Myths of descent
2025-09-11 20:10 It is common to ascribe to someone the characteristics of a specific ancestor.  Why would this particular one matter and not all the others?  As I have pointed out before genetic similarity decrease by half for each degree of relationship.
The difference between ethnicity and population
2025-08-30 18:24 I don’t want to speak of “human races”.  It would far too easily lead to the myth that they would be essentially different from each other.  In addition there is often a belief they would have sharp borders.
The American catastrophe
2025-08-11 16:43 The depopulation of the Americas took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. Naturally, regional collapses had already taken place earlier. Maybe the most famous is the Mayan culture’s collapse.
How infectious diseases work
2025-08-08 12:20 Infectious diseases is always something transferred to the affected.  Contagions don’t arise spontaneously when people do certain things.  Instead they have to be conveyed from someone already infected.
To differ pharmaceutical industry from modern medical care
2025-07-15 19:15 Modern medicine is subject to the same error as denial of the existence of space.  Everyone occupied with it are taken for granted to be part of the same organisation.  In reality medical care is offered by loads of different groups.
Why inbreeding is a bad idea
2025-06-25 13:13 It seems like humanity is particularly sensitive to inbreeding.  If so it is because evolution has changed our ancestors too quickly.  The locomotor system has changed considerably in 3.5 million years.
Why the eugenicists were wrong
2025-06-19 17:29 Eugenics arose at a time when the pace of evolution was unknown. Charles Darwin himself thought it was a very slow process. But many of his admirers believed it went at breakneck speed.
The blonde and blue-eyed myth
2025-06-04 10:50 Here in northern Europe there is a widespread myth of an earlier homogenous appearance.  Before a certain point in time all the area’s inhabitants would have been blonde and blue-eyed.  Nazis would add strait hair and strait noses to that.
Peoples of the wheel
2025-06-02 13:11 Proto-Indo-European was the first proto-language identified by linguists.  This based on similarities between Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.  Unfortunately, it took long before one could say something about where it had been spoken.
Peoples of the sail
2025-04-25 17:02 I call the Austronesians peoples of the sail since they spread agriculture by literally sailing out into the world.  Most areas they came to had no agriculture earlier.