Nicholas Wade Takes on the Regime
The troublesome persistence of genes and race.
Nicholas Wade, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History, Penguin Press, 2014, 266 pp., $27.95.
“Human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional.” With these heroic words, New York Timesscience writer Nicholas Wade opens fire on two of the obligatory myths of our time: that there is no such thing as race, and that human evolution stopped in the Stone Age.
It is gratifying to see someone firmly planted in the mainstream poke the regime in the eye, and the regime’s reaction will be a diverting spectacle. Bravo Mr. Wade, and we wish him a thick skin—though we wish he had not been quite so circumspect on certain matters.
Race is real
Mr. Wade notes that the early peddlers of race-is-a-myth, such as Ashley Montagu (the stylish name British-born Israel Ehrenberg chose for himself), were clearly trying to distort science for political purposes, and that more recent peddlers, such as Jared Diamond and Steven Jay Gould have done the same thing.
The physical differences we see in human groups reflect separate evolutionary paths that led to unmistakably biological differences. Hunter-gatherers left Africa about 50,000 years ago, and once they wandered into all of earth’s habitable spaces, they stayed put and bred with their neighbors. DNA testing shows there was essentially no crossing until the modern era. For tens of thousands of years, independently breeding populations developed distinct genetic patterns. . . .
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