The man who tried to catalog humanity

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza chased Darwin’s dream of a tree of humankind

John Hawks
Sep 2, 2018 · 15 min read

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, known simply as “Luca” to generations of human geneticists, died this week at age 96. More than any other human geneticist, Cavalli-Sforza believed in the potential of genes and culture together to trace humanity’s origins. In the course of his work, he pioneered new ideas and models that brought together these two distinct areas of science.

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John Hawks

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Paleoanthropologist. I study human evolution and work to understand the fossil and genetic evidence of our hominin ancestors.

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