The "genetic history" information that's built up over recent decades is completely fascinating. One of the questions that emerges from it for me is how intertwined are "culture" and genetics?
Is it possible to impose some arbitrary cultural and economic system on a given group of people regardless of their genetic makeup? I think the answer is a hard no. People's way of living on this world is probably dictated by their genes. Hunter-gatherers have hunter gathering genes. Pastoralists (mobile herders) have pastorilizing genes and settled farmers have settled farming genes.
I think this is why social engineering is doomed to fail and we're living through a societal and economic collapse right now. The civilization doesn't fit the people. (By the way, that's basically what Ted Kaczynski was complaining about.)
Various combinations of factors, e.g. the weather, resource availability, can favor this or that group. For example, as pastoralists settled in various regions they destroyed forests. For them, the forest seems inconvenient, but maybe in different climate conditions the open steppe/grassland is not viable compared to the shelter provided by the forest, and that favors the hunter-gatherers, same thing for the farmer life style, which ultimately led to the "industrial/technological" society that we have.
The "modern" mindset is people are blank slates. Through proper training and education, they can be forced into any shitty system. However, ideology and laws can't edit people's essential nature. That nature is more like a very specific sort of musical instrument. It will make the best music when played with the proper technique.
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