engleski

Reading the signatures of population histories: from language to DNA

Historical processes are laboratories where human populations are created. Today we face a plethora of intriguing information on different problems of (macro)evolution and hypotheses and theories about current human diversity. These intellectual constructs are usually based on grossly insufficient information. I will discuss the rich data collected during three decades of field research in the isolated populations of Adriatic island ; these data can provide meaningful interpretation and provoke discussion about the justification of (micro)evolutionary hypotheses. The underlying methodology is much more than collecting and elaborating the collected data, that models must help in the reduction of information and its interpretation and that we have immense new possibilities and methods of research (from analyses of metric, morphological traits in the fifties to very fine physiological and biochemical analyses and today almost unimaginable possibilities for molecular genetic research). The results of our study of numerous population traits show that different traits respond to (micro)evolutionary impacts differently. Some traits are more likely connected to specific different selective pressures, others more likely reveal selective inertia, while for the third group of traits a reasonable genetic interpretation cannot always be provided because of their extreme phenotypic plasticity. One should accept that the humans are social and cultural beings in addition to the physical being and that they contribute to their own biological state that is limited both by natural laws and sociocultural restraints.

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