Hands of living San resemble those in palaeolithic stencils, not modern Europeans

Abstract

The hand metrics of Palaeolithic artists show a number of distinctive features that contrast with the low-variance hand metrics of modern Europeans, and with the majority of other modern humans. For example, the D2/D4 ratio in the Palaeolithic artists has a much greater spread of values and a greater degree of sexual dimorphism. We find that living San people, who represent the minority of modern humans that have high-variance genetics, also have a hand metric phenotype like the Palaeolithic artists, different from modern Europeans and other low-variance genetics modern humans. The increased variance and sexual dimorphism of the phenotypic D2/D4 ratio in the San measurements are in keeping with genetic evidence that the San represent one of the oldest human lineages with the greatest genetic diversity. The findings have the implication that the European Palaeolithic cave artists may have been derived from San-like migrants who brought an established artistic tradition from Africa to Europe, only to be replaced as a population, leaving no evidence of their genetics in modern Europeans, as observed for other Palaeolithic genes such as Oase 1.

Keywords:

• San
• hand metric
• phenotype
• rock art

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was undertaken with the approval of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy and the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, with ethical clearance from the University of the Witwatersrand (Clearance certificate no. M1404105). Dean Snow kindly provided his samples of raw measurements taken for the D2/D4 ratios from Palaeolithic and European humans. We especially thank Mr Leon Tsumgxao who provided essential services in recruiting subjects and acting as our interpreter and Dr Joao Paulo Coimbra for assistance during data collection.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (PRM, grant number IFR150115112130).