeh: A response to Luca Fiorenza and Ottmar Kullmer

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Rachel Sarig^a ; ^{sarigrac@post.tau.ac.il" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Anne-marie Tillier^b
• 刊名：HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：February 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：67
• 期：1
• 页码：85-87
• 全文大小：278 K

文摘

It is common knowledge, that in archaic populations teeth could have been used as tools, such behavior can be studied by evaluating occlusal attrition patterns. Fiorenza and Kullmer suggested a digital approach to distinguish between masticatory and non-masticatory wear facets in archaic and modern populations. In their last response to our letter (Fiorenza and Kullmer, 2015), they used comparative modern samples to demonstrate that described para-facets in Skhul and Qafzeh individuals could not have been produced by dental occlusal anomalies and also since they claimed that more than 50% of the sample analyzed in their study are characterized by para-facets, it is highly unlikely to be the result of dental pathologies. What the authors neglected to mention is that misalignment of teeth and/or malocclusion features in the Qafzeh specimens for example are present in 55.5% of the individuals, and therefore, malocclusions should be at least reconsidered as a possible cause for the para-facets formation. Also, dental cross-bite may involve functional shift and mandibular deflection and therefore, should also be considered as a possible cause for untypical occlusal contacts. In the current reply, we indicate the disadvantages of the occlusal fingerprints analysis in archaic fragmented samples.