Ancient genomics AMA with Davide Piffer
I am in Italy together with Davide Piffer. We will be filming a conversation about ancient genomes and group differences. Please post your questions below so we can cover them in the conversation. We will be talking about our recent Roman dysgenics paper, as well as other ancient genomics selection research, and what we see as exciting in the future.
In his book A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark argued that the demographic growth of the middle class caused the English gene pool to change for mental and behavioral traits, not only cognitive ability but also time preference and predisposition to personal violence. From the 12th century onward, the English population became, on average, more middle class in its values and behavior. "Thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent, and leisure loving" (p. 166).
Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff has argued that a similar evolutionary change occurred throughout Western Europe during late medieval and early modern times.
Do we now have enough ancient DNA from Western European sources to test this argument? I know we can track evolution in cognitive ability by examining alleles associated with educational attainment. But what about time preference and violent male behavior?
Is there a way to estimate the average genotypic g of a population from a (probably) unrepresentative sample of ancient genomes. or at least how can you better approximate the true population parameter?