The DNA Olympics -- Jamaicans Win Sprinting 'Genetic Lottery' -- and Why We Should All Care

It's not a matter of changing minds. It has to do with our being humans and not being pigs or chickens. We've had several "bottlenecks" where the entire species was down to a few thousand members in relatively recent times (as these things go). So with many of our major characteristics there really aren't any different genes to select for.

On the other hand, as a broad principle, if you take the great geographic divisions of humanity and line everybody up by height within each division you will discover that the Western Asian bell curve for height has a different form than the African bell curve for height, and both are different in form from the East Asian bell curve.

That means that ON THE AVERAGE just about every population, given the same nutrition and environment shows up with the same AVERAGE height. But, the numbers in the tails are different. So, in America, the 13% of the population with substantial African ancestry ends up with about half the tallest people! They also end up with about half the shortest people. Being tall has a certain advantage in many athletic endeavors.

The issue is whether or not slave owners SUCCEEDED in breeding larger slaves ~ and maybe they did, and maybe they didn't ~ if they tried. But I have it on very good authority that a lot of them seemed to be using their own sperm to do that "breeding" and that was definitely NOT creating a race of tall Negroes. That part came from Africa anyway.

They'd been ahead of the game just feeding them lots of prime steak and oatmeal!

Europeans were hunter-gatherers until quite recently ~ 3,000 years. Then, Middle Easterners wandered in with agriculture and changed the odds. Gradually Europeans were driven North and were displaced by the Middle Eastern types.

Thomas Jefferson, for example, is known to have had a y-chromosome typical of the Middle East and not Northern Europe.

The real Europeans still win at Olympic cross country skiing BTW. The Middle Easterners just aren't cut out for that sort of thing, nor whaling. Now there's a test. You and a dozen buddies leave your ship and go out in a small open decked wooden craft into Antarctic waters. You harpoon a gigantic Blue Whale. He takes you on a ride through 28 degree water.

Who comes home? Well, fur shur, it ain't the guys from Syria I can tell you that.

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