The Human Ecology of Infectious Disease

Biological anthropology is the study of the origins and maintenance of human diversity; the axis of diversity that defines his research interests is the stunning variation across populations and through time in the fundamental quantities of demography: age-specific mortality and fertility rates. Two major sources of variation in human mortality are the differential impact of (1) infectious disease and (2) violence across populations and through time. Theory, in turn, predicts that fertility should respond to the variation in mortality. As a consequence, Dr. James Holland Jones sees studying both infectious disease and violence as necessary predicates for understanding the diversity of the human demographic experience.