Introduction

In the last few decades population structure of human groups has emerged as posing some of the most interesting and provocative problems in contemporary anthropological and genetic sciences. Migration is a principal feature acting directly (though with varying intensity) on both genetic equilibrium and demography of populations, so that migration analysis is essential for the understanding of population structure at all levels (Roberts, 1988). Few human populations today remain isolated; those that are not, experience different migratory pressures. At the global level, international migration today is a major topic of economic and social concern (Appleyard, 1988), while the biological effects of human migration are of considerable importance to a wide variety of disciplines (Mascie-Taylor & Lasker, 1989) including anthropology, demography, epidemiology and genetics. A few years ago, discussing the importance of genetic structure in human microevolution, Roberts (1987) noted ‘Every human population can be regarded as a continuing entity occupying a particular space. … A population can be characterised statistically, and distinguished from other populations, by the use of parameters, its group attributes (e.g. birth rates and death rates, means and variance of metric characters, territorial density, gene frequency) which are meaningless relative to any individual. The population is permanent in relation to the individuals composing it; for the individual is born into the population, which exists before his arrival and continues to exist after his death.’ This chapter presents an analysis of the results from studies of the population structure of contemporary European rural communities in the Eastern Adriatic.