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A pathway to pro-social behavior
The digit ratio is the length of the index finger (2ndfinger) divided by the ring finger (4th finger). It correlates with the degree of androgenization or estrogenization of fetal tissues, including...
View ArticleLooking back over 2013
She looks nice in a long skirt. Source: Ted TalksThe year is ending, and it’s time to take stock. Which posts interested you the most? Here are the five most popular ones, with the number of visits to...
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Another Robert Chambers?
Robert Chambers (1802-1871). His anonymously published book, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), helped pave the way for public acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution. (source) I...
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The puzzle of European hair, eye, and skin color
Taylor Swift (photo by David Shankbone). The physical appearance of Europeans seems to result from a selection pressure that acted primarily on women and only secondarily on men. This is especially...
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Rice farming and gene-culture co-evolution
Rice paddies, China, circa 1917-1923 (source). To grow rice, you must cooperate with neighbors for irrigation and labor. Today, even with the shift to a post-agricultural society, Chinese from...
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A new allele for blond hair
Geographic prevalence of the new allele for blond hair (Guenther et al., 2014). Just one of many alleles that create the European palette of hair and eye colors. There is a widespread belief that...
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A hair-color allele of Neanderthal origin?
Taiwanese aboriginal children, Bunun village (source: Jeremy Kemp). 60-70% of Taiwanese aborigines have a loss-of-function allele at the main hair color gene, MC1R, yet their hair is as black as...
View ArticleNegotiating the gap. Four academics and the dilemma of human biodiversity
I’ve published a second article in Open Behavioral Genetics: “Negotiating the gap. Four academics and the dilemma of human biodiversity.” You can read it as a PDF here or as a caliber ebook here. The...
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How universal is empathy?
Bronislaw Malinowski with natives on the Trobriand Islands (1918 - source). Pro-social behavior seems to be a human universal, but is the same true for full empathy? What is empathy? It has at least...
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The origins of guilt: Darwin and Freud
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Replacement or continuity?
Inuit meat cache, Kazan River (source: Library and Archives Canada / PA-101294). Because of their high meat diet, hunters produce more body heat than farmers do. Natural selection has thus favored...
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The Franz Boas you never knew
The anthropologist Franz Boas is remembered for moving the social sciences away from genetic determinism and toward environmental determinism. In reality, he felt that genes do contribute...
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From Nazi Germany to Middletown: ratcheting up the war on racism
Licensed under public domain via Wikimedia Commons Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), much more than Franz Boas, would define the aims of Boasian anthropology for postwar America. When Franz Boas died in 1942,...
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A new start
When geneticist Davide Piffer examined IQ-enhancing alleles at seven different genes, he found that their average prevalence differed among human populations, being highest in East Asians and lowest...
View ArticleDear Fred
In a recent post, Fred Reed asks:Why should I not indulge my hobby of torturing to death the severely genetically retarded? This would seem beneficial. We certainly don't want them to reproduce, they...
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Kinder, gentler speech
A highwayman - by Glen Campbell (source). Before the rise of the State, and its pacification of social relations, the top man was the one who dominated the local group through a mixture of violence,...
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The agricultural revolution that wasn't
Originally from south China, Austronesians spread successively outward to Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Was farming the secret of their success? Or was it their mental makeup? (source: French...
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Getting the babes but not the babies
Still from the film Is Matrimony a Failure?(1922). Who's making more babies? "Good boys" or "bad boys"? Originally, the good boys were, thanks to parental monitoring of relations between single men...
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How modular is intelligence?
Great at reading or recognizing faces? You might not do so well on an IQ test. Source: Histoire naturelle générale et particulière avec la Description du Cabinet du Roy (1749) (Wikicommons) The English...
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Does Natural Law exist?
A widow about to be buried alive in her husband's grave (Wikimedia Commons). Do we all share the same sense of right and wrong? What, ultimately, is the basis for morality? In a comment on a previous...
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