Dental Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dental, including details on implants, health, hygiene, cosmetic, dentistry.

Population affinities of African Colombians to Sub-Saharan Africans based on dental morphology.

Delgado-Burbano ME

Departamento de Antropología, Universidad del Cauca, Grupo de Investigación Antropos, Oficina 313, Museo de Historia Natural-Vicerrectoria de Investigaciones, Universidad del Cauca, Popayán, Colombia.

The Atlantic slave trade moved more than 13 million Africans to American lands between the 15th and 19th centuries. Previous historical, linguistic, and social-cultural studies suggested a Western-Central Bantu African origin for the Colombian slaves; however, their precise provenance remains unclear. The present study investigates the variation of the epigenetic dental traits in the deciduous and permanent dentition and phenotypic affinities of a contemporary Afro-Colombian community (n=178) in an attempt to identify their possible African ancestors. The results of a multivariate analysis of principal components show that Afro-descendents from Guapi have strong phenotypic relationships with several Bantu-speakers groups of Western and Western-Central Africa (Sub-Saharan region), specifically from Gabon, Congo, Pygmies, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo and Benin. In concordance with recent mtDNA studies, this research suggests a distant but important relationship between Afro-Colombians and Eastern and South-Eastern African populations. This analysis also shows a marked dental divergence with North African samples. The dental information is not very different from the cultural, linguistic and historic data; however, it is more in agreement with studies based on molecular variation. In addition, this study reveals that African-Americans from North America, Central America-Caribbean and South America have high biological variation essentially identical to their several Sub-Saharan sources. Although a microevolutionary model, based on differential rates of gene flow with Native American and European-American groups and little selective pressures influence, better explains the phenotypic variation observed, more African-American dental samples must be analyzed from a regional perspective.

Published 13 August 2007 in Homo.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Dental Research Today. All Rights Reserved.