“Our bones are more gracile than those of our Upper Paleolithic ancestors, our personalities less aggressive, our societies more trusting and cohesive. An element of human choice, a preference for negotiation over annihilation, has perhaps been injected into the genome.… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“there is every reason to suppose that people living in agrarian societies were subject to intense forces of natural selection. But what traits were… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“The English state thus constructed a system, later followed by other European countries, in which the ruler was subject to the law and in… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“Although the emotional and intellectual differences between the world’s peoples as individuals are slight enough, even a small shift in social behavior can generate… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“The king and queen were usually present, and the king or the dauphin would light a pyre. The cats were then tumbled into the… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“The Chinese state, from the days of the Qin, was an efficient, bureaucratized autocracy. Yet to this day, China has never developed the rule… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“Darwin’s theory of evolution, at least in its author’s eyes, dealt solely with the natural world. Yet it was as attractive to political theorists… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“ancient Greek word mousikē, from which the English word music is derived, means any art over which the Muses presided, hence included dance, music… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“Another possibility is that the sweat glands were the driving force behind the rise of EDAR-V370A. East Asians are usually assumed to have evolved… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“When the glaciers retreated, starting around 20,000 years ago, both Europe and East Asia were repopulated by former northerners who had survived the Last… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“Knowledge advances, funeral by funeral,” the economist Paul Samuelson once observed.” — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“Several primate species have communication systems of considerable sophistication. Gelada baboons have 22 different kinds of call, and gorillas have been recorded using some… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
“One of the strangest features of human anatomy, when people are compared with the other 200 monkey and ape species in the primate family,… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share Image
