Nature finally published it!
The Reich Lab article on genetic selection in Europe over the last 10,000 years is finally online, and it includes such interesting results as:
- Intelligence has increased
- People got lighter
- Mental disorders became less common
And more!
They've added some interesting simulation results that show that these changes are unlikely to have happened without directional selection, under a variety of different model assumptions.
They also showed that, despite pigmentation being oligogenic, selection on it was polygenic.
"[S]election for pigmentation had an equal impact on all variants in proportion to effect size."
As an indication this result isn't due to recent population structure, the results also held up using effect sizes from East Asia!
The greatest positive effect across both was directional selection for years of education—a mishmash of cognitive ability and noncognitive skill:
Moreover, three alternative selection tests all agreed on what happened here:
In a sort-of confirmation of the Cochran-Harpending thesis, they also found that, for several traits, the intensity of selection appears higher more recently in time.
Specifically, selection intensity increased in the Bronze Age compared to the Neolithic, then it stabilized!
The paper also shows us several nonlinear changes in selection for particular SNPs over time.
For example, rheumatoid arthritis was once selected against, but in more recent millennia has been making a comeback:
But ultimately, what really sticks is that there's strong evidence we have evolved in a way that's selective, that we've preferred certain traits and that the way we are does not just reflect background or neutral selection.
Nature has preferred some traits!
This paper is a treasure trove! Go read it!
Source: nature.com/articles/s4158…
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