The t-shirts which depict the "ascent of man" from hairy semi-ape to upright Homo sapiens might make you think that human evolution has been trivial since the emergence of our own species. Modern genomics suggests this isn't so, selection coefficients on the order of 1-10% are probably rather normal, and iterated over hundreds of generations that could result in a nontrivial amount of change on a quantitative trait. I bring this up because a few days ago in The New York Times a piece was published titled The Twists and Turns of History, and of DNA. Greg Cochran (interest divulgence, a friend of mine) offered the boldest quote:
"Since it looks like there has been significant evolutionary change over historical time, we're going to have to rewrite every history book ever written," said Gregory Cochran, a population geneticist at the University of Utah. "The distribution of genes influencing relevant psychological ...
