‘‘So Mortal and So Strange a Pang’’: A Tribute to

An important aspect of human biology is our ability to acclimatize to essentially every environment on earth: our adaptability. A second aspect is evolutionary, how we got the ability to do that: our adaptation. Both adaptability and adaptation have a genetic component, in the first case concerning the genetic mechanisms that enable people to respond to different environmental conditions and, in the latter, the evolution of those mechanisms. The two seem to be related, but are the genes the same, and how can we tell? One model system for understanding both adaptability and adaptation in the present as well as the evolutionary past may be life in the hypoxic (low-oxygen) environment of high altitude, because if you live up high, you can’t escape the stresses posed by the lower partial pressure of oxygen. Beginning in the early 1960s, one of the homes of high-altitude research was the Department of Anthropology at Penn State, where Paul Baker (Fig. 1), his colleagues, and their students traveled the high road of humanadaptability research for many years. In the 1980s, Paul’s colleagues, students, and grandstudents made 10% or more of all presentations at annual meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. Other prominent research groups have also been working on this problem, of course, but now, after a considerable hiatus, there is renewed research in this area here at Penn State. Consequently, we thought it would not be too parochial to discuss recent scientific advances in the context of honoring the Baker legacy. Paul’s academic descendants continue to conjure understanding out of thin air, but since his time the research atmosphere has changed. Major advances in technology, especially in molecular biology and genetics, have shifted the focus from phenomenology to mechanism and made it possible to be much more genetically specific about both adaptability and adaptation. But the new approaches also force us to confront the challenge of understanding the difference between them.