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As this book shows, a fascinating chapter of the human evolutionary history has been written in the American continent. In pre-Columbian times, America was inhabited by hunter-gatherer peoples, although, in some places, new technological innovations arose, resulting in the emergence of organized states and cities larger than some important European counterparts. The arrival of the European conquerors and settlers and African slaves dramatically changed the course of this history, however. Despite the turmoil in this post-contact period, some small and isolated communities maintaining hunter-ga

This article begins with a brief overview of the history of Brazil and that of Brazilian science, from the European discovery of the country in 1500 up to the early 21st century. The history of the fields of genetics and genomics, from the 1930s, is then first examined from the focal point of the lives and publications of the three persons who are generally considered to be the founders of genetics in Brazil (C. A. Krug, F. G. Brieger, and A. Dreyfus), and then by 12 other researchers up to 1999. The area of molecular genetics and genomics from 2000 to present is then described. Despite the problems of underdevelopment and the periodical political and economic crises that have affected life in Brazil, the fields of genetics and genomics in Brazil can be regarded as having developed at an appropriate pace, and have contributed in several major ways to world science.

Foram comparados os processos de evolução biológica e cultural, especialmente no que se refere à genética e à linguagem em Ameríndios. Após, foi feita uma revisão sobre a variabilidade genética do povo Tupí como investigada pela nossa equipe de pesquisadores, relacionando-a com a história de populações da Guiana Francesa, do Paraguai, do sul do Brasil, bem como de outras regiões do continente. É muito importante que haja uma integração entre dados biológicos e linguísticos, para a interpretação correta da evolução de grupos humanos.

A review of studies re the consequences of race mixture suggests that an answer to the question of the biological consequences for man will be achieved only after 2 basic questions are elucidated: (1) the characteristics of the major component of `genetic load' in most the human pop's & (2) the degree of adaptiveness of most racial diff's. D. Cooperman.