From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 12:24:46 +1000
Subject: Book Review - The Great Human Diasporas

     title: The Great Human Diasporas
          : The History of Diversity and Evolution
        by: Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza + Francesco Cavalli-Sforza
      from: the Italian [Sarah Thorne]
 publisher: Addison-Wesley 1995
  subjects: anthropology, genetics
     other: 300 pages, bibliography, index

_The Great Human Diasporas_ is a very broad-scale history of
Homo sapiens.  It begins with a portrait of the pygmies and the
hunter-gatherer way of life, then traces the early history of
mankind, moving from the molecular dating of the human-chimp split
and the earliest fossil evidence to the Neandertals and African "Eve".
Cavalli-Sforza (the elder Cavalli-Sforza is the principal author) then
explains the basics of genetics -- Mendelian genetics, selection,
mutation, drift -- and the extent of human genetic diversity --
evolutionary trees, blood groups, migrations and the geography of
genetic variation.  This is then, in what is perhaps the central
chapter of the book, applied to the origins of agriculture and the
reconstruction of population movements over the last ten thousand years
(especially in Europe).  A long chapter is devoted to linguistic
evolution.  Here Cavalli-Sforza comes out strongly in support of
Greenberg and the classification of human languages into superfamilies,
but he is careful to make it clear that this is a not a position with
much support amongst linguists.  A chapter on the relationship between
cultural and genetic evolution explains some of the differences and
the difficulties involved in separating them (especially when it comes
to such things as "intelligence"). This leads naturally to a chapter
on the problems with the term "race" and on the pathology of racism.
Autobiographical perspectives appear occasionally throughout the
book, but in the final chapter Cavalli-Sforza presents his thoughts
about the future and about ethical issues such as abortion and the
implications of modern biotechnology.  Perhaps the best part of
_The Great Human Diasporas_ is the postscript, which is devoted to
explaining just how weak _The Bell Curve_ is as a work of science.
(This is also more thoroughly referenced than the bulk of the volume.)

My only real complaint with _The Great Human Diasporas_ is that it
has been poorly edited -- certainly much more sloppily than I have
come to expect from Addison-Wesley.  _The Great Human Diasporas_ is
an outstanding work of popular science, and the first book I would
recommend to the layperson interested in human genetics.  It covers
material which I believe should be basic knowledge for everyone,
and it does a great job of making it accessible, so I hope it will be
widely read: it should definitely be in every school library and it
is far more deserving of a place on the best-seller lists than _The
Bell Curve_.

--

Disclaimer: I requested and received a review copy of _The Great
Human Diasporas_ from Addison-Wesley, but I have no stake, financial
or otherwise, in its success.

--

%T	The Great Human Diasporas
%S	The History of Diversity and Evolution
%A	Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
%A	Francesco Cavalli-Sforza
%F	Sarah Thorne
%M	Italian
%I	Addison-Wesley
%C	Reading, Massachusetts
%D	1995
%O	hardcover, bibliography, index
%G	ISBN 0-201-40755-8
%P	xiii,300pp
%K	anthropology, genetics

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
20 August 1995

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     Copyright (c) 1995 Danny Yee.  Comments and criticism welcome
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     URL http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/index.html
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