There was no genetic switch for behavioural modernity: no selective sweep is shared by everyone alive today in the period the cognitive revolution supposedly happened.

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• Selection on the genetic predictors of cognitive performance peaked in the Bronze Age and has left no trace at all in the last 2,000 years. DRDavid Reich8 May 2026
• The weak selection signal on behavioural traits is a shortage of statistical power, not evidence that behaviour was unselected. DRDavid Reich8 May 2026
• The selection signal on the genetics of schooling is not a European artefact: the same variants predict years of school in China, a population disconnected from Europe for the whole period. DRDavid Reich8 May 2026
• Natural selection in humans has not been quiescent: it is tugging almost every position in the genome in one direction or another, everywhere. DRDavid Reich8 May 2026
• Finding no selection in African-Americans over 300 years is not evidence against selection: five generations is simply too short a time to compound. DRDavid Reich8 May 2026

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