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Genes, Peoples, and Languages Paperback – April 3, 2001

4.4 out of 5 stars 88

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Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza was among the first to ask whether the genes of modern populations contain a historical record of the human species. Cavalli-Sforza and others have answered this question―anticipated by Darwin―with a decisive yes. Genes, Peoples, and Languages comprises five lectures that serve as a summation of the author's work over several decades, the goal of which has been nothing less than tracking the past hundred thousand years of human evolution.

Cavalli-Sforza raises questions that have serious political, social, and scientific import: When and where did we evolve? How have human societies spread across the continents? How have cultural innovations affected the growth and spread of populations? What is the connection between genes and languages? Always provocative and often astonishing, Cavalli-Sforza explains why there is no genetic basis for racial classification.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Effectively communicates complex ideas for a general audience without sacrificing the important technical details that underlie them; thus it should be of great interest to professional as well as lay readers."--Theodore G. Schurr, "American Scientist

About the Author

Luigi Luca 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 and is the author of The History and Geography of Human Genes.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First Edition (April 3, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 239 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520228731
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520228733
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.22 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 88

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
88 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2005
This is an excellent and easy to read book about the fascinating analysis of the heritage of mankind. The author has developed an extensive multidisciplinary approach that includes: a) archeology, b) history, c) genetics, d) linguistics, and e) mathematics.

Although the author never stresses mathematics as a key discipline to analyze mankind heritage, his work relied on Principal Component Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, Cluster Analysis, Logistic Regression, and Hypothesis Testing. Thus, the readers familiar with these statistical methods will enjoy reading this book as a fascinating social science application of such methods.

You certainly don't have to be a mathematician or a scientist to enjoy this book. The author has clearly written it as an introduction to this field aimed at the layperson.

You will learn many fascinating concepts. One of those, is that the history of genes, cultures, and languages converge. In essence, they all influence each other back and forth. It is somehow hard to tell what is the main driver of overall changes in population. You run into many Nature or Nurture arguments. Continuing along the same line, he refers to other scientific works explaining the difference in IQ between individuals. Well, it is 1/3 due to heredity (nature); 1/3 due to cultural transmission (nurture); and 1/3 due to differences in personal experience (random). That is a pretty far cry from the 80% to 90% due to heredity that many people believe in. Also, natural evolution will or has already stopped according to the author. This is because medicine in industrialized societies has reduced the natural mortality rate down to almost zero among the pre-reproductive age set. In other words, medicine has eliminated the natural selection process as the survival rate mechanism of our specie. Some of us may have had concepts that humans eventually will evolve and look like aliens with extremely big heads (for superior intelligence and processing powers) and very skimpy bodies (since physical force is useless in an information age). Well, that's not going to happen.

Throughout the book there are many very interesting graphs and maps that beautifully illustrate and clarify the concepts he introduces. The migration map on page 94, clearly outlines all the major original migrations out of Africa starting 100,000 years ago. On page 71, a world map showing the actual genetic distance between locations is fascinating too. On page 164, you can observe the best diagram of the Indo-European languages you will ever see. English is a Germanic language, as we all know. However, English predates German by several centuries!

You can see how throughout his life, he must have been a fantastic university professor. About 6 months ago, I started reselling my books at Amazon Marketplace to cut my cost of reading. However, I am not reselling this one. I am keeping it as a reference. I anticipate there will be so many occasions when I will be glad I have kept it. The book has opened for me a new window of knowledge quest where so many of the social and quantitative sciences have converged into one to crack the mystery of the history of mankind. I hope this book will do for you, what it did for me.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2023
I receive my book at a great price with excellent service and delivery
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2009
Genes, Peoples, and Languages is an excellent introduction to the study of how the human species has evolved and spread out of Africa. Dr. Cavalli-Sforza has pulled together years of his own research and synthesized it into an easy to read, and sometimes humorous, narrative that looks at the archaelogical, genetic and linguistic evidence for the spread of the human species from Africa to all points of the globe. A good addition to your library if you have enjoyed recent books by Spencer Wells and Bryan Sykes.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2000
Professor Cavalli-Sforza'a book "Genes, Peoples, and Languages" is a fascinating history of humankind based on genetics, archeology, and linguistics. It addresses topics, which are of interest to many people who are starting to look into their genealogy in more global aspects. Dr. Cavalli-Sforza is a Professor Emeritus of Genetics at Stanford University. Together with Peter Underhill and Peter Oefner they have published extensively on detecting DNA variation in the Y chromosome and developing markers to study the evolution of modern humans.
The book delves into genetics and linguistics issues, which are explained well despite the multidisciplinary approach. A must read for students in genetics, history, linguistiscs, and even genetic counseling.
For readers who would like to utilize the knowledge of genetics in studying their distant family relationships as a supplement to this work, I would refer them to the "Ancestry DNA Toolbox" or the book "How to DNA test our family relationships?" available from amazon.com.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2015
racism is the greatest tragedies of humanity. Figuratively speaking it symbolizes a vast ocean of tears and pain, instead of the joy of life and laughter. this book throws the final and decisive light on the futility of racism . as usual it is science that solves all of our problems.this book tells the exciting story of the research work in genetics and the combined applications of linguistics, paleo-meteorology to unravel our invaluable past and the factors that contributed to our change physically and the progress of our ideas.
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017
Stanford's Cavalli-Sforza, going strong in his 9th decade, is a geneticist who has re-indexed world family relationships, and in this volume he pulls languages into the mix. It is an utter mesmerizing, though sometimes technical, read. It is an essential read, especially for a globalizing world.
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2014
This book is one of the first books to arrange the human family based on the advances in DNA science which occurred in the 1990s and apply it to people and languages. A cheap shot here, as a result the information and interpretations are a bit dated, but much of the information is pretty insightful.

This is a highly technical book. It is college level reading.

Top reviews from other countries

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Nick Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, even for a non scientist like me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2022
A wonderful book - this is a second copy for presentation to a friend
Monica
2.0 out of 5 stars acquisto da bancarella
Reviewed in Italy on January 10, 2021
L'autore del libro è un grande. Libro dei più venduti. Ma l'acquisto fatto è scarso. Si vede come sia stato comprato su una bancarella e venduto a un prezzo carissimo.
MIHIR K MOITRA
5.0 out of 5 stars ONLY AN EXPERT OF HIS GENRE CAN DRAW COMPREHENSIVE CONCLUSIONS FROM SUCH DIVERGENT SUBJECTS.
Reviewed in India on July 1, 2019
Mr. Sforza's candor and expertise both come out clearly in almost all the chapters. However he has faltered while covering the complex subject of Indo- European language family. particularly on the Indian group- the easternmost among the IE speakers. However this has not in anyway affected the overall quality of this book as a seminal work on an integrated approach on the subject of 'human evolution'.
Bernie Koenig
5.0 out of 5 stars Ties Things Together
Reviewed in Canada on May 6, 2011
Natural Law, Science, and the Social Construction of Reality

An interesting well presented work tying together biology, language, agriculture, and the migrations of people.

The main point That Cavalli-Sforza makes is that there is one human race and all our differences are due to various evolutionary factors.

The meat of the book is how migrations patterns of humans can be traced using both genetics and language. genetic changes and linguistic changes occur for similar reasons, though linguistic changes occur much more rapidly. But by showing how languages have evolved, along with how people have evolved, we get a good picture of both the genetic and the social aspects of the evolutionary process.

Much of the information in the book was not new to me. A lot of it is contained in other books I have reviewed here. But what makes this book stand out is how all the factors are tied together and how the same kinds of factors that lead to biological or genetic change also lead to linguistic and social change.

Indeed, again as other people have pointed out, social conditions can lead to biological change. Cavalli-Sforza develops this theme.

The point is that there are many many factors that are present in the evolutionary process and they influence each other.

A good book to get an overview of the evolutionary process from a wide perspective.
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puttaraju
5.0 out of 5 stars Genes,People,& languages
Reviewed in India on September 27, 2016
It is a wonderful book. I want to read more of Sforza.