Henry Harpending

University of Northern Iowa | UNI · Anthropology

General discussion of human evolutionary genetics and several recent results on recent adaptive evolution in our species. Some particulars are (already!) outdated; we will update them at our earliest convenience.

We focus on the effects of gene differences on social and behavioral differences among individuals and among larger groups of individuals. Many specific genetic markers are known that influence aspects of personality and behavior. The focus on single genes and groups of genes is giving way to quantitative genetics, the statistical study of transmis...

Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. Such pacification proceeded slowly in Western Europe between the 5th and 11th centuries, being hindered by the rudimentary nature of law enforcement, the belief in a man's right to settle personal disputes as he saw fit, and the Church's opposition to the death penalty. T...

We develop a quantitative genetic model of positive assortative mating for a neutral trait, where trait is simply a direction in a high dimensional space. We think of conscientiousness or intelligence or aggressiveness or earnings potential as examples of traits that might be important to social science (without suggesting that these are or ever we...

The incidence of base substitutions in humans increases with the age of the father, which shows up as an increased incidence of mutational disorders in the children of older fathers. There is a less obvious implication: an extended period of high average paternal age in a population will lead to increased genetic load. We mention some societies tha...

Unreciprocated aid among co-ethnics and the emotional intensity of ethnic conflict have long been explanatory challenges to evolutionary science. J.P. Rushton’s theory of assortative ethnic affiliation–altruism, mating and friendship directed towards fellow ethnics–derives from his more general theory of genetic similarity (GST). GST proposes that...

The genus Mycobacterium encompasses over one hundred named species of environmental and pathogenic organisms, including the causative agents of devastating human diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy. The success of these human pathogens is due in part to their ability to rapidly adapt to their changing environment and host. Recombination is th...

Genomes of Mycobacterium used in this study, including identified habitats. (DOC)

Recombination events identified through analysis with RDP3.2. (DOC)

Summary of the Statistical Tests Performed by CONSEL. (DOC)

This chapter discusses the evolutionary responses to infectious disease. Pathogen dynamics can have a major influence on long-term demographics and typically require a minimum number of hosts in fairly close proximity in order to survive. The biggest demographic change experienced by humans was the population explosion made possible by the developm...

Though a variety of linkage disequilibrium tests have recently been introduced to measure the signal of recent positive selection, the statistical properties of the various methods have not been directly compared. While most applications of these tests have suggested that positive selection has played an important role in recent human history, the...

We present results of Short tandem repeat polymorphisms (STRPs) analysis and epidemiology study of indigenous ethnic highlanders of Daghestan and of the migrants from highlands to the lowland area in 1944, in comparison with native lowlanders. Results obtained show that demographically ancient highland ethnics have achieved a relatively stable equi...

Near the junction of three major continents, the Caucasus region has been an important thoroughfare for human migration. While the Caucasus Mountains have diverted human traffic to the few lowland regions that provide a gateway from north to south between the Caspian and Black Seas, highland populations have been isolated by their remote geographic...

The roles of fossil human populations in the origin of modern humans have been enigmatic. Earlier (archaic) human populations were biologically similar and were in recurrent temporal and geographic contact, making interbreeding between ancient populations likely. Regardless of the taxonomic status of these populations, adaptive alleles may have int...

Genomic surveys in humans identify a large amount of recent positive selection. Using the 3.9-million HapMap SNP dataset, we found that selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. We tested the null hypothesis that the observed age distribution of recent positively selected linkage blocks is consistent with a constant rate of ad...

The genome of our species preserves a record of population dynamics – changes in size and of subdivision into partially isolated demes. Genetic data have revealed that our humans arose from a small population, with as few as several thousand members, during the last interglacial period. Since then, we have spread rapidly over the earth. Keywords:...

This paper elaborates the hypothesis that the unique demography and sociology of Ashkenazim in medieval Europe selected for intelligence. Ashkenazi literacy, economic specialization, and closure to inward gene flow led to a social environment in which there was high fitness payoff to intelligence, specifically verbal and mathematical intelligence b...

Autosomal short-tandem repeats (STRs) were typed in ethnic populations of Kubachians, Dargins, Avars, Lezgins, Kumiks, and Nogais of the Caucasus (Daghestan, Russia) at the University of Utah. Daghestan ethnic populations demonstrated differences in STR allele frequency distributions, but these differences were much lower among these ethnic groups...

We discuss categories of genetic diversity in humans. Neutral diversity, population differences in frequencies of genetic markers that we think are invisible to natural selection, provides a passive record of population history but is otherwise of little interest in human biology. Genetic variation related to disease can be separated into mutationa...

The 13 May issue contained three papers (“Single, rapid coastal settlement of Asia revealed by analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes,” V. Macaulay et al. , Reports, p. [1034][1]; “Reconstructing the origin of Andaman Islanders,” K. Thangaraj et al. , Brevia, p. [996][2]; “Did early

Ten years ago, evidence from genetics gave strong support to the "recent African origin" view of the evolution of modern humans, which posits that Homo sapiens arose as a new species in Africa and subsequently spread, leading to the extinction of other archaic human species. Subsequent data from the nuclear genome not only fail to support this mode...

How did human cooperation evolve? Recent evidence shows that many people are willing to engage in altruistic punishment, voluntarily paying a cost to punish noncooperators. Although this behavior helps to explain how cooperation can persist, it creates an important puzzle. If altruistic punishment provides benefits to nonpunishers and is costly to...

Genomic diversity of 21 STR loci has been studied in six ethnic populations of Daghestan (the Caucasus), namely, Avars, Dargins, Kubachians, Lezgins, and Nogais, and the results have been compared with these data for European, African, and East Asian ethnic groups. Daghestan is unique in its ethnic diversity, which is the greatest in the Caucasus:...

Genomic diversity of 21 STR loci has been studied in six ethnic populations of Daghestan (the Caucasus), namely, Avars, Dargins, Kubachians, Lezgins, Kumiks, and Nogais, and the results have been compared with these data for European, African, and East Asian ethnic groups. Daghestan is unique in its ethnic diversity, which is the greatest in the Ca...

We describe aspects of genetic diversity in several ethnic populations of the Caucasus Mountains of Daghestan using mitochondrial DNA sequences and a sample of 100 polymorphic Alu insertion loci. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences are like those of Europe. Principal coordinates and nearest neighbor statistics show that there is little detectab...

▪ Abstract This article summarizes recent genetic evidence about the population history of our species. There is a congruence of evidence from different systems showing that the genetic effective size of humans is about 10,000 reproducing adults. We discuss how the magnitude and fluctuation of this number over time is important for evaluating compe...

Relationships between ethnic and genetic differentiation with respect to 54 microsatellites have been analyzed in five Daghestan ethnic groups. To detect the microsatellites, human chromosomes 3, 17, and 18 were screened with a step of 10 cM (Weber/CHLC 9.0 markers) at the Mammalian Genotyping Service (National Institute of Health, United States)....

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) constitute the great majority of variations in the human genome, and as heritable variable landmarks they are useful markers for disease mapping and resolving population structure. Redundant coverage in overlaps of large-insert genomic clones, sequenced as part of the Human Genome Project, comprises a quarter...

Relationships between ethnic and genetic differentiation with respect to 54 microsatellites have been analyzed in five Daghestan ethnic groups. To detect the microsatellites, human chromosomes 3, 17, and 18 were screened with a step of 10 cM (Weber/CHLC 9.0 markers) at the Mammalian Genotyping Service (National Institute of Health, United States)....

Human Biology 75.5 (2003) iii-xiii Richard Hugh Ward died suddenly of cardiac causes on February 14, 2003, at home near Oxford, UK. At the time of his death he was Professor and Head of Biological Anthropology and Head of the School of Anthropology at Oxford University. Over nearly four decades Ryk made fundamental contributions to zoology, anthrop...

The coefficient of kinship between two diploid organisms describes their overall genetic similarity to each other relative to some base population. For example, kinship between parent and offspring of 1/4 describes gene sharing in excess of random sharing in a random mating population. In a subdivided population the statistic F st describes gene sh...

The origin and demographic history of the ethnic populations of China have not been clearly resolved. In this study, we examined the hypervariable segment I sequences (HVSI) of the mitochondrial DNA control region in 372 individuals from nine Chinese populations and one northern Thai population. A relatively high percentage of individuals was found...

The D4 dopamine receptor (DRD4) locus may be a model system for understanding the relationship between genetic variation and human cultural diversity. It has been the subject of intense interest in psychiatry, because bearers of one variant are at increased risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (1). A survey of world frequencies...

Patterns of genetic diversity within our species imply that we descended from a small number of ancestors, of the order of several thousands. While early genetic evidence suggested major population expansions in our past, recent data from the nuclear genome are ambiguous.

We have analyzed 35 widely distributed, polymorphic Alu loci in 715 individuals from 31 world populations. The average frequency of Alu insertions (the derived state) is lowest in Africa (.42) but is higher and similar in India (.55), Europe (.56), and Asia (.57). A comparison with 30 restriction-site polymorphisms (RSPs) for which the ancestral st...

Archaeological, anatomical, linguistic, and genetic data have suggested that there is an old and significant boundary between the populations of north and south China. We use three human genetic marker systems and one human-carried virus to examine the north/south distinction. We find no support for a major north/south division in these markers; ra...

Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It. Jon Entine. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000. ix + 397 pages.

This is a review of genetic evidence about the ancient demography of the ancestors of our species and about the genesis of worldwide human diversity. The issue of whether or not a population size bottleneck occurred among our ancestors is under debate among geneticists as well as among anthropologists. The bottleneck, if it occurred, would confirm...

In the last decade a large amount of new genetic data from human populations has appeared. The most informative of the new loci are STR (short tandem repeat) polymorphisms, because they are not subject to the ascertainment biases that affect classical markers and SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). These loci show a marked diversity cline away...

Patterns of gene differences among humans contain information about the demographic history of our species. Haploid loci like mitochondrial DNA and the nonrecombining part of the Y chromosome show a pattern indicating expansion from a population of only several thousand during the late middle or early upper Pleistocene. Nuclear short tandem repeat...

Paleodemographers must work to understand how representative any archaeologically recovered skeletal series is and the potential effects of series bias on their demographic reconstructions. We examine two forms of bias: 1) infant underenumeration caused by differential preservation or incomplete archaeological recovery and 2) the underenumeration o...

There are estimated to be approximately 1000 members of the Ya5 Alu subfamily of retroposons in humans. This subfamily has a distribution restricted to humans, with a few copies in gorillas and chimpanzees. Fifty-seven Ya5 elements were previously cloned from a HeLa-derived randomly sheared total genomic library, sequenced, and screened for polymor...

We have examined differences in diversity at 60 microsatellite loci among human population samples from three major continental groups to evaluate the hypothesis of greater African diversity in this rapidly evolving class of loci. Application of a statistical test that assumes equal mutation rates at all loci fails to demonstrate differences in mic...

The reliability of published paleodemographic fertility reconstruction methods was assessed using simulated age-at-death distributions and a published cemetery series from a population with known birth rates. In the first test, the Brass ([1971] Biological Aspects of Demography, pp. 69-110) LOGIT models were used to generate 180 simulated skeletal...

Considerable attention is being paid to the use of molecular evidence in studies of human diversity and origins. Much of the early work was based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA, but this has been supplemented by important information from nuclear DNA from both the Y chromosomes and the autosomes. The bulk of the material available is also from...

Although many genetic studies of human evolution have tried to make distinctions between the replacement and the multiregional evolution hypotheses, current methods and data have not resolved the issue. However, new advances in nucleotide divergence theory can complement these investigations with a description of human demographic behavior during t...

Recent controversies surrounding models of modern human origins have focused on among-group variation, particularly the reconstruction of phylogenetic trees from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and, the dating of population divergence. Problems in tree estimation have been seen as weakening the case for a replacement model and favoring a multiregional ev...

A mismatch distribution is a tabulation of the number of pairwise differences among all DNA sequences in a sample. In a population that has been stationary for a long time these distributions from nonrecombinant DNA sequences become ragged and erratic, whereas a population that has been growing generates mismatch distributions that are smooth and h...

PIP A model of the effects of infectious sterility on reproductive histories of women was presented to criticize the recent treatment of comparative forager population statistics, in which Blurton Jones et al. suggest that Hadza fertility is higher than ]Kung fertility because the Hadza have more food and a lighter workload. Infectious infertility...

We have three general conclusions to emphasize as well as an observation about aging in these [!Kung and Herero] societies that we believe deserves elaboration: 1. Old people are treated well in both these groups but not because they are scarce. Both the !Kung and the Herero are low-fertility populations so the proportion of the total population th...

Discusses mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences as important source of data about the history of human species. journal article

Paleodemography and paleopathology presuppose that direct relationships exist between statistics calculated from archaeological skeletal series (e.g., skeletal lesion frequencies and mean age at death) and the health status of the past populations that gave rise to the series. However, three fundamental conceptual problems confound the interpretati...

Episodes of population growth and decline leave characteristic signatures in the distribution of nucleotide (or restriction) site differences between pairs of individuals. These signatures appear in histograms showing the relative frequencies of pairs of individuals who differ by i sites, where i = 0, 1, .... In this distribution an episode of grow...

Episodes of population growth and decline leave characteristic signatures in the distribution of nucleotide (or restriction) site differences between pairs of individuals. These signatures appear in histograms showing the relative frequencies of pairs of individuals who differ by i sites, where i = 0, 1, .... In this distribution an episode of grow...

A team of seven anthropologists conducted a coordinated, cross- cultural investigation to examine how structural and cultural variables shape the strategies people employ to assure themselves a secure old age. Central to the investigation was the goal of determining how people in the societies involved (Hong Kong, the United States, Ireland, and Bo...

The proposal that all mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) types in contemporary humans stem from a common ancestor present in an African population some 200,000 years ago has attracted much attention. To study this proposal further, two hypervariable segments of mtDNA were sequenced from 189 people of diverse geographic origin, including 121 native Africans....

Details of the population pyramid of living Herero and Mbanderu of Botswana suggest that infant and childhood mortality of males has been substantially greater than that of females. Direct tests from reproductive histories show that the hazard ratio is approximately 3 to 1 in favor of female survival in infancy and 2 to 1 in childhood. This biased...

Analysis of the fertility of Herero and Mbanderu pastoralists of the northern Kalahari Desert of Botswana indicates that they have suffered from infertility. The smoothed population pyramid constructed from a recent census shows waves of births occurring about every 22 years. Since generation times in human populations are typically longer, we sugg...

Transition from low to high rates of fertility among Herero pastoralists of the northern Kalahari of Botswana is examined. Total fertility rates have increased from 2.65 in the first half of this century to 7.02 in the last decade, while postreproductive women report having had only 3.47 births. We use an indirect estimator of the fertility of moth...

When wealth or social status can be transmitted from parents to offspring and when fitness depends on wealth or social status, evolutionary consequences of individual transmission strategies can be described by a parameter, called long-term fitness by Rogers (1990), which is the expected relative contribution of an individual to the gene pool in th...

We derive a method for interpreting information about the reproductive performance of mothers of a sample of informants and apply it to the history of low fertility among the !Kung of the Kalahari desert of southern Africa. The method formalizes the commonsense procedure of weighting mothers with 1 birth by 1, with 2 births by 1/2, with 3 births by...

We describe details of Herero residential units and discuss the meaning of household among Herero ranchers of northwestern Botswana and conclude that there is no single meaningful household. Rather there is a dual system of local social units. From the male perspective, a household is a hamlet with the associated herd and huts or hut clusters withi...

Hypervariable parts of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were amplified enzymatically and sequenced directly by using genomic DNA from single plucked human hairs. This method has been applied to study mtDNA sequence variation among 15 members of the !Kung population. A genealogical tree relating these aboriginal, Khoisan-speaking southern Africans to 68 ot...

Model age-at-death distributions are generated from fertility and mortality rates derived from two present-day, traditional human societies with widely differing cultural systems: the !Kung hunters-and-gatherers and Yanomamo horticulturalists. Visual examination of these models demonstrates that fertility has more of an effect than mortality on the...

In this paper we develop a model that examines fertility and childhood mortality patterns and their relationship to environmental variables. Interactions among environmental variables can account for different fertility patterns and different mixes of these variables can produce similar patterns of fertility. Our model attempts to quantify the idea...