The population structure of the Peruvian Cashinahua: demographic, genetic and cultural interrelationships.

Abstract

THE processes of ongoing human evolution, as revealed by the dynamics of populations, may be studied in a variety of contexts. At the one extreme we have the large population, seemingly infinite and effectively panmictic, while at the other there is the small, finite isolate, geographically delineated, whose gene pool is strikingly affected by both natural and cultural factors which may not act significantly upon the larger population. With the increasing study of small isolates, the analysis of these factors becomes not only of interest but vital to an understanding of the alterations of their gene pools with successive generations. We describe here, in a specific population of limited size, pertinent demographic and cultural aspects insofar as they are significant in the channeling of genes.