Product Description

Historians relying on written records can tell us nothing about the 99.9% of human evolution which preceded the invention of writing. It is the study of genetic variation, backed up by language and archaeology, which provides concrete evidence aboutthe spread of farming, the movements of peoples across the globe, the precise links between races - and the sheer unscientific absurdity of racism. Genes, Peoples and Languages offers an astonishing investigation into the past 100,000 years of human history and a rare, firsthand account of some of the most significant and gripping scientific work of recent years. Cavalli-Sforza is one of the great founding fathers of archaeogenetics, and in this book he maps out some of its grand themes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49079 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Jared Diamond says, "It would be a slight exaggeration to say that LL Cavalli-Sforza studies everything about everybody, because actually he is "only" interested in what genes, languages, archaeology, and culture can teach us about the history and migrations of everybody for the last several hundred thousand years". Cavalli-Sforza has been the leading architect of a revolution (even a paradigm shift) in human genetics since the 1960s. Because of his work, geneticists no longer think that the human species is divided into colour-coded races. Cavalli-Sforza's studies of the transmission of family names in Italy, of the relationship between human genes and languages, of migration and marriage, are the benchmarks of our biological self-understanding.

Genes, Peoples, and Languages is less personal than Cavalli-Sforza's preceding book, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution. And it is far more compact that the magisterial The History and Geography of Human Genes. Instead, it is an excellent overview of Cavalli-Sforza's many-faceted approach to human history and our present condition. It is that rarest of achievements, holistic without any trace of mushy-mindedness. --Mary Ellen Curtin

About the Author
Cavalli-Sforza was born in Genoa in 1922 and has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Parma and Pavia. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Stanford University. He is the author of THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE HUMAN GENE.

Customer Reviews

The Ideal Popular Primer On Population Genetics.
Although a lot of interesting books have been written in the last few years about deep ancestry and the origins of humanity it is important to have a work that concisely and authoritatively brings together the current broadly accepted ideas as they stand today. 'Genes, Peoples and Languages' reconstructs prehistory by using the concepts that are explained in the title and gives an outline of the origins of all the major populations in the world and their relationship to each other.

Other works of recent years have proposed new theories that challenge or modify the orthodox ideas on human origins but to make sense of newer theories it is necessary to understand how the accepted views were arrived at.

Some of the dry technical aspects of the methodology can be a little tedious at times but they don't take too long to read, and aren't necessary to understand precisely in order to grasp the conclusions that Cavelli-Sforza derives from them.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions
This book is a bad execution of a good idea. Intelligence, claimed someone, is the ability to overcome obstacles to achieve a goal. Here we have plenty of obstacles tackled, but the goal is not defined. Again and again, in my futile attempt to read the book I halted, trying to figure out what this or that phrase is all about and why was it written.
I do not - in fact I can not - know if that is wholly the author's blame, or partly the responsibility of the translator. The author's seems to be very confident in both facts and their meaning, and it may well be true that both are fully justified. However, he failed to convey either to me, the reader.

Interesting content but fragmented
An interesting book overall, analysing genetic, cultural and linguistic evidence of human origins. However the various strands within the text are dealt with in a rather disjointed and piecemeal fashion. The book would have benefitted from the inclusion of a section tying together the material presented in the work in a more holistic overview. Probably not for the casual reader, but written in plain enough language for the non-specialist to understand.