HBD Chick's hypothesis – that long-term mating patterns – specifically, the degree of cousin marriage historically practiced by people influences the selective pressures those people experience, pushing them, over time, towards either clannishness (in the case of long-term inbreeding) or individualism and civic-minded (in the case of long-term outbreeding) – explains a great many things.... Read More

HBD Chick and I talk about how rates of historic inbreeding have had an important impact on the selective pressures acting on the traits of various peoples living today. We have often used Europe and the Middle East as examples of this, because strong regional variations in historic rates of inbreeding exist in those places.... Read More