International Balzan Foundation Luigi Luca Cavalli

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1999 Balzan Prize for Science of Human Origins 1500. This would permit us to calculate the genetic variation due to chance predicted theoretically, and compare it with actual observations. This work turned out successfully thanks to the assistance of two young students: the priest Antonio Moroni, and Franco Conterio, who are both now professors at Parma, the former of ecology and the latter of anthropology. By 1961 enough genetic data and observations from numerous populations in the world had been collected, and it was possible to make a first analysis of the evolutionary tree of human populations. Anthony Edwards of Cambridge University helped me to develop and use methods of reconstructing evolutionary trees. We performed the necessary heavy calculations with the Olivetti Elea computer recently purchased by the University of Pavia, to which I had moved and where I was continuing my research work. We could thus reconstruct the first evolutionary tree of human populations, whose basic structure is still valid today. Another working relationship very fruitful for me was with Sir Walter Bodmer, also a student of R. A. Fisher, with whom we published two books on human population genetics. One of these, The Genetics of Human Populations, was re-printed only a few months ago by Dover Publications, almost thirty years after it was first published. In the second half of the nineteen-sixties I extended the model of genetic research I had developed on the population of Parma – as far as this was possible – to a group of hunters and gatherers in the African bush: the pygmies. This is one of the few population groups still alive today with a pre-agricultural economy similar to that of the Palaeolithic period. Professor Marcello Siniscalco, at that time Professor at Leiden, was very helpful to me in carrying out in his laboratory the genetic analysis of countless blood samples I had collected in Africa. The contact with such a totally different culture stimulated me to embark on research into cultural evolution which I pursued after I moved to Stanford University in 1971. I began by analysing archaeological data on the spread of agriculture in Europe in the Neolithic period in collaboration with the archaeologist Albert Ammerman. Thanks to a mathematical theory developed by R. A. Fisher in 1937 we were able to measure the rate at which agriculture spread, and show that it was consistent with the hypothesis that it was the people themselves that spread, and not the knowledge of agriculture. In other words, it was a diffusion of farmers, which we called demic, and not of farming. In the second half of the nineteen-seventies we carried out with Alberto Piazza and Paolo Menozzi, now 8
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza Professors of Human Genetics in Turin, and Ecology in Parma, an analysis of data on gene frequencies in Europe. This work enabled us to confirm that genetic and archaeological data are closely correlated and consistent with the idea that agriculture spread from the Middle East. This was the start of a 14-yearlong working relationship with Menozzi and Piazza. Thanks to it we extended these studies of genetic geography and history to the rest of the world, in the way they are described in the book The History and Geography of Human Genes published in 1994. In the nineteen-eighties the first methods of genetic analysis were used which made it possible to carry out direct investigations on DNA. This revolutionary development expanded the bandwidth of genetic variation from a few hundred genes to several tens of thousands, and genetic analysis could be shifted down to the smallest unit of DNA, the individual nucleotide. It also became possible to use new methods of collecting genetic data on significant factors in human evolutionary history, particularly on the spread of modern man beyond the area from which he originates: Africa. Four years ago, a researcher from my laboratory, Peter Underhill, together with Peter Oefner, a colleague from Ron Davis’ laboratory, invented a new and particularly efficient method of investigating DNA differences. This made it possible to find many genetic variations in the Ychromosome. For a number of reasons this chromosome turned out to be extremely valuable, even though it had made practically no contribution to evolutionary research up to that time. Since then, however, we have entered a phase of great activity and fascinating discoveries. The explosive growth in knowledge in the last few years has also had an effect on certain socio-cultural fields of study such as linguistics and onomastics - the study of names. In connection with my studies of onomastics and blood relationships I would like to acknowledge the valuable support of Professor Gianna Zei of Pavia. We have observed a significant similarity between the development of language and of genes, which is in part due to common evolutionary mechanisms and historical expansionary processes of populations. With the studies of the development of language I have had the assistance of Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen of Stanford, and Bill Wang of Berkeley. These latest studies result in part from thirty years of collaboration with Professor Marc Feldman of Stanford, with whom we developed a mathematical theory of cultural heredity. Until now the studies of cultural evolution have not aroused 9
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International Balzan Foundation Luigi Luca Cavalli

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