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Did Confucian Institutions Select for Educational Attainment?
Over centuries, Confucian societies built unusually durable educational institutions.
Jul 2
•
Davide Piffer
12
1
4
June 2026
Did Cold Make Human Brains Bigger?
The idea that cold environments might favor larger brains did not come out of nowhere.
Jun 30
•
Davide Piffer
6
1
Who are the Roma Gypsies? What Their DNA Tells Us
The Roma have historically been a difficult population to map genetically due to a lack of dense genomic data and a complex, highly disrupted migratory…
Jun 28
•
Davide Piffer
13
4
PifferPilfer Turns One
On July 1st, this Substack turns one year old.
Jun 25
•
Davide Piffer
10
4
Italy’s Rolling R: A Natural Experiment in the Genetics of Speech
As we saw in the previous post, Pakistan is useful for studying recessive genetic effects because cousin marriage increases homozygosity.
Jun 23
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Davide Piffer
4
Pakistan’s Natural Experiment in Mendelian Genetics
How autozygosity makes recessive gene loss visible
Jun 22
•
Davide Piffer
8
4
4
Did Rome Rise and Fall With Genetic Human Capital?
The history of Rome is usually told through its institutions: a village becomes a republic, a republic conquers the Mediterranean, and an empire builds…
Jun 18
•
Davide Piffer
15
1
1
Did Hard Times Build Civilization?
It is easy to assume that milder climates should favor human development.
Jun 17
•
Davide Piffer
7
2
1
The World Used to Be Bigger
A thousand kilometers is not the same thing in every century.
Jun 15
•
Davide Piffer
14
2
1
Did Climate Cooling Select for Cognitive Abilities?
In my previous posts, I found that ancient climate cooling predicted higher height polygenic scores and more introverted, less neurotic personality…
Jun 12
4
2
1
Did Cold Climates Select for Cold Personalities?
After looking at how ancient height polygenic scores track local climate shifts, the obvious next question for me was whether the same model would…
Jun 10
•
Davide Piffer
3
4
1
Did Climate Change Make Humans Shorter or Taller?
There is an old model in evolutionary biology known as Bergmann’s Rule: warm-blooded animals living in colder environments tend to evolve larger body…
Jun 9
•
Davide Piffer
3
1
1
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