Nehaveigur

Here is Dwarkesh interviewing geneticist David Reich on selection in humans. Here is the paper by Akbari et al. out of Reich’s lab that they’re mostly discussing. Among other things, they see evidence of increased selection for immune and intelligence related traits in Western Eurasia during the Bronze age, between 5,000 and 2,000 years ago. Interestingly, selection for intelligence-associated variants is higher during the Bronze age than during more recent history. The same set of variants tend to also be associated with other traits, such as having children later and reduced risk for obesity, hinting at selection having been for a trait other than intelligence per se.