Statures of Prehistoric Humans from Fossil Femora and Humeri

The author has recently discovered six femoral and three humeral fossil fragments of the Stone Age humans from Central Narmada valley. The present study deals with the stature estimations of those prehistoric men by using the segment ratios and the obtained lengths of the fossil femora and the Humeri. The study is significant in forensic studies as well as in palaeoanthropology for understanding the hitherto unknown statures of prehistoric men and their biological adaptations and evolution in South Asia. The results show that very short-statured early humans inhabited the central Narmada valley between 300-70 Kya. This, couple with previous studies suggest that the short-bodied Narmada hominins constituted the ancestral stock for the subsequent similar late Pleistocene populations of South Asia, like the Munda and the pygmy of Andaman Islands, supported by the recent genomic studies that a common ancestor lived on Indian mainland around 60,000 years B.P., and these populations got differentiated about 25,000 years ago.