Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis / Edition 1

by Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Overview

Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesisis a textbook on human evolution that offers students a unique combination of cultural anthropology and genetics.

• Written by two geneticists—including a world-renowned scientist and founder of the Human Genome Diversity Project—and a socio-cultural anthropologist.
• Based on recent findings in genetics and anthropology that indicate the analysis of human culture and evolution demands an integration of these fields of study.
• Focuses on evolution—or, rather, co-evolution—viewed from the standpoint of genes and culture, and their inescapable interactions.
• Unifies cultural and genetic concepts rather than rehashing nonempirical sociobiological musings.
• Demonstrates that empirical genetic evidence, based on modern DNA analysis and population studies, provides an excellent foundation for understanding human cultural diversity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405150897
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	10/23/2006
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Linda Stone is Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University. She has produced over 25 scholarly publications, including 8 books.

Paul F. Lurquin is Professor of Genetics at Washington State University. He is the author and coauthor of over 100 scholarly publications, including 6 books.

L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza is Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Stanford University. His publications comprise over 500 articles and 14 books. He is a member of the United States Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, and the Italian Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

Figures.

Plates.

Preface.

Introduction by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza.

1. Genetic and Cultural Theory: A Brief Overview.

2. Human Descent and Paleoanthropology.

3. Foundations of Classical and Molecular Genetics.

4. Genetics as a Key to Human Origins and Prehistory.

5. Fundamentals of Human Evolution: Mutation and Natural Selection.

6. Fundamentals of Human Evolution: Drift, Migration, and Quantitative Analysis of Human Genetic Diversity.

7. Cultural Evolution.

8. Geography of Human Genes and Correlation with Languages.

9. The Prehistory of Human Genes.

10. Voyages: Prehistoric Human Expansions.

11. The Neolithic Transition in Europe and the Peopling of the Americas.

12. Genes, Kinship, and Identity.

13. Cultural Clines, Clades, Cycles, and Waves: The Process of Cultural Evolution.

14. Genes and Culture in Medicine.

General Conclusion.

Appendix 1. The Denaturing High Performance Liquid Chromatography (DHPLC) Technique.

Appendix 2. The Hardy–Weinberg Theorem.

Appendix 3. A Simulation of Drift.

Appendix 4. The Diversification of Languages.

Notes.

Key References.

Glossary.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This book lives up to its title. It provides an invigorating and well-informed overview of human genetic and cultural evolution, one that transcends the disciplinary boundaries that become an irrelevance to a full understanding of where we come from, out nature and origins." (Anthropos, 2009)

"The important branch of evolutionary anthropology that concentrates on the co-evolution of genes and culture has been in need of its definitive textbook. Here it has found its perfect expression in one of those rare texts that is also a grand synthesis and a contribution in its own right."
—Robin Fox, University Professor of Social Theory, Rutgers University

"Stone and Lurquin have integrated what we know about bones, genes, and languages to produce a uniquely valuable account. By focusing on the science of human evolution, the authors avoid the stultifying debates about what is culture and does it evolve. With this volume, evolutionary anthropology becomes a coherent discipline accessible to all students and scholars in the human sciences."
—Marc Feldman, Stanford University

"The first textbook that uses evolutionary theory to combine the study of human culture and genetics." (Australian Journal of Anthropology)

From the Publisher