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Jandila comments on Brain shrinkage in humans over past ~20 000 years - what did we lose? - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: Dmytry 18 February 2012 10:17PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 March 2012 09:08:38PM *  -2 points [-]

Um. You are aware that humans from long-isolated groups can breed and that the majority of traits are polygenic (meaning there are lots of contributing alleles that interact with each other in frequencies that may or may not differ between two populations)? The range for many such possible traits in a human is wider than binary for polygenic traits but its edges are defined by a function of the average edges of the parents' inherited range (and so on), meaning that if you have two groups with very distinct frequencies and you mix 'em, the results will not be representative of the frequencies of either root source group, and in cases of colonization, that means interbreeding throws off the curves.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 March 2012 07:43:05AM *  4 points [-]

You've just promted me to respond despite my awoval otherwise. To respond to your question of course I'm aware. I am talking about the huge amounts of genetic information that can be recovered from admixed individuals and even fossils.