A dermatoglyphic analysis of four Indian populations in British Columbia
Date
1971
Authors
Haggarty, James C.
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Abstract
This thesis comprises a dermatoglyphic study of four linguistic samples from indigenous Northwest Coast populations . A purpose of the study was to contribute to an understanding of the dermatoglyphic (biological) relationships that exist between each sample . A further purpose was to examine the usefulness of linguistic classification as operational units for biological investigation.
A total of 323 individual sets of prints have been analyzed; 174 from the collection of prints belonging to the Department of Pediatrics, Univesity of British Columbia, and 149 obtained at the Anaham Reserve in central British Columbia during the month of October 1969. The collection was assembled to form four linguistic samples of the following sizes: Nootka 7l , Kwakiutl 65, Tsimshian 35 , and Athapaskan 149.
The analysis of finger, palmar, and plantar dermatoglyphic data by both quantitative and qualitative measures showed that, in general, for males and females, the Nootka were most divergent from the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian samples while the Athapaskan sample was almost consistently intermediate between these two extremes. Further, the results clearly indicate that linguistic samples are only of limited use as operational units in physical anthropological studies.