The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations

About this book

Animal-herding (pastoralism) is a subsistence strategy that is practised by populations of low-producing ecosystems worldwide. Increasingly, it is vanishing due to land pressure and ecological degradation, particularly in the developing world.

While previous books have examined the social, cultural and economic dimensions of the pastoral way of life, there has been little systematic examination of the biology and health of pastoral groups. The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations fills this gap by drawing together our knowledge of the biology, population structure and ecology of herding populations. It investigates how pastoral populations adapt to limited and variable food availability, the implications of the herding way of life for reproductive patterns, population structure and genetic diversity and the impacts of ongoing social and ecological changes on the health and well-being of these populations.

This volume will be of broad interest to scholars in anthropology, human biology, genetics and demography.

Paperback re-issue; originally published in 2002.

Contents

1. The biological diversity of herding populations: an introduction Michael H. Crawford and William R. Leonard; 2. Genetic structure of pastoral populations of Siberia: the Evenki of Central Siberia and the Kizhi of Gorno Altai Michael H. Crawford, Joseph McComb, Moses S. Schanfield and R. John Mitchell; 3. Genetic structure of the Basque herders of northern Spain Rosario Calderon; 4. History, demography, marital patterns and immigration rate in the South Sinai Bedouins: their effect of the coefficient of inbreeding (F) E. Kobyliansky and I. Hershkovitz; 5. Uncertain disaster: environmental instability, colonial policy, and the resilience of East African pastoral systems Sandra Gray, Paul Leslie and Helen Alinga Akol; 6. Changing pattern of Tibetan nomadic pastoralism Melvyn C. Goldstein and Cynthia M. Beall; 7. Human biology, health and ecology of nomadic Turkana pastoralists Michael A. Little; 8. Economic stratification and health among the Herero of Botswana Renee L. Pennington; 9. Ecology, health and lifestyle change among the Evenki herders of Siberia William R. Leonard, Victoria A. Galloway, Evgueni Ivakine, Ludmila Osipova and Marina Kazakovtseva; 10. Disease patterns in Sami and Finnish populations: an update Simo Nayha, Pauli Luoma, Saara Lehtinen, Terho Lehtimaki, Mary Jane Mosher and Juhani Leppaluoto; 11. Yomut family organization and demography William Irons; 12. Pastoralism and the evolution of lactase persistence Clare Holden and Ruth Mace.

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Biography

WILLIAM R. LEONARD is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University, Illinois. He is a biological anthropologist whose research focusses heavily on aspects of physiology, nutrition and health. He has extensive fieldwork experience in Siberia and Latin America examining how human populations adapt to extreme environments. MICHAEL H. CRAWFORD is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on anthropological genetics particularly in populations in the Americas. He has also written The Origins of Native Americans (1998/ 2001), ISBNS 0521 592801 & 0521 004101, and edited Different Seasons: Biological Aging in Mennonites of Midwestern United States (2000).