关键词: 南京1号人类头骨;Bodo人类头骨;“中心和边缘”假说

Abstract: A significant form to the geographical distribution of human variation towards the end of the Early Pleistocene was noted by Alan Thorne and explained by his  Center and Edge hypothesis in 1977. He recognized that populations sampled at the peripheries of the human range were more homogeneous than samples from the center, or eastern Africa. Some of the homogeneous features at the peripheries could be linked to common characteristics found in populations from the same area today. In other words, features that marked modern geographical variation have been found to appear in initial immigrants living at peripheries.
The Thorne hypothesis predicts an opposite pattern of the late appearance of regional features at the center of the range and their early appearance in Homo erectus populations at geographic or ecological peripheries.
Two crania Bodo and Nanjing 1 both dating approximately 0
6Ma BP are from a center and a periphery location, respectively. Both of these crania preserve comparable facial skeletons, and for these reasons, the Bodo and Nanjing 1 are ideal for testing the  Center and Edge hypothesis.
A comparison of Bodo and Nanjing 1 facial measurements indicates the following results. 1) The anatomical differences between Bodo and Nanjing 1 are more marked than those between center and periphery modern populations. This result suggests that as early as 0
6Ma BP, fossil populations seemed to show more geographical variation than modern populations. 2) In facial measurements, Nanjing 1 is similar to modern population of East Asia, suggesting that at the periphery, some of features that marked modern geographic variation appear in Homo erectus and were maintained for very long time periods. However, at the center region, the metric facial features of Bodo were not distinctly linked to features of modern population from the same area today. This comparison confirms the prediction of the  Center and Edge hypothesis.

Key words: Bodo; Nanjing 1; Human cranium; Center and edge hypothesis