> We finally observed signals of selection for combinations of alleles that today are associated with three correlated behavioural traits: scores on intelligence tests (increasing γ = 0.74 ± 0.12), household income (increasing γ = 1.12 ± 0.12) and years of schooling (increasing γ = 0.63 ± 0.13). These signals are all highly polygenic, and we have to drop 449–1,056 loci for the signals to become non-significant (Extended Data Fig. 10). The signals are largely driven by selection before approximately 2,000 years )*, after which γ tends towards zero
Presumably pressure in different regions lead to different combinations of those alleles, which I think they are shorthanding a bit, but the fact that those alleles exist makes blank slate theory a kind of rough assumption
If anything they seem to support homogenization of intellectual capacity/mental health in Eurasia since 2kya.
The methodology, if it holds up, seems to hold a lot of promise for answering questions like this in the future.
> Just because an allele, SNP, or trait swept into or out of West Eurasia during this time doesn’t mean this happened only in West Eurasia. Researchers can use the new computational methods to look for directional selection in other populations worldwide that have enough ancient DNA sequences and construct a clearer picture of what’s unique to different groups and what generalizes across populations.
> Reich expects that future studies will show that shared selective pressures acted on some of the same core traits across diverse human groups, even as those groups split off and migrated to different parts of the world over tens of thousands of years.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/massive-ancient-dna-study-revea...
> If anything they seem to support homogenization of intellectual capacity/mental health in Eurasia since 2kya.
I would be interested in how you came to that conclusion, unless I'm misleading your post and you specifically mean West Eurasia
So really when you say select for household income among western populations, it might be hard to actually find any real signal that is actually causal that isn't due to simple demographic and historical reasons, due to the lack of power you have in sampling rare demographics within a given category such as high income.
Now I would be quite curious to know how they constructed this polygenic score
Then to address the elephant in the room - which is the race discourse subtext let’s be honest - it’s highly unlikely that any recent selective pressure on a separated population, which resulted in meaningful phenotype adaptations, happened similarly everywhere at the same time