© JAY EADSDuring his final year as an undergraduate anthropology major at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Josh Snodgrass began working criminal cases with forensic anthropologist Alison Galloway. After graduating in 1995, Snodgrass spent a month in the former Yugoslavia, analyzing human remains from mass graves. “It was an amazing experience, but oh, man, it takes a toll,” he recalls, “and in the end, I just didn’t find [forensic anthropology] intellectually satisfying enough.”
Instead, Snodgrass studied the evolution of early hominins at the University of Florida, earning a master’s degree in 1998. After many lively discussions with William Leonard, who was on his master’s thesis committee, Snodgrass realized that “if we want to understand human evolution, we need a better grasp of the adaptive dimensions of human biology in living populations, and we need more data on that.” Another new direction beckoned.
METHODS: In 2001, as a PhD student under Leonard at Northwestern University, Snodgrass started a field project studying indigenous populations in northeastern Siberia to understand how long-term environmental adaptation shapes biological responses to culturally induced lifestyle changes.
In the early 2000s, indigenous Siberians called the Yakut began to abandon traditional ways of life, meaning they became ...
