Diversity in palmar pattern ridge counts among 12 Iranian populations

M. Sharif Kamali, Kailash C. Malhotra, Ranajit Chakraborty

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bilateral palmar prints of 604 male individuals from 12 Iranian groups, six Mongoloid and six Caucasoid, have been analyzed for palmar pattern ridge counts (PPRC). Highly significant variation has been observed in the size of the palmar patterns in all the configurational areas among the Iranian groups. The distance analysis based on PPRCs differentiated the Iranian Mongoloid from the Iranian Caucasoid groups into distinct clusters. The pattern of differentiation based on PPRCs explained the ethnohistoric relationships between the Iranian groups as well as between the Iranian and the 20 Caucasoid groups from India much better than the palmar pattern frequencies. The results of this study demonstrate the existence of variation in the size of the palmar patterns across different populations within an ethnic group, as well as that among different ethnic groups, and seems to be a better indicator of interpopulational diversity than the palmar pattern frequencies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)443-455
Number of pages13
JournalAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume70
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1986

Keywords

  • Cluster analysis
  • Coefficient of racial likeness
  • Dermatoglyphics

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