Our species has a capacity for flexible biological response to environmental conditions within a lifetime, as well as specific adaptations acquired over the long span of evolution. Pre-industrial human populations, sharing a similar range of physiological capacities, succeeded in occupying much of the globe and a wide diversity of environments. This course examines this adaptability and its limits in an anthropological context, with particular attention to nutrition, the physical environment, and disease. The main sections of the course will be: on nutritional ecology, discussing the adequacy of the diet (especially in energy and protein) for health and growth, and environmental and social influences on nutrition; on environmental physiology, especially responses to physical factors (e.g. climate), also psychosocial factors (e.g. stress); on disease ecology, contrasting patterns of disease occurrence in traditional and developing societies with those in developed societies, and considering the processes involved in selected cases; and finally on the critical assessment of arguments that interpret aspects of culture as adaptations to biological variables, such as protein needs, population pressure or nutrient flows in the ecosystem. Throughout, examples for study will be selected on a cross-cultural basis, with a focus on indigenous traditional and developing societies, but with some attention also to developed societies.

Tutorial presentation (10%), two 2,500 word essays (30% each), examination (30%).

Normally offered in even-numbered years
Up to 2 hours of lectures, 1 hour of tutorial and 1 hour of film per week

Harrison, G., Tanner, J., Pilbeam, D. and Baker, P. Human Biology, Part IV, 3rd edn, Oxford UP, 1988.
Ashcroft, F. Life at the Extremes, Harper Collins, 2000.
McMichael, T. Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease, Cambridge UP, 2001.