That’s not something everyone likes to talk about. “As soon as you say, ‘This group of people is genetically different from that group of people,’ some constituency will manipulate that to say, ‘This group is genetically superior to that group’,” says University of Chicago neuroscientist Bruce Lahn. “If we are evolving away from one another, it’s because each population is adapting to a different environment, so you can’t compare them to one another like that.”

Keen to avoid this controversy, Lahn says many of his colleagues have chosen to focus on our overwhelming genetic similarities instead of exploring the biology of our differences. But even our fear of diversity may be something we can evolve past. “Eventually, our reasoning centers will develop more control over our emotional ones,” says Lahn. “That would make for more rational, tolerant beings.” It appears we have quite a few more scales to shed.
-JENEEN INTERLANDI (Newsweek)