Postscpript: Migration, migrants, and biological anthropology

Anthropology is the study of people. Allpeople are migrants. Therefore, anthropologyisthe studyof migrants. Biological anthropol-ogystudiesthe effects of migration on humanphysiology, morphology, population geneticstructure, demography, health and well-being, and more. Human, or at least hominid,migration began when our ancestors leftAfrica in one or more waves of populationdispersal. Even earlier, population movementwithin Africa churned the biocultural diver-sity of that continent for more than one mil-lionyearsandstilldoessotoday.Theflowoutof Africa had biological effects on peoplealmost immediately. Colder temperatures inEurope seem to have altered tropical bodyproportions by shortening legs relative tototal stature. It is still debated if this was adirect consequence of the cold or if it wasan effect mediated by changes in diet andphysical activity (Bogin and Rios, 2003).Latitudinal variation in the intensity of solarradiation, combined with new diets, newclothing, and outdoor exposure, intensifiedselection for various shades of skin pigmenta-tion (Jablonski and Chaplin, 2000). Old dis-ease vectors were left behind, but new oneswere confronted and the selection of newgenotypes and behavioral phenotypes resist-ant to disease continued apace.Astute observers took note of bioculturaldifferences between human groups since atleast the time of the ancient Egyptians. Ittook European Colonialism to spur an effortto systematically organize and hierarchicallyarrange human variation. Those efforts cul-minated in the racial pseudo-science of the18th and 19th centuries. One major counter-attack to ‘‘race science’’ came from severalmigrants to the New World, especially FranzBoas, in the late 19th and early 20th centur-ies (Mascie-Taylor and Little, this volume).World Wars, holocausts, industrialization,urbanization, and other socio-political up-heavals in the 20th century served to inten-sify the process of human migration. By mid-century, migration studies were the bread-and-butter of a coterie of anthropologists,including Gabriel Lasker and his wifeBernice Kaplan. Lasker, Kaplan, Goldstein,Shapiro, and others were able to show,perhaps more fully than Boas may have sus-pected, the nature of human biological plas-ticity in response to migration.Today, we who continue with the researchare the intellectual descendants of Boas andLasker. We still discuss the merits and mean-ing of population biological markers rangingfrommorphologyoftheskull(Relethford,thisvolume) to stature and chest size (Weitz andGarruto, this volume). We add to the mix ofmigration research some population biologymarkers that were unknown to Boas andlargely unavailable to Lasker, such as nu-clear and mitochondrial DNA (Schurr andSherry; Cann and Lum, this volume). We havenot forgotten the broad and deep anthropo-logical roots of our past, as we remind every-one of that most anthropological of alltopics, kinship, and its role in migrationand human diversity (Fix, this volume).Earlyinthe21stcentury weliveunderfearand suspicion of migrants and migration.Refugees, immigrants, drifters, tourists, andstudents from abroad may bring disease,death, and destruction. Foreign militaryforces fight and fraternize with local popu-lations around the globe. Globalization ofindustrial and agricultural production on theone hand and markets for the distribution ofgoods on the other hand bring all humanbeings within contact. This interchange andinterdependence is both biological and cul-tural at the same time. Anthropology has aunique focusonthebioculturalnature ofpeo-ple and a formidable history of migrationresearch. Because of this, biological anthro-pologists have both the skills and the respon-sibility to replace the fears of migration andmigrants with tempered understanding.LITERATURE CITED