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Because history cannot be repeated, we may never have answers
to these far-reaching questions. Yet, population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
proposed that the evolutionary past of humankind can be reconstructed by analyzing
current genetic data. "I made a personal bet that it could be done,"
says Cavalli-Sforza, "because I believed the theory of evolution gives us
the key." Not only did he win his bet, but he pursued one of the most original
research programs of any post-World War II scientist -- work that has left its
mark on every recent book about human origins, evolution, and migration. Now in
The Great Human Diasporas, coauthored with his son, Cavalli-Sforza presents
in a single volume for the non-specialist the fruits of over forty years of research.
After providing a thorough grounding in evolutionary theory,
Cavalli-Sforza takes readers back to the heady times of 1961-62 when he and a
few colleagues were able to bring together genetic data on blood groups for fifteen
populations spread out on five continents. By computing the genetic distance between
pairs of populations, these scientists were able to develop an evolutionary tree
that looks surprisingly like the ones reconstructed today, even with fifteen times
more information. Using this crude tree, scientists could trace the approximate
routes modern humans took in colonizing the earth 100,000 years ago and discover
when populations split off from each other to form new groups. In
the course of his work, Cavalli-Sforza joined forces with archaeologists, linguists,
anthropologists, and molecular biologists. He shows how both archaeological and
genetic data were used to track human migrations during the spread of agriculture;
he probes such topics as the existence of a single ancestral language and the
relationship between biological and linguistic evolution; and he brings us up
to date with his current work as chief sponsor of the human genome diversity project,
an ambitious attempt to analyze the most significant individual variations in
human genomes. The New York Times describes Cavalli-Sforza
as having "the mind of a mathematician and the interests of a philosopher."
In The Great Human Diasporas he also ties his scientific research to issues
of race, eugenics, genetic engineering, and the future of human evolution. And
while he has devoted most of his life to the topic of human diversity, his book
stands as eloquent testimony to the idea that what unifies us as humans far outweighs
what make us different. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
is Professor of Genetics Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School. He is
the author of a number of seminal scientific books. Francesco Cavalli-Sforza is
a creator and producer of educational films, based primarily in Italy. |
