Book review of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza

Luigi Cavalli-Sforza:
GENES, PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES (North Point, 2000)

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Italian biologist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, who spent most of his adult life at Stanford, has written a book that reads more like an autobiography, but is, nonetheless, an excellent introduction to the field of genetics that he helped pioneer. In the 1950s Cavalli-Sforza first had the idea that one could use genetic information to trace the genealogical tree of species, of human habits and of languages. This method, now widely employed around the world, led to the understanding of how humans left Africa and populated the rest of the world. It also helped clarify how farming spread from Europe elsewhere. And it helped reconstruct the evolution of languages.

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