Advancements in Forensic Anthropology

Seminar Session 1: The Concept of “Race”: A Forensic Anthropological Perspective on Human Variation

This is a first schematic lecture of the idea of racial groups in terms of the use in Forensic Anthropological reasoning.

The connection I have made from the seminar with my senior topic and E.Q. is:

• When we are looking at ancestral groups, we're looking at origins, or geographic origins of populations.
• Phenotypes and geographical expansion over a period of time suggest the formation of the skeletal remains.
• Anthropologically speaking we must assess race because we can estimate a person's ancestry to a specificity by visually seeing in the cranifacial region of the skull.
• Subdividing ethnic groups such as Hispanic like Puerto Rican and Cuban can contain African and European ancestry. Distinct cultures can be teased out and be assesses accordingly.
• Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid are the three types of main three areas that individuals are grouped into in schemes of intellectual ideas that were later discontinued due to negative connotations to skeletal conformity.
• When you are doing a forensic case it is good to know your demographics of your area if you know you have a heavy origin of incorporation in thought process.
• Ethno-historical regions such as Mexico contain biological factors that are indigenous, in Cuba you have Afro-European characteristics, whereas Honduras contain a different type of Native American and indigenous phenomenological, characteristically traits.
• Using geometric morphometrics you can look at the different populations and see a connection of distinct population relationships and the average distinctiveness between each cluster.
•  Mexico and Ecuador are very similar in morphological remains based on the travels between the coastal region in prehistoric and historic times.
• Amalgamations of different traits show that signs of protostylid vary through wideness based on geographical location in the magnitude of longitudinal base.
• Cranial landmarks contain complex sutures in Asian/Indigenous Ancestry of the South Americas by having wormian bones in the lower cranial asymmetrical vaults.
• In Asian countries, individuals have shovel-shaped incisors in their teeth.
• European/African individuals have spatulate-shaped incisors.
• European-Asians contain molar cusp pattern that is rather smooth.
• Africans have molar cusp pattern which are cronulate in the center.
• The complex sutures are actually a reflection of cultural feature by being biologically enduced. 
• European/Asians have no depression in their intersecting bragmatic area.
• Application of multivariate statistical methods to set defined linear distances in order to utilize cranial and postcranial material of the individual.