India's largest assemblage of prehistoric hunter-gatherer burials was recovered from three related, Mesolithic sites in the Ganges Valley. Our recent craniometric documentation of six large samples of modern Indians provides the opportunity to investigate the similarity of 19 Mesolithic Ganges crania to modern Indians in the context of the 28 non-Indian series recorded by W.W. Howells. Most of the Mesolithic Ganges crania are incomplete and so they were analyzed individually and their classification results then summarized. Overall, eight classify as modern Indian, in a pattern whereby those with a larger number of measurements available for analysis, and with characteristically Indian cranial indices, are more likely to classify as Indian. In contrast, only a miniscule proportion of the crania measured by W.W. Howells classify as modern Indian. On that basis, the Mesolithic Ganges can be characterized as ‘proto-Indian’, and can be considered representative of a pre-agricultural population that made a major contribution to the phenotype of modern Indians.

从恒河谷的三个中观石器时代遗址中发现了印度最大的史前猎人-采集者墓葬组合。在WW Howells记录的28个非印第安系列中，我们最近对6个现代印第安人的大样本的颅骨学文献提供了机会来研究19个中石器恒河缝与现代印第安人的相似性。大多数中石器恒河沟不完整，因此需要对其进行单独分析，然后对其分类结果进行汇总。总体而言，有八种分类为现代印度人，其模式是那些具有大量可用于分析的测量值并且具有典型的印度人颅骨指数的人，更有可能被分类为印度人。相比之下，通过WW测得的缝隙中只有很小一部分 豪威尔斯归为现代印度人。在此基础上，中石器恒河可以被描述为“原始印度人”，并且可以被认为是农业前人口的代表，该人口对现代印度人的表型做出了重大贡献。