Wiley-Liss Plenary Symposium History of Migration Studies in Biological Anthropology C.G. NICHOLAS MASCIE-TAYLOR 1 AND MICHAEL A. LITTLE 2 * 1 Department of Biological Anthropology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK 2 Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, New York ABSTRACT The earliest studies of human biological factors in migration in which a clear research design was employed date back to the early 20th century in the United States. Maurice Fishberg’s study of Jewish migrants, published in 1905, antedated the classic study of Franz Boas initiated in 1908. There have been two main approaches. The first approach examined the impact of migration in relation to changing environment and the importance of environmental plasticity. For example, Fishberg reported that migrants had offspring different in stature from themselves and with differences thought to be due to improvements in the environment, although some selection of genetically determined traits was suggested. Subsequently, a number of research designs have been used, ranging from Boas’s simple design of sedente (nonmigrant) adults and children compared with first- and second-generation migrants; Shapiro’s extension of this study in Japanese migrants to Hawai’i; Goldstein’s four-fold comparison of Mexican sedentes and their offspring in Mexico, and migrants to the USA and their offspring in the USA; and Lasker’s extension of Goldstein’s Mexican study by including comparison of sedentes with returning emigrants. More sophisticated designs were used by Harrison and Baker in examining altitude effects and changes in subsistence and lifestyle during the 1960s through to the 1980s. The second approach has focused on the effect of migration on gene flow. For example, the clinal variation of ABO blood groups in Europe and Australia is generally purported to result from past migration, although increasing random migra- tion for blood groups is likely to eliminate clinal variation. Migration has usually been considered from a spatial (geographic) perspective, but more recent studies have also investigated the impact of social or occupational movement (social mobility) alone, or in combination with geographic migra- tion, and tested whether such movements are selective or random for a number of biological traits. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:365–378, 2004. # 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Human movement can be studied from a number of perspectives, including social and biological, and at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, including evolutionary, histor- ical, international, national, and local. Lasker and Mascie-Taylor (1988) observed that there are several independent lines of migration study that have been undertaken. The first is that migration is the mechanism that inserts similar kinds of individuals into diverse environments (dispersal). An alterna- tive is the mechanism that inserts diverse peoples into a similar environment (conver- gence). Sorting out the characteristics of the people and the environments in these studies has been a major challenge, particularly since people carry with them culture, diseases, and genes as they move through space. The second is that migration leads to the movement of DNA (or genes) from one population to another—that is, gene flow. This can occur through invasion and interbreeding by the conquering people at a large scale or village exogamy at a small scale. Gene flow is a fun- damental evolutionary process. The third is a combination of the first two: studying the interaction of genetic and environmental results of migration. Less research was con- ducted in the latter area in the past because identification of genetic traits was difficult. Current studies of DNA may make this research more practical. EARLY EMPIRICAL STUDIES IN HUMAN BIOLOGY Franz Boas’s (1911, 1912a,b) widely cited study of Eastern and Southern European migrants to New York City was one of the ß 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. *Correspondence to: M.A. Little, Department of Anthro- pology, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000. E-mail: mlittle@binghamton.edu Received 20 February 2004; Accepted 23 March 2004 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience. wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.20046 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY 16:365–378 (2004)