AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 125:264 –265 (2004)

Technical Note: Modification of Regression Equations

Used to Estimate Stature in Mesoamerican
Skeletal Remains
Andres del Angel* and Hector B. Cisneros

Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City 04510, Mexico

Problems in estimating individual height based on TABLE 1. Estimation of stature (cm) from long bones
the length of long bones have been studied since the (N ⫽ 98, 69 males and 29 females)
late 19th century, and the results have been applied Males
to Mesoamerican remains. Pearson (1899), based on Stature ⫽ 63.89 ⫹ 2.262 (femur)
Stature ⫽ 91.26 ⫹ 1.958 (tibia)
a French cadaver sample, was the first to use regres- Stature ⫽ 94.09 ⫹ 1.919 (fibula)
sion to investigate this relation. Trotter and Gleser Stature ⫽ 83.52 ⫹ 2.505 (humerus)
(1958) studied a limited sample of Mexican-Ameri- Stature ⫽ 94.80 ⫹ 2.615 (ulna)
Stature ⫽ 98.22 ⫹ 2.668 (radius)
cans who died in the Korean War. Genovés (1967) Females
paid special attention to constructing regression Stature ⫽ 47.25 ⫹ 2.588 (femur)
models to predict height as a function of the length Stature ⫽ 61.29 ⫹ 2.720 (tibia)
Stature ⫽ 54.55 ⫹ 2.988 (fibula)
of long bones, using data from samples of modern Stature ⫽ 32.35 ⫹ 4.160 (humerus)
Amerindian and a miscegenated series of skeletons Stature ⫽ 58.72 ⫹ 3.991 (ulna)
from the Medical School of the National University Stature ⫽ 66.88 ⫹ 3.926 (radius)
of Mexico. His formulae have been widely used for
archaeological and forensic studies (e.g., Sciulli et
al., 1990; Storey et al., 2002).
and fibula, and the condyle-malleolus length in the
However, the analyses of Genovés’s (1967) suf-
tibia.
fered from an inconsistency, which he was the first
These modified equations have already been ap-
to recognize. The problem is that the results vary plied to the study of ancient Mesoamerican popula-
depending on whether one uses the regression esti- tions (Márquez et al., 2002; Márquez and Del Angel,
mates tabulated for each sex (the ratios in Tables 12 1997; Del Angel, 1996).
and 13 in the original paper by Genovés, 1967) or the
equations proposed for the femur or tibia (his Table ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
14). We thank Dr. Mario Cortina, Dr. Ann Cyphers,
It was impossible to remeasure the original sets of Dr. Santiago Genovés, Dr. Francisco Gurri, Dr. Luis
skeletal material since, according to Genovés (per- A. Vargas, and the anonymous reviewers for sugges-
sonal communication), they were lost a short time tions and critical comments.
after the study was performed. Consequently, we
followed the author’s advice to use only the tables LITERATURE CITED
that appear in the original publication (Genovés, del Angel A. 1996. La estatura de la población prehispánica de
1967), which subtract 2.5 cm to account for the ex- México. In: López S, Serrano C, Márquez L, editors. La antro-
tension of the cadaver on the autopsy table. We then pologia fisica en México. Estudios sobre la población antigua y
contemporánea. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma
recalculated all the regression formulae using the de México. p 55–78.
published tables, and found that the main differ- Genovés S. 1967. Proportionality of the long bones and their
ences for the equations based on femur and tibia relation to stature in Mesoamericans. Am J Phys Anthropol
appeared in the intercept estimates. This is consis- 26:67–77.
tent with the advice of Genovés (1967), as it shows
that only a minor shift is required to correct the *Correspondence to: Andres del Angel, Instituto de Investigaciones
estimates. Because there were no equations avail- Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cd. Uni-
able for other bones, such as fibula, humerus, ulna, versitaria, Coyoacán, Mexico City 04510, Mexico.
and radius, we calculated them using SYSTAT ver-
Received 20 April 2003; accepted 3 July 2003.
sion 10 software (see Table 1). As in the original
publication, each equation yields an estimate of the DOI 10.1002/ajpa.10385
individual’s stature in centimeters based on the Published online 12 May 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.
maximum length of humerus, ulna, radius, femur, interscience.wiley.com).

© 2004 WILEY-LISS, INC.

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