“The Chinese state, from the days of the Qin, was an efficient, bureaucratized autocracy. Yet to this day, China has never developed the rule of law. Its emperors, and now the Chinese politburo, make the law but are not accountable… — 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 a very different kind of society. Tribal societies, for instance, are organized on the basis of kinship and differ from modern states chiefly in that people’s radius of trust does not extend too far beyond the… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
“The king and queen were usually present, and the king or the dauphin would light a pyre. The cats were then tumbled into the flames from an overhead basket, and the crowd reveled in their cries. “Certainly this is not really a worse spectacle than the burning of heretics, or the torturings and public executions of every kind,” Elias writes.… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
“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 as a candle’s flame is to moths. Karl Marx asked if he could dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, an honor the great naturalist declined.5 Darwin’s name was slapped on to Spencer’s political ideas, which would far… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
“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 in a cold climate because of certain traits, such as narrow nostrils and a fold of fat over the eyelid, which seem helpful in conserving body heat. But researchers have calculated that the EDAR variant emerged… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
“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 30 different gestures.34 One of the best studied animal communication systems is the repertoire of alarm calls uttered by the vervet monkeys of East Africa. Vervets lead a perilous existence, at constant risk from eagles, leopards… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
“One of the strangest features of human anatomy, when people are compared with the other 200 monkey and ape species in the primate family, is the sclera, or the white of the eye. In all our primate cousins, the sclera is barely visible. In humans it stands out like a beacon, signaling to any observer the direction of a person’s… — Nicholas Wade Copy Share
