Southeast Asia is regarded as one of the birthplaces of modern humans. Recent genetic evidence shows that it was probably the entry point of modern humans from Africa into East Asia and Oceania. With the help of new markers X mostly from the Y-chromosome and mtDNA X several recent efforts have been made to study the populations of Southeast Asia, which have been somewhat neglected in the past. A new picture of the origin and migrations of modern humans in this region is quickly emerging. In this book, the leading researchers in the studies of Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Oceanian populations present the most up-to-date results of their research. Contents: Prehistory of Human Populations: Archaelogical, Linguistic and Paleontological Perspectives: Prehistory, Language and Human Biology: Is There a Consensus in East and Southeast Asia? (C F W Higham); Human Diversity and Language Diversity (W S-Y Wang); Before the Neolithic: HunterBGatherer Societies in Central Thailand (R Thosarat); The Peopling of Southeast Asia: The Case for an African Rather Than an Asian Origin of the Human Y-Chromosome YAP Insertion (P A Underhill & C C Roseman); Genetic History of Ethnic Populations in Southwestern China (B Su et al.); Y-Chromosomal Variation in Uxorilocal and Patrilocal Populations in Thailand (M Srikummool et al.); Genetic Relationships Among 16 Ethnic Groups from Malaysia and Southeast Asia (S G Tan); The Peopling of East Asia: Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project: A Synopsis (J Chu); Origins and Prehistoric Migrations of Modern Humans in East Asia (B Su & L Jin); The Peopling of Oceania: The Genetic Trail from Southeast Asia to the Pacific (R Deka et al.); The Colonization of Remote Oceania and the Drowning of Sundaland (J K Lum). Readership: Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in genetics, anthropology and linguistics.

As the population of older Americans grows, it is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Differences in health by racial and ethnic status could be increasingly consequential for health policy and programs. Such differences are not simply a matter of education or ability to pay for health care. For instance, Asian Americans and Hispanics appear to be in better health, on a number of indicators, than White Americans, despite, on average, lower socioeconomic status. The reasons are complex, including possible roles for such factors as selective migration, risk behaviors, exposure to various stressors, patient attitudes, and geographic variation in health care. This volume, produced by a multidisciplinary panel, considers such possible explanations for racial and ethnic health differentials within an integrated framework. It provides a concise summary of available research and lays out a research agenda to address the many uncertainties in current knowledge. It recommends, for instance, looking at health differentials across the life course and deciphering the links between factors presumably producing differentials and biopsychosocial mechanisms that lead to impaired health.

Recent findings in the fields of East Asian archaeology, linguistics and genetics are collected together here, making this an ideal reference tool for scholars in all disciplines working on the reconstruction of the East Asian past.

The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?

-- "The Scientist"