Steve Sailer reports on the search for the genetic ancestors of African-Americans. An interesting snippet:
He told UPI that he found, “My female line goes back to Northern Nigeria, the land of the Hausa tribe. I then went to Nigeria and talked to people and learned a lot about the Hausa’s culture and tradition. That gave me sense about who I am. In a way, it grounded me.”
“Two people there looked like cousins I have — they even behaved like them!” Kittles laughed. [my emphasis -r]
The human mind is great at making connections and the geneticist in question might not have noticed the similarity of these Hausa to his cousins in physique & personality if he did not already know he had a blood tie to these people-even a distant one. On the other hand-we are often likely to associate mannerisms & behavior to environmental influences, but we should not neglect the importance of genetics on our behavioral patterns, especially when lower level instincts help form higher complexity emergent tendencies.
Comments are closed.