An essay on cultural transmission and evolution: definition of culture; animal culture; mechanisms, dynamics and factors of cultural transmission; interactions between biological and cultural transmission.
Evoluzione culturale
Chi siamo. La storia della diversità umana
Human diversity: the factors behind it and how it emerged in the course of time. How we change through succeeding generations. Genetics and molecular biology, archaeology, anthropology and linguistics come together to address the question of where we came from and how we became what we are.
Razzismo e noismo. Le declinazioni del noi e l’esclusione dell’altro
A study on the roots of racism and the refusal of “the other”. “Weness”, the sense of strength, safety and superiority provided by the group we identify with, and some of its dire consequences in XXth century history.
Infinite forme bellissime
Science Course for Junior High Schools: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Genetics, Evolution, Energy, Geology, Anatomy, Physiology, Biodiversity, Ecology, and Astronomy, are the main subjects dealt with.
Homo Sapiens. La grande storia della diversità umana
Born as a catalogue to the exhibit Homo sapiens, La grande storia della diversità umana, held in Rome in 2011, the book traces the history of humankind, as reconstructed through the disciplines that investigate our past. The narration is supported by the exhibit’s displays.
Pagina esposizione
Biologia per capire
Biology Course for Senior High Schools.
Ancora una volta ero io il curioso
Excerpts from the travels and the life on the field, in the lab and in the academy , of L.L. Cavalli-Sforza. Pictures and travelogues: the Pygmies and the African forests, the crossing of the Sahara, scientists and family, Cambridge and Stanford. The unquenchable curiosity of a researcher.
Vita in evoluzione
Science Course for Intermediate High Schools.
La specie prepotente
How a clever, arrogant human species came to colonize the planet, through a variety of biological and cultural adaptations, leading to waves of radiation as a consequence of demographic success, and to the differentiation of Homo sapiens into many thousand peoples across the continents. From molecules to customs.
Pianeta in evoluzione
Science Course for Intermediate High Schools.
La cultura italiana, I-XII
The Italian Culture is a 12-volume encyclopedia, directed by Cavalli-Sforza, devoted to all sides of Italian living and culture: I – Land and Peoples; II – Tongues and Languages; III – House, Town, and Landscape; IV – Economy and Communication; V – Social Structure, Values, and Politics; VI – Food, Games, Feasts, and Fashion; VII – Culture. A Humanistic Inclination; VIII – Sciences and Technologies; IX – Music, Spectacle, Photography, and Design; X – Art and Visuals / Subject Index; XI – Dictionary of Culture A-L; XII – Dictionary of Culture M-Z. The whole of the nation’s history is explored, for the very first time.
Itinerari di scienze della natura
Science Course for Commercial High Schools.
Il caso e la necessità. Ragioni e limiti della diversità genetica
A scientist’s enquiry into the tools that allow us to look into the human past: genetic transmission and molecular biology, demography and statistics, archeology and linguistics. The progress of the species, between chance and necessity. How the co-operation among different disciplines may help us to understand the marks left by our evolutionary history.
Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis
The scientific research of L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, unifying the study of genetics and of culture, as seen through the eyes of an anthropologist and of a geneticist (with an introduction by Cavalli-Sforza).
Itinerari di scienze della Terra e biologia
Science Course for Technical High Schools.
Perché la scienza. L’avventura di un ricercatore
A researcher’s adventure. An auto-biography of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza: how he discovered Genetics as a young medicine student, and how from the study of bacterial recombination he progressed to founding Human Population Genetics and to the parallel study of biological and cultural human evolution. A section of the book is dedicated to what science is and is not, and to the reasons for practising it.
Galàpagos
Science Course for Junior High Schools.
Consanguinity, inbreeding, and genetic drift in Italy
A case study, nation-wide: consanguineous marriages and inbreeding in Italy in the past centuries, reconstructed through parish-book genealogies and the use of surnames as a genetic marker, along with the application of sophisticated statistical tools.
L’evoluzione della cultura
The evolution of culture, studied in its distinctiveness as well as in its affinities with biological evolution. The first book to deal with culture as an evolutionary force in its own right, and to approach the interlacement between biology and culture, and its driving effect on the evolution of our species.
Natura
Science Course for Junior High Schools.