Sinodonty and Sundadonty

In anthropology, Sinodonty and Sundadonty are two patterns of features widely found in the dentitions of different populations in East Asia. These two patterns were identified by anthropologist Christy G. Turner II as being within the greater 'Mongoloid dental complex'. Sundadonty is regarded as having a more generalised, proto-Mongoloid morphology and having a longer ancestry than its offspring, Sinodonty. In anthropology, Sinodonty and Sundadonty are two patterns of features widely found in the dentitions of different populations in East Asia. These two patterns were identified by anthropologist Christy G. Turner II as being within the greater 'Mongoloid dental complex'. Sundadonty is regarded as having a more generalised, proto-Mongoloid morphology and having a longer ancestry than its offspring, Sinodonty. The combining forms Sino- and Sunda- refer to China and Sundaland, respectively, while -dont refers to teeth. Tsunehiko Hanihara (1993) believed that the dental features of Aboriginal Australians have the characteristic of high frequencies of 'evolutionarily conservative characteristics,' which is called the 'proto-sundadont' pattern. C.G Turner II shows with his analysis of 2016 that sundadonty is the proto-Mongolid dental morphology and is not connected to the Australoid dental morphology. He also shows that sinodonty is predominant in Native Americans. Analysis on the Sinodonty and Sundadonty of New world groups by G.R. Sott et al. (2016) shows the distinction between East Asians and Southeast Asians is not nearly as dramatic as the difference between all Asians and all New World groups. Other researchers like Stojanowski et al., 2013;Stojanowski and Johnson, (2015) suggest New World groups may be neither Sinodont nor Sundadont and in most regards, could be viewed as super-Sinodont. A clear dental morphology not only ties New World groups to Asians, particularly northeast Asians, but it also exhibits a pattern largely consistent with the Beringian Standstill model (BSM) based on a Sinodont source population. Turner defined the Sinodont and Sundadont dental complexes in contrast to a broader Mongoloid dental complex. Hanihara defined the Mongoloid dental complex in 1966. In 1984, Turner separated the Mongoloid dental complex into the Sinodont and Sundadont dental complexes. Ryuta Hamada, Shintaro Kondo and Eizo Wakatsuki (1997) said that, based on dental traits, Mongoloids are separated into sinodonts and sundadonts, which is supported by Christy G. Turner II (1989). Turner found the Sundadont pattern in the skeletal remains of Jōmon people of Japan, and in living populations of Taiwanese aborigines, Filipinos, Indonesians, Borneans, and Malaysians. In 1996, Rebecca Haydenblit of the Hominid Evolutionary Biology Research Group at Cambridge University did a study on the dentition of four pre-Columbian Mesoamerican populations and compared their data to 'other Mongoloid populations'. She found that 'Tlatilco', 'Cuicuilco', 'Monte Albán' and 'Cholula' populations followed an overall 'Sundadont' dental pattern 'characteristic of Southeast Asia' rather than a 'Sinodont' dental pattern 'characteristic of Northeast Asia'.