Abstract
In the 1960s the human geneticist James V. Neel and collaborators launched a research program aimed at investigating the human biology of South American indigenous populations, which would become one of the most influential such studies in the second half of the 20th century. In the first part of this article I explore the trajectory of some components of the Amazonian research program and situate it in the context of worldwide human biological research in the 1960s and 1970s. In the second half I suggest that the comparative analysis of previous research on the human biology of indigenous peoples might provide insights into highly debated issues pertaining to contemporaneous research agendas, including the `Human Genome Diversity Project' (HGDP).
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