Biological Anthropology and Aging : Perspectives on Human Variation Over the Life Span

Using models traditionally unique to anthropological research, this volume explores evolutionary, cross-cultural, physiological, environmental, and pathological influences on variation in human ageing. Presenting a broad evolutionary perspective in examining human life span and life history at the population level, the book also emphasizes human phenotypic plasticity as the key to understanding human biological ageing.

This volume is designed to explore evolutionary, cross-cultural, physiological, environmental, and pathological influences on variation in human biological ageing. With use of models traditionally unique to anthropological research, contributors to this edited volume approach human biological ageing as a heterogeneous and variable process. An explicit emphasis on evolutionary biology and human variation results in a renewed perspective on human biological ageing as the end result of a set of co-adapted genetic complexes that were associated with successful growth, development, reproduction, and parenting of offspring during our species'' evolutionary history. However, while examining human life span and life history parameters as population level phenomena, the book also emphasizes human phenotypic plasticity as the key to understanding human biological ageing. This broad evolutionary perspective on human biological ageing and life history patterns is unique in biological gerontology, a field generally reductionist in method and theory in keeping with current trends in biomedicine.