Abstract: 26 cranial features of Holocene African and Chinese skulls were observed and analyzed. Our results show that even though some feature seem to characterize African humans, the expression patterns of most cranial features used in present study resemble those of East Asian humans very much, which may suggest the similar trends of the characteristics of modern humans. We also found that more variations of cranial features occur in African human skulls than those of Chinese. The authors believe that these differences between African and Chinese indicate the physical characteristics of African hu- mans have wider variation ranges than those of East Asian populations. According to the high frequen- cies of some East Asian, European and Australian cranial features in African humans found in present study, the authors proposed some problems to be solved in future studies.

Key words: Cranial features; Modern human origins; African; China