Seasonality has effects on a wide range of human functions and activities, and is important in the understanding of human-environment relationships. In this volume, distinguished contributors including human biologists, anthropologists, physiologists and nutritionists consider many of the different ways in which seasonality influences human biology and behavior. Topics addressed include the influence of seasonality on hominid evolution, seasonal climatic effects on human physiology, fertility and physical growth, seasonality in morbidity, mortality and nutritional state, and seasonal factors...

This volume emphasises the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of diet and disease.

Measures of biological variation have long been associated with many indices of social inequality. Data on health, nutrition, fertility, mortality, physical fitness, intellectual performance and a range of inherited biological markers show the ubiquity of such patterns across time, space and population. This volume reviews the current evidence for the strength of such linkages and the biological and social mechanisms that underlie them. A major theme is the relationship between the proximate determinants of these linkages and their longer term significance for biologically selective social...

In this book, the gap between socio-ecology and population demography is bridged, by showing how animals and humans adjust their fertility to environmental conditions.

This volume explores the factors in Third World cities that affect human biology and health.

The processes that control senescence have been the subject of more then a century of serious biological research. Two institutions closely involved in this programme, the Society for the Study of Human Biology and the British Society for Research in Ageing, held a joint symposium in 1984 to consider human ageing and longevity from an interdisciplinary point of view. The resulting book has four main sections: the evolution and genetics of ageing, biological age assessment, demographic and social aspects, and the nutritional and physiological aspects of ageing and longevity. The fundamental...

First published in 1988, this book examines the causes and consequences of different mating patterns in man with particular reference to biological, medical and demographic factors. Although the effects of inbreeding on genetic structure and gene frequencies have been well covered in the medical genetics literature, and specific social systems have been described in social anthropology texts, this attempts to present an holistic approach. Four main areas are covered: historical and demographic aspects; mate choice and assortative mating; social systems, religious rules and mating practices;...

The early environment in which we grow up has profound, long lasting, and often irreversible consequences for us throughout our lives. Stresses due to undernutrition in early childhood can mean that in adulthood individuals are smaller, more prone to disease, and have a shorter life expectancy than those with normal diets. Disease and poor living conditions in infancy and childhood also have serious implications in adulthood. While environmental effects on human growth and development are well documented, the long term consequences due to processes taking place at the early stages of growth...

Over 70% of the population in industrialized nations live in cities; in the next decade so will most of the world's entire population. This volume examines the impact of urban living on human health and biology. Cities pose numerous and diverse social and biological challenges to human populations. These challenges bear little resemblance to the forces that molded human biology throughout millions of years of evolution. Urban populations in industrialized nations have distinctive patterns of behavior, social stratification, stress, infectious disease, diet, activity, and exposure to...

In this volume the knowledge of working capacity in tropical populations is reviewed in a series of illustrative papers.