Henry C. Harpending Distinguished Professor and Thomas Chair 121 Stewart 801-581-3776 Courses Homepage This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Areas of Specialization

Foragers, pastoralists, demography, population genetics, evolutionary ecology, human evolution; Africa

Research

I am an anthropologist interested in preindustrial populations, the history of modern humans, and the evolution of human social life. My recent work is about genetic diversity within and between human populations. Some genetic markers, such as mitochondrial DNA, microsatellites, and quantitative traits, evolve rapidly enough to have information about size and isolation of subpopulations in the recent past. We have found evidence that our species had only a few thousand members during the last interglacial and that there were several subsequent demographic expansions, the earliest among the ancestors of contemporary sub-Saharan Africans. I have also done fieldwork with several groups in southern Africa, concentrating on family demographic histories. My particular interests have been the effects of infectious infertility on population structure, consequences of preferential treatment of children by sex for mortality and for growth and development, and the relationships among wealth, family organization, and individual reproductive outcomes.

Selected Publications