With the recent spate of mass shootings, (at least four high-profile incidents occurring in the U.S. and Canada in the last two weeks), the issues of guns and violence inevitably come up. Naturally, the politically correct wisdom, which is founded on the blank slate (or at least, a bare slate), wants to blame these events... Read More

Canadian suicide rates (per 100,000 people): Inuit, First Nations, all Canadians. Source From Alaska to Greenland, young Inuit have unusually high rates of suicide, attempted suicide, and suicidal ideation. According to a 1972 survey of Inuit 15 to 24 years old from northern Quebec, 28% of the males and 25% of the females had attempted... Read More

Annual average exposure to erythema-inducing UV radiation at ground level. Source: Jablonski & Chaplin, 2000. At high northern latitudes, vitamin D can be obtained only from one’s diet, notably fatty fish. Yet many northern native peoples consume little fish. Have they evolved a different vitamin D metabolism? I’ve just published an article on population differences... Read More

An Inuk wearing snow goggles. Is ambient light at its lowest in Inuit territory? The logjam seems to have broken. On the heels of Lewis et al. (2011), we now have another paper on variation in brain size among human populations, this time by Pearce and Dunbar (2011). Brains vary in size by latitude, being... Read More

Bird in a gilded cage Cavalli-Sforza’s last big project was the publication of The History and Geography of Human Genes, which came out in 1994. Since then, he has kept himself busy tying up loose ends. Advancing age is only one reason why he has lowered his sights. In fact, he had originally planned to... Read More

This year, look for advances in the following areas: Brain growth genes Back in 2005, it was found that human populations vary considerably at two genes, ASPM and microcephalin, that control the growth of brain tissue. The finding seemed to be ‘huge’ in its implications. Then, it all fizzled out. No correlation could be found... Read More

One of the mysteries of anthropology is the reported presence of ‘blond’ Inuit in the western Canadian Arctic, specifically on and around Victoria Island. They were first noticed by the explorer Sir John Franklin and by Alaskan whalers. These impressions were confirmed by the anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson for Victoria Island and by the anthropologist Knud... Read More