The south east coast of Tamil Nadu was inhabited in pre-historic times mainly by Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids and Australoids rather than people similar to contemporary Tamils, a dental anthropological study has found.
A team of anthropologists came to the finding after studying more than 1,000 teeth from Adichanallur's pre-historic harbour site on the south-east coast of Tamil Nadu that dates back to 2,500 BC.
"Most of the teeth belonged to people of the four races and very few represented contemporary Tamil populations," a member of the study team Dr P Raghavan of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University at Canberra told PTI here today.
Optical microscope techniques were employed to study the teeth, which have shown the various growth stages, ageing and wearing processes, racial and ethnic and geographical affinities, dietary patterns, jaw mechanism, constitutional abnormalities of the jaws, pathological problems including the infections and inherited diseases, Dr Raghavan said.
The other members of the study team were Dr Gayatri Pathmanathan from the Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh and Dr T Satyamurthy, Director, Academy of Archaeological Sciences of Ancient India, Chennai.
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