The Solomon Islands Project

In the late 1960s and early 70s, the Harvard Solomon Islands Medical-Anthropological expeditions amassed extensive anthropological, genetic, and health data on over 3000 individuals living in eight quite different groups in these south-west Pacific islands.

At that time, most of the groups were still only marginally affected by world culture, but in the past twenty years many have been transformed by mining discoveries and cash cropping.

This volume serves both to summarize the findings of the Harvard expeditions and the follow-up results of subsequent surveys in 1978-80, in which a large percentage of the people initially studied were resurveyed.

Particular emphases of this collection include genetic distance studies in this most diverse set of populations, longitudinal studies in blood-pressure change and associated changes in body build, a prospective study of hepatitis-B status and mortality, and an overview of epidemiological trends with modernization.