Anthropologists have long been interested in explaining patterns of variation in human physical form, in both present-day and ancient humans. Starting in the 1950s, their explanations became more firmly rooted in evolutionary theory, but they have typically focused on adaptive accounts. Neutral explanations - those grounded in models of evolution by mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow rather than natural selection - provide an alternative to adaptive explanations, and in recent years, neutral models have become an important tool for researchers investigating the evolution of human physical form. Neutral models have implications for many areas of biological anthropology, including using morphology to reconstruct the histories and migrations of recent human populations, using morphology to infer the evolutionary relationships among hominin taxa, and clarifying how natural selection has acted on physical form throughout human evolution. Their application to anthropological questions has stimulated biological anthropologists to more seriously consider the roles of history and chance in human evolution. In light of the growing importance of neutral explanations in biological anthropology, the goal here is to provide an introduction to neutral models of phenotypic evolution and their application to human physical form.

中文翻译：

---

中立理论与人类身体形态的演变：模型和应用简介。

长期以来，人类学家一直对解释当今和古代人类身体形态变异的模式感兴趣。从1950年代开始，他们的解释更加牢固地植根于进化论，但通常集中于适应性理论。中性解释-基于突变，遗传漂移和基因流动而不是自然选择的进化模型中的解释-提供了适应性解释的替代方法，并且近年来，中性模型已成为研究人员研究人体进化的重要工具形成。中性模型对生物人类学的许多领域都有影响，包括使用形态学重建最近人类的历史和迁徙，使用形态学推断人参类群之间的进化关系，并阐明自然选择如何在整个人类进化过程中作用于物理形式。将其应用于人类学问题已经激发了生物人类学家更加认真地考虑历史和机会在人类进化中的作用。鉴于中性解释在生物人类学中的重要性日益提高，此处的目的是介绍表型进化的中性模型及其在人类身体形态中的应用。