Recently published craniometric and genetic studies indicate a predominantly indigenous ancestry of Indian populations. We address this issue with a fuller coverage of Indian craniometrics than any done before. We analyse metrical variability within Indian series, Indians’ sexual dimorphism, differences between northern and southern Indians, index-based differences of Indian males from other series, and Indians’ multivariate affinities. The relationship between a variable’s magnitude and its variability is log-linear. This relationship is strengthened by excluding cranial fractions and series with a sample size less than 30. Male crania are typically larger than female crania, but there are also shape differences. Northern Indians differ from southern Indians in various features including narrower orbits and less pronounced medial protrusion of the orbits. Indians resemble Veddas in having small crania and similar cranial shape. Indians’ wider geographic affinities lie with “Caucasoid” populations to the northwest, particularly affecting northern Indians. The latter finding is confirmed from shape-based Mahalanobis-D distances calculated for the best sampled male and female series. Demonstration of a distinctive South Asian craniometric profile and the intermediate status of northern Indians between southern Indians and populations northwest of India confirm the predominantly indigenous ancestry of northern and especially southern Indians. 1. Introduction This paper analyses the metrical variability of human crania within the Indian subcontinent and uses the results to inform a univariate, bivariate, and multivariate comparison of Indian and other crania. India’s importance for understanding anatomically modern human origins is widely recognised: India has the highest genetic diversity of any continental region after Africa [1] and is generally regarded as the major dispersal centre for Homo sapiens following our exodus from Africa [2]. Yet India has been comparatively neglected in human craniometric studies, for instance, in being excluded from the global survey of modern human crania undertaken by Howells [3]. Studies that have included Indian crania have been restricted to specimens held in overseas collections [4–10]. In addition, most of these studies have been based on a limited set of measurements, and none of them combine a presentation of descriptive statistics with a large-scale multivariate analysis of the data. The motivation of our paper is to explain Indians’ craniometric affinities in the context of a thoroughgoing statistical description
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