Cribra orbitalia is an osteological lesion that may be closely related to anemia owing to iron deficiency,and also to living environment and socio-economic factors.Many foreign studies have indicated that the incidence of this disease increased during the transition from hunting-and-gathering to farming societies due to changes in the subsistence pattern and increasing dependence on agriculture.The present paper makes an introduction to paleopathological research on ancient Chinese skeletal material,and discusses the relationship between disease prevalence and its various factors,such as those in sex,age,time period,geographic location and subsistence pattern.
Based on the nonmeasured morphological features of their skulls, the present papermakes a racio-typological comparative study of the Qinghai Lijiashan people of the Kayue culture andpopulations in the surrounding areas. The results show that morphologically the Lijianshan people areclose to modern northern groups such as the Evenki, Mongolians, North Chinese, Japanese and Buryatsand differ from the Neolithic populations in Qinghai. There is hardly a hereditary relationship betweenthe Neolithic Qinghai populations and the Lijiashan people with the general character of primitive Mongoloids, which indicates their similarity to the modern East Tibetans. The retention of such primitivemorphological character is believed to have possibly been the result of the “genetic drift” appearing whenhuman societies lived in relative isolation.
