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: #174936 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

Concise and well written
Having read the likes of Jared Diamond, Merrit Ruhlen, Sykes and Richard Dawkins in the past 6 months another name was always on the periphery, Luca Cavalli-Sforza. He has an abundance of experience on his subject and it shows in the book giving you enough detail to know how some of the current conclusions on Peoples, Genes and Languages have been derived. It is also very interesting to see how many of these apparent separate disciplines fit together to make a fairly coherent map of humanity, from where we originated and how we have diversifed.

The book isn't technical so it should appeal to most people and it certainly leaves you with a better appreciation of ourselves.

The history of the human species
This is a very good popscience book. It explains in a simple way some of the methods that can be used to study and uncover the genetic as well as linguistic and cultural past of the human species. (Interestingly, it turns out that some of the methods for studying genetic change are similar to some of the methods for studying cultural and linguistic change, and that the history of genes can help us understand the history of languages and vice versa.) But the book does not just explain the methods, it also tells you what results these methods have yielded. That is, it tells you when (probably) modern humans came out of Africa, the way they colonised the whole planet, the way linguistic differentiation took place, etc. The book is well written and entertaining.

It could have been so much better
This was a bit disappointing. It's not a terrible book but it takes a great subject but doesn't manage to make it very exciting. I also found there was a lot of repetition as if each chapter had been written separately, perhaps as separately published articles. When you read the book straight through the repetition is tiresome. I noticed that the same critiscism was made of "Guns, Steel......" by Jared Diamond and I recently discovered that he had worked or studied with the Cavalli-Sforza.

If he wants to know how to write a popular book in this subject area he should read and learn from likes of Matt Ridley (Genome), Brian Sykes (The Seven Daughters of Eve) and Robert Winston (Human Instinct).

However, it is useful as a sort of reference book to see what his conclusions were, especially in the form of diagrams that chart the evolution of races, languages, agriculture, etc. I find myself going back to it occasionally.