No Recent Human Evolution
False Assumption: The human mind is adapted to the conditions of 10,000 years ago and has not changed since.
Summaries Written by FARAgent (AI) on February 14, 2026 · Pending Verification
For a long time, a standard line in evolutionary psychology was that the human mind is basically a Pleistocene tool kit, built for hunter-gatherer life and only recently dropped into cities, states, and markets. On this view, agriculture and civilization arrived too late to rewrite much of human nature, especially for complex psychological traits that are hard to change and hard to measure. That was not a foolish inference. For decades the strongest examples of recent evolution were mostly physiological, lactose tolerance being the classroom favorite, while the postwar fear of biological determinism made many scholars wary of claims about mental differences. By the 1990s and 2000s, writers such as Steven Pinker could discuss universal human nature, and even falling violence, mainly in terms of institutions, commerce, and state power, while treating substantial recent mental evolution as politically radioactive and scientifically doubtful.
Since then, that assumption has been increasingly questioned. Population genetics found widespread signals of recent positive selection, including a 2007 PNAS paper arguing that human adaptive evolution had accelerated rather than stopped, and later genome-wide studies reporting many selected regions in the last few thousand years. Researchers such as Gregory Clark argued from historical demography that in England, from the medieval period onward, differential reproduction may have favored traits useful in bourgeois life, while Cochran and Harpending's The 10,000 Year Explosion made the broader case that agriculture, density, and new social orders created fresh selection pressures. Some studies have also reported enrichment of recent-selection markers in educational and cognitive traits, and journalists such as Nicholas Wade argued that denying recent evolution of behavior had become a social taboo as much as a scientific judgment.
The case is still disputed. Many experts accept recent human evolution in the plain sense, but argue that moving from selected genes to claims about population-level psychology is a much larger step, vulnerable to weak proxies, confounding, and storytelling. They note that cultural change can be fast, institutions can reshape behavior without genetic change, and polygenic traits are difficult to interpret across populations. Still, a substantial body of experts now rejects the old flat claim that the human mind is simply adapted to conditions of 10,000 years ago and unchanged since; the live argument is over how much recent evolution affected behavior, cognition, and social traits, and how confidently anyone can say so.
Status: A significant portion of experts think this assumption was false
People Involved
- Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist and author of several influential books on human nature, spent years documenting the long decline in violence across human history. He pointed to twin studies showing substantial heritability of aggressive traits and even noted that certain breeds of animals could be selected for docility in just a few generations. Yet when it came to the possibility that natural selection had continued to shape human populations in the last 10,000 years, Pinker drew back, citing the political inconvenience of such conclusions. His hesitation carried weight. Many readers who followed his work on violence absorbed the message that biology had largely frozen at the end of the Pleistocene. [1]
- Gregory Clark, the University of California economic historian, examined centuries of English probate records and parish registers. He concluded that between 1200 and 1800 the descendants of the most successful tradesmen and farmers had gradually replaced the violent and impulsive among the English population. The data showed steady selection for traits that favored literacy, numeracy, and self-control. Clark presented his case in plain economic terms, yet his findings sat uneasily beside the prevailing view that nothing biological had changed since the Ice Age. [1]
- Nicholas Wade, longtime science journalist at The New York Times, published A Troublesome Inheritance in 2014. He argued that denying recent human evolution left scholars unable to make sense of persistent differences in social institutions and economic performance across continents. Wade’s book was widely attacked. Reviewers accused him of reviving discredited racial science, even though his central claim was simply that the same evolutionary processes visible in other species had not exempted humans in the Holocene. [1]
- David Reich, the Harvard geneticist known for sequencing ancient DNA, stated in 2018 that the denial of biological differences among human populations had become indefensible. In 2024 his team released a massive study of West Eurasian genomes that detected directional selection on variants linked to cognitive performance. Reich’s public warnings and empirical work placed him in the uncomfortable role of challenging the academic consensus he had once helped shape. [3]
- John Hawks, anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, led the 2007 analysis that first demonstrated a hundredfold acceleration in genetic evolution over the past 40,000 years. He later criticized newer studies for methodological choices that masked ongoing selection. Hawks’ early paper received respectful citations but little follow-up until larger datasets became available. [6]
- Nathan Cofnas, an American researcher, published a 2019 paper in Philosophical Psychology arguing that the assumption of equal genetic potential across human groups lacked empirical support. Student protests and faculty complaints followed. Cambridge University nevertheless appointed him as an early-career fellow in philosophy in 2024, a decision that reignited public debate over the boundaries of acceptable inquiry. [7]
▶ Supporting Quotes (16)
“Pinker agrees with Elias that the principal drivers of the civilizing process were the increasing monopoly of force by the state, which reduced the need for interpersonal violence, and the greater levels of interaction with others that were brought about by urbanization and commerce.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
““It could have the incendiary implication that aboriginal and immigrant populations are less biologically adapted to the demands of modern life than populations that have lived in literate state societies for millennia.””— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Clark makes a strong case that the molding of the English population from rough peasants into industrious citizenry between 1200 and 1800 AD was a continuation of this evolutionary process.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“This book has been an attempt, undoubtedly imperfect, to dispel the fear of racism that overhangs discussion of human group differences and to begin to explore the far-reaching implications of the discovery that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“I was told that I was “engaging in outdated notions of environmental determinism,” that I was “playing with fire by suggesting evolved cognitive differences,” that “the political climate on our campus is highly unfavorable for these areas of research,””— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“I had no choice but to pursue my studies alone: I would publish my findings in a peer reviewed scientific journal, and skip the PhD. I cashed out my savings and bought myself a year or two of runway time. A few weeks ago, the paper I wrote was finally published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“David Reich is the Harvard geneticist who caused a stir in 2018 when he wrote a piece for the New York Times arguing that “well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science”. His team has just released a major new study.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Taken together, the findings arguably vindicate the arguments put forward in Henry Harpending and Greg Cochran’s 2009 book, The 10,000 Year Explosion.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Geneticist Graham Coop has already posted a Twitter thread criticising the study. But in my view, he makes two mistakes.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Dan’s post is called “We Are Confused, Maladapted Apes Who Need Enlightenment.” What Dan means by “enlightenment” is something like: “the culture and ideas of intellectuals.” And what he means by “confused and maladapted” is something like: “irrational, ignorant, self-deluded, and in dire need of the culture and ideas of intellectuals.””— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain. —Stephen Jay Gould”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“Something must have happened to weaken the selective pressure drastically. We cannot escape the conclusion that man’s evolution towards manness suddenly came to a halt. —Ernst Mayr”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“The first study was led by John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“It was led by Ilan Libedinsky, a geneticist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“Nathan Cofnas denied that all 'human groups' have the same 'potential' in 2019... Speaking to MailOnline, he confirms he still stands by what he wrote... 'The paper represents my views then and now.'”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge
“It is seriously flawed and has been thoroughly debunked by Stephen J. Gould and others.”— But Why Would You Study That?
Organizations Involved
The American Anthropological Association launched public education projects in the 1990s and 2000s declaring that race had no biological reality. Its statements emphasized that human differences were cultural and that any attempt to link them to genetics risked repeating the errors of the past. The AAA’s position became standard reference material in undergraduate courses and shaped the language used by journalists and policymakers when discussing group differences. [1]
The Santa Barbara school of evolutionary psychology, centered on researchers at the University of California, promoted the idea that the human mind was shaped by universal mechanisms fixed before the Out-of-Africa migration. Textbooks and review articles from this group rarely discussed post-Pleistocene local adaptations, treating them as trivial at best. Their framework dominated introductory psychology courses for two decades. [2]
The American Sociological Association issued formal statements discouraging the collection of race data in ways that might imply biological causation. Its guidance reinforced the view that observed group differences in behavior and achievement were entirely environmental. These statements influenced grant reviewers and journal editors across the social sciences. [1]
Harvard’s Reich laboratory assembled and standardized thousands of ancient genomes from disparate studies, then released the dataset without the restrictive access agreements common in the field. The move allowed independent researchers to test hypotheses about recent selection that might otherwise have remained unexplored. [3]
▶ Supporting Quotes (6)
“American Anthropological Association, “Race: A Public Education Project,” www.aaanet.org/resources/A-Public-Education-Program.cfm.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“American Sociological Association, “The Importance of Collecting Data and Doing Social Scientific Research on Race,” (Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 2003), www2.asanet.org/media/asa_race_statement.pdf.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“The famous Santa Barbara school seems to focus on the (pre-Out of Africa) origins of certain universal features among humans, and has little to say about the (post-Out of Africa) origins of certain features that vary among human groups.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“Reich and his colleagues deserve credit for promoting true “open science” principles in ancient genomics. They have spent considerable effort collecting genomes from many studies, aggregating the data into a consistent format, and making it publicly available. Here I mean genuinely publicly available, as in literally anyone can download it without signing up or agreeing to censorship terms, having an approved academic email, or being a “bona fide” researcher.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago—in the most up-to-date version, before modern humans expanded out of Africa some 50,000 years ago.”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“In a 2019 paper published in Philosophical Psychology... in June 2020 the editor of the journal resigned over the controversy.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge
The Foundation
Evolutionary psychologists maintained that the human mind had been shaped by the demands of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer life and had remained essentially unchanged since the end of the Ice Age. The claim seemed reasonable because the archaeological record showed sophisticated tools and symbolic behavior appearing roughly 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, after which cultural evolution appeared to take over. Later evidence of ongoing genetic change, including selection on cognitive traits, has prompted critics to question whether the Pleistocene adaptation story captured the full picture. [5][1]
The decline in violence over recent centuries was attributed entirely to the rise of the state and expanding commerce. Steven Pinker and the historian Norbert Elias presented these social institutions as the principal drivers, an explanation that aligned with the assumption that human biology had stayed constant. Twin studies and skull gracilization data suggesting genetic contributions were acknowledged but rarely integrated into the dominant narrative. [1]
Cultural psychologists explained differences in personality and behavior across societies by pointing to socioecological factors of the last 10,000 years, such as rice cultivation and pathogen stress. The approach appeared persuasive given the clear historical correlations, yet it left earlier Ice Age environments out of the analysis. Recent archaeogenetic work has since shown that Siberian and Arctic conditions during the Pleistocene left detectable signatures in East Asian psychological traits. [2]
Evolutionary mismatch theory portrayed the modern mind as adapted to an ancestral world of small egalitarian bands, scarce calories, and immediate threats. Popular accounts described humans as confused apes struggling with junk food, pornography, and large-scale inequality. Subsequent research by authors such as Daniel Nettle, Clark Barrett, and others has documented flexible learning mechanisms and variable ancestral social structures that complicate the simple mismatch story. [4]
The prevailing academic view held that culture had largely replaced genetic evolution after behavioral modernity. Innovations like agriculture and sedentary life supposedly allowed humans to adapt by changing their environment rather than their genes. Genomic studies have since identified hundreds of selected variants in the last 14,000 years, including those linked to pigmentation, lactose tolerance, and educational attainment, raising questions about how completely culture insulated human biology from selection. [6][9][11]
▶ Supporting Quotes (21)
“evolutionary psychologists, of whom he is one, have always held that the human mind is adapted to the conditions of 10,000 years ago and hasn’t changed since.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Pinker agrees with Elias that the principal drivers of the civilizing process were the increasing monopoly of force by the state, which reduced the need for interpersonal violence, and the greater levels of interaction with others that were brought about by urbanization and commerce.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“The implied view of many academics, from historians to anthropologists to population geneticists, is that human evolution came to a halt in the distant past and that only then, after a decent pause, did history begin.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Christopher F. Chabris et al., “Most Reported Genetic Associations with General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives,” Psychological Science 20, no. 10 (Sept. 24, 2012): 1–10.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Sandra Wilde et al., “Direct Evidence for Positive Selection of Skin, Hair, and Eye Pigmentation in Europeans During the Last 5,000 years,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (2013): 4832–837.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“My paper falls within the discipline of cultural psychology, which seeks to understand people’s culture and personality by examining the socioecological factors that they experienced over the last 10,000 years.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“prior to recent advances in archaeogenetics and paleoecology, the pre-Holocene period was mostly handwaved away by psychologists – due to lack of data, methods and interest.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“These scores are exclusively trained on modern Europeans (mostly British people), so it is possible that they are afflicted by certain biases, notably ascertainment bias or uncorrected population stratification. The latter means that the model identifies some ancestry signal which predicts an outcome, not for genetic reasons, but rather because it serves as a proxy for some unmeasured environmental cause. The typical example is the use of chopsticks.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“A big part of Dan’s post is about evolutionary mismatch. This is the idea that the human brain is primarily adapted to an ancestral environment of cave paintings and tribal warfare and saber-tooth tigers, which is very different from our modern environment of cellphones and skyscrapers and pornography.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“The popular story about gorging on sugary or fatty foods that were scarce in ancestral environments has a bit of truth to it, but it’s too simple. A moment’s reflection will make you realize that we obviously have mechanisms for curbing our appetite when our stomachs are full, or when we’ve had too much bacon or fudge, or when we’ve had too much bacon or fudge, or when we need to lie down because we’re in a food coma.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“Then there is the story of ancestral, mobile, small-scale, egalitarian hunter gatherer tribes—another supposed example of mismatch to our swarming cities and towering wealth inequalities. Again, this story is too simple.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“Dan argues that one of the biggest sources of mismatch is in our zero-sum attitudes. Dan writes that “zero-sum thinking makes sense for hunter-gatherers. When you live at the subsistence level, one person’s dramatic gains likely mean someone else’s dramatic loss.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“Scientists have long believed that the “great leap forward,” some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe, marked the advent of cultural evolution and the end of significant biological evolution in humans.”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“The argument that the advent of behavioral modernity somehow froze human evolution is dependent on the notion of a static environment.”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“The dominant view is that we evolved by changing our environment rather than ourselves; genetic evolution gave way to cultural evolution. For instance, we “adapt” to the cold by making clothes or having a fireplace in our home. Culture allowed us to inhabit a diverse range of circumstances, and it diversified us accordingly. Yes, we too have diversified — in shape, color and size — but those differences are trivial.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“Genetic evolution began to accelerate at a time when humans had already spread from the equator to the Arctic. The impetus for acceleration came from people adapting, not so much to new natural environments, as to an ever-wider range of cultural environments.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“In sum, the faster pace of cultural change made genetic change more necessary, not less so. The two modes of evolution complemented each other, with one spurring the other forward.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“selection has accelerated greatly during the last 40,000 years. McDonald-Kreitman analyses inferred that 10%–20% of amino acid changes have been adaptive”— Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution
“in those 10,000 years, it arose independently in at least four places around the globe”— An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance?
“Results suggest an underlying evolutionary factor in the genetics of educational attainment and cognitive function”— Enrichment of genetic markers of recent human evolution in educational and cognitive traits
“It is seriously flawed and has been thoroughly debunked by Stephen J. Gould and others. Perhaps the authors are racist, perhaps not, but whatever their motives, the book is full of elementary errors and other logical embarrassments.”— But Why Would You Study That?
How It Spread
The assumption spread through standard textbooks in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, where it was presented as settled knowledge. Stephen Jay Gould’s influential critiques of biological explanations for behavior reinforced the idea that significant human evolution had stopped tens of thousands of years ago. Undergraduate lectures repeated the claim without qualification, and students absorbed it as conventional wisdom. [12][5]
Academic gatekeeping during the period known as the Great Awokening made it difficult to pursue research on evolved psychological differences. PhD applicants who proposed such topics were warned about funding problems and reputational damage. Several program directors explicitly advised candidates to choose safer lines of inquiry. [2]
Ancient DNA datasets often came with access restrictions requiring approved academic status or signed agreements against certain forms of analysis. Major papers on recent selection sometimes omitted citations to earlier controversial works, possibly to avoid drawing attention. These practices limited open debate and slowed the accumulation of contrary evidence. [3]
Intellectuals amplified mismatch narratives in popular writing and public lectures. By emphasizing human irrationality and the need for expert guidance, they positioned themselves as necessary correctives to evolved flaws. The framing proved attractive in both academic and media circles. [4]
▶ Supporting Quotes (11)
“Pinker establishes that both personal violence and deaths in warfare have been in steady decline for as long as records can tell.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Alan H. Goodman, Yolanda T. Moses, and Joseph L. Jones, Race: Are We So Different? (Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association 2012), 2.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“it was the peak of the “Great Awokening”, and there was a blackout in the English-speaking world on any academic exploration of psychological group differences.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
““the political climate on our campus is highly unfavorable for these areas of research,” that “this is probably the worst time in history to be studying such topics,””— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“literally anyone can download it without signing up or agreeing to censorship terms, having an approved academic email, or being a “bona fide” researcher.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Reich’s team failed to cite certain prior research on the topic. Even though their paper has 220 references and runs to 53 pages (plus a 124 page supplement), the Harpending and Cochran book is not cited. Nor is our study from March of this year based on a partially overlapping dataset. Nor is the Yunus Kuijpers and colleagues study (which is also based on a partially overlapping dataset). Nor is the pioneering study by Michael Woodley and colleagues. Since we’re talking about a preprint, oversights of this sort can be forgiven. But one does wonder whether the authors made a deliberate attempt to avoid “stirring the pot”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“intellectuals often overstate the demand for their grand ideas, in large part by pretending we humans are confused and maladapted, so that they can cast themselves as humanity’s saviors.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“The dominant view is that we evolved by changing our environment rather than ourselves; genetic evolution gave way to cultural evolution.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“Students have slammed the decision to hire him as 'disappointing' and 'crazy'... one philosophy student telling Varsity: 'It's crazy that someone who's published such obviously questionable work has been given not only a platform but a Fellow position. 'It's obviously disappointing but not surprising.''”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge
“In my first psychology classes, I was taught what many undergraduates have since been taught about that book.”— But Why Would You Study That?
Resulting Policies
PhD admissions committees at English-speaking universities during the 2010s routinely turned away applicants whose proposals involved evolved group differences in psychology. The stated concern was that such research would face grant difficulties and public backlash. The pattern created a de facto filter on what questions could be asked by the next generation of scholars. [2]
Cambridge University’s Faculty of Philosophy reviewed Nathan Cofnas’s 2019 paper challenging the assumption of equal group potential. Despite protests from students and some faculty labeling the work questionable, the department appointed him to a three-year early-career fellowship in 2024. The decision signaled that certain institutional barriers were not absolute. [7]
Undergraduate psychology curricula presented The Bell Curve as a text containing elementary errors and logical embarrassments, citing Stephen Jay Gould’s review as authoritative. The portrayal discouraged students from reading the original work and steered research agendas away from questions about genetic contributions to group differences in intelligence. [12]
▶ Supporting Quotes (3)
““you will likely encounter extreme difficulties in securing grants.””— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“The University of Cambridge has hired a controversial 'race researcher' to its Faculty of Philosophy... Nathan Cofnas, an American who was appointed on a three year programme as an 'early career fellow' on September 1 of this year... said the University of Cambridge knew about the paper before he took up his position there.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge
“In my first psychology classes, I was taught what many undergraduates have since been taught about that book. It is seriously flawed and has been thoroughly debunked by Stephen J. Gould and others.”— But Why Would You Study That?
Harm Caused
Parts of Africa and the Middle East continued to experience homicide rates above 10 per 100,000, far higher than the under-2 rates in developed nations. The assumption that no meaningful biological evolution had occurred since the Pleistocene made it harder to discuss whether some of these persistent patterns reflected deeper historical selection pressures rather than purely institutional failures. Policy discussions therefore rested on incomplete foundations. [1]
Researchers who pursued questions about psychological group differences faced public accusations of racism and, in some cases, professional repercussions. The resulting chill discouraged systematic study of traits such as East Asian patterns of emotional suppression and social rigidity. These unexamined traits continued to affect quality of life and institutional functioning in affected populations. [2]
Evolutionary biology and anthropology operated with datasets and methods that made recent adaptive changes difficult to detect. Reliance on limited reference panels such as HapMap excluded many human lineages, leading to underestimates of total genetic change. Research agendas were shaped away from questions that might have produced earlier clarity. [6]
Interest in race differences in intelligence became academically taboo. Merely raising the topic was often treated as evidence of moral defect, which distorted funding priorities and publication decisions across the social sciences. [12]
▶ Supporting Quotes (7)
“the homicide rate in the United States, Europe, China and Japan is less than 2 per 100,000 people, whereas in most African countries south of the Sahara, it exceeds 10 per 100,000, a difference that does not prove but surely allows room for a genetic contribution to greater violence in the less developed world.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Knowledge is usually considered a better basis for policy than ignorance. This book has been an attempt, undoubtedly imperfect, to dispel the fear of racism that overhangs discussion of human group differences”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Many scientists were slandered, and some even lost their jobs.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“Some of the Arcticist traits in my paper may underlie habits like stifled expression and social rigidity among East Asians, which many people say affect their quality of life.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“The rate of genetic change may have actually peaked later than the above dates of 8,000 and 5,250 years ago. As that rate increases, so does the difficulty of distinguishing between adaptive and non-adaptive genetic changes.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“It uses data from a limited number of present-day human groups. Thus, as you go forward from the time of early humans, you capture less and less evolutionary change within the entire human species.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“But only one is routinely met with the morally perplexed and often accusatory question: “But why do you care about that?” The “that” is race differences, especially race differences in intelligence. Indeed, interest in the subject is often treated as evidence of some underlying pathology or fetish.”— But Why Would You Study That?
Downfall
Skull gracilization across Europe and the Middle East before 15,000 years ago, combined with twin-study heritability estimates for violence and Gregory Clark’s selection data from English records, began to suggest that significant change had continued well after the Pleistocene. Steven Pinker himself noted the MAO-A gene and acknowledged prior selection in East Asia, though he did not pursue the implication. [1]
Genomic scans revealed clear signatures of recent positive selection on pigmentation genes within the last 5,000 years and independent origins of lactase persistence in multiple populations within the last 7,000 years. These concrete examples undermined the claim that natural selection had effectively stopped. [11][1]
Advances in archaeogenetics and paleoecology supplied concrete data on pre-Holocene environments, allowing researchers such as David Sun to build models that incorporated both Pleistocene and Holocene selection pressures. Personnel data from polar expeditions independently confirmed that traits like emotional suppression predicted survival in extreme cold, matching predictions from Arctic adaptation theory. [2]
The Reich laboratory’s 2024 analysis of 8,433 West Eurasian genomes spanning 14,000 years identified hundreds of variants under directional selection, including those contributing to polygenic scores for intelligence. Sibling-based GWAS designs and cross-population polygenic scores produced consistent results that were harder to dismiss as population stratification. [3]
John Hawks’ 2007 study using HapMap data showed genetic evolution had accelerated more than a hundredfold after the advent of agriculture. Ilan Libedinsky’s 2023 analysis of a larger dating dataset confirmed recent bursts of selection concentrated in genes related to mental function and nutrient processing. These empirical demonstrations shifted the burden of proof onto those who still maintained that nothing biological had changed. [6]
▶ Supporting Quotes (18)
“The gracilization of human skulls prior to 15,000 years ago almost certainly did, and Clark makes a strong case that the molding of the English population from rough peasants into industrious citizenry between 1200 and 1800 AD was a continuation of this evolutionary process.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“He describes the human genes, such as the violence-promoting MAO-A mutation mentioned in chapter 3, that could easily be modulated so as to reduce aggressiveness. He mentions that violence is quite heritable, on the evidence from studies of twins”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Joshua M. Akey, “Constructing Genomic Maps of Positive Selection in Humans: Where Do We Go from Here?” Genome Research 19 (2009): 711–22.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“Emmanuel Milot et al., “Evidence for Evolution in Response to Natural Selection in a Contemporary Human Population,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (2011): 17040–45.”— A Troublesome Inheritance
“prior to recent advances in archaeogenetics and paleoecology, the pre-Holocene period was mostly handwaved away by psychologists”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“Scouring the literature on personnel psychology revealed that the relevant traits are so consistently predictive of success in polar environments that they have been refined into the personnel selection criteria for many countries’ polar research programs.”— Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians
“Given the large scale of the data – 8,433 genomes spread across 14,000 years – they could employ powerful methods to find the specific variants they were looking for, namely those that have changed faster than would be expected from the various migrations and population turnovers, as well as random chance.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Nevertheless, we see that of 3 + 3 tests for selection for education/intelligence, all 6 are positive, and 2/3 of the years of schooling sibling GWAS tests have p < .05 (if only marginally).”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Overall, there is strong evidence of natural selection for higher intelligence/education in West Eurasians over the last 14,000 years. ... the consistency of the results is “very difficult to explain as an artifact of population structure”.”— Overwhelming evidence of recent evolution in West Eurasians
“Mismatch is a thing, but it is increasingly being recognized by evolutionary psychologists to be overrated as an explanatory approach.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“Research by Manvir Singh and Luke Glowacki suggests that ancestral hunter gatherer societies were more variable in structure than is commonly assumed, with some being very large and very unequal. Singh and Glowacki have also gathered evidence from the ethnographic record to show that humans in forager groups often try to enforce the rules and social norms that personally benefit them”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“an important concept introduced by Clark Barrett: the difference between tokens and types. The idea is that we have cognitive adaptations to deal with particular types of things, like food, mates, groups, status, and zero-sum conflict.”— What Kind Of Apes Are We?
“Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution continued. In the light of modern evolutionary theory, it is difficult to imagine how it could have been otherwise.”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“We intend to make the case that human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping, and is now happening about 100 times faster than its long-term average”— The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
“Changes to the genome accelerated more than a hundredfold when hunting and gathering gave way to farming and other cultural changes (sedentary living, growth of towns and cities, rise of social complexity). And the faster pace of genetic evolution lasted well into the time of recorded history, reaching a peak of 8,000 years ago in Africa and 5,250 years ago in Europe.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“Human evolution went through two periods of rapid change. The first one was between 2.4 million and 280,000 years ago, with a peak around 1.1 million years ago. The second period was between 280,000 and 1,700 years ago, with a peak around 55,000 years ago. The second period saw rapid evolutionary change in three domains. In order of importance, they were: vision; mental function; and nutrient absorption, digestion and storage.”— Human evolution didn't slow down. It accelerated
“Speaking to MailOnline, he confirms he still stands by what he wrote and said the University of Cambridge knew about the paper before he took up his position there.”— EXCLUSIVE: Researcher who wrote on race 'IQ gaps' hired by Cambridge
“He replied that it was a careful, judicious work that had been unfairly maligned by its critics. I was surprised... It seemed to me, then, that I ought to read it for myself before forming an opinion one way or the other.”— But Why Would You Study That?
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Related False Assumptions