Bushman Canine

The Bushman Canine is an unusual dental feature that was first observed among South African Bushmen (San, Khoisan people) by Oranje in 1934, and Galloway in 1937. The name was coined by David R. Morris in 1975. Its more formal name is "Canine Mesial Ridge", as it is known in the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS).

Since it is found at very high frequencies among the San people, and they are presented as the most diverse, divergent, and "oldest" living branch of the original African modern humans, this trait could probably shed some light on the origin and dispersion of our Homo sapiens lineage.

The Bushman Canine

Canine teeth are located on both upper and lower jaws, on each side of the incisors. They have a fang-like appearance, and are the teeth with longest roots. They are designed to seize, tear, and cut food.

Canines with the Bushman canine trait have a different shape, they resemble the premolars. Below is a depiction of a Bushman canine; the image comes from Irish & Morris, 1996:

Prevalence in different populations

This trait is found among the Khoisan, the allegedly "oldest" and most diverse human group, who live in Southern Africa. But it is also found in other populations around the world.

The following image gives the values for African populations, those closest, geographically, from the San Bushmen people. It shows the frequencies of incisor shoveling (see my post on dental shoveling), and Bushman Canine in African populations, from Irish, 1998, Table III.

As you can see, within Africa, there is a large variability in frequency, even in areas close to each other like Western Africa where it varies from 0 in Congo, to 35% in Togo Benin, with 6 or 7% in Gambia and Ghana.

Its frequency, according to Bailey, 2006 and (Sakuma, 1991), in other populations is the following: 0% in early Africans, modern Europeans and modern Asians, Indians, Polynesians, and Native Americans. But it reached 20% in Homo erectus, 33.3% in Early Neanderthals, 57.1% in late Neanderthals, and 16.6% in Upper Paleolithic Europeans.

This makes me wonder if its presence in ancient Europeans stems from Neanderthal or Denisovan introgression, or possibly a trait that is ancestral, and inherited from erectus.

In other populations, Irish, 1998 found the following frequencies for Bushman Canine: Sub-Sahan Africa: 18.1% ; North Africa: 6.1%; Europe: 4.8%; Sundadonts: 2%; Sinodonts: 1.2%; Australia: 5%; Melanesia: 3.2%.

Irish, 2026 reports it at 0% frequencies in Pima (Native Americans), Lower Ob Khanty (West Siberia), Aleutians, Chuckchi (Siberia), Vietnam, Philippines, Australia (North), Nepal, Italy, and South Finland; and at low frequencies elsewhere: Kazakhistan 2.4%, Monglolia 3.7%, Thailand 9.3%, Japan 4.7%, Malaysia 4.3%, Borneo 11.1%, New Britain (Melanesia) 1.9% Greece 8.7% Estonia 2.7% Lapps (Finland) 4.2%. (See Table S2 in that paper's supplementary material).

Hotspots with high frequencies Outside of Africa

The "Non-African" values mentioned above are all lower than 10% (except for Borneo). Interestingly, it has been reported at rates of 14% among inhabitants in Kerala and Odisha, in India (Nair, 2020). Very high frequencies were reported among Central American natives by Scherer, 2004, who studied Maya dental traits from the Classic Period (AD 250 to AD 900) and found a 7.1% frequency, which is high, some sub-populations like those at Barton Ramie, Aguateca and Seibal presented prevalences of 25% to 36.4%. These values are also mentioned by Domínguez Vázquez, 2020 in his thesis (see Annex 4, p.162). He reports it at 57.1% frequency among Yucatan pre-Hispanics, 100% among Yucatan pre-ceramic people (by pre-ceramic he means 4,500 to 12,000 year-old specimens) yet absent among Mexican and North American pre-ceramic populations, and 100% in Zhoukoudian, China humans, 35,000 years old.

The Sub Saharan San (Khoisan) Bushmen

But, why is it found among San people at frequencies of 43.1%? (Sakuma, 1991) There has been no Neanderthal introgression into Africa. Did erectus migrate into Africa, carrying it? Or, is it an ancestral trait that has not been lost over the course of hundreds of thousands of years?

These people have some odd ancestral traits, including the epicanthic fold, shared with Asians, pale skin pigmentation, shared with Europeans, they also display moderate dental shoveling, a factor which Nair, 2020, found as strongly associated with Bushman Canine among Indian populations, which hints at some kind of genetic link between both dental traits.

Back in 2018, I posted about research describing teeth recovered from a human who lived in Magubike, Tanzania, 45,000 years ago. The remarks were that they had Neanderthal and H. erectus traits. I revisited the post today, and reread the article by Willoughby et al., 2018 and noticed that its Table 11 reported that this person had Bushman Canine trait, and added that it was not present in other Mid to Late Pleistocene African fossils yet present in 20% of the Early Holocene Kenyan ones.

The paper also reported that the teeth had “Khoisanoid affinities” (due to the presence of the Medial Canine Ridge found in the San people, among other traits), yet these teeth were big, and had some traits that are not found in archaic Homo sapiens or H. heidelbergensis or other hominins from that period.

This seems to imply the presence of other unknown hominins in Africa admixing with the Khoisan people, super archaics? These could be related to the Homo erectus lineage, or relatives of Neanderthals / Denisovans. This could explain the high frequencies in India and Borneo, possible spots of Denisovan-human admixing. And, regarding America, I have already posted about human-Denisovan admixure in America.

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