Gregory Clark focusses exclusively on England within Europe since England has by far the best surviving demographic records covering the 13th to the 19th century. Clark makes little distinction between England and the continent besides this, except he notes that England and the Netherlands were far and away the most urbanized European countries during this period. We differentiated England and the continent in our empirical research to reflect Clark's use of English-only data. (However in later oral presentations Clark notes that the same trends probably apply to other countries in Europe since many of the same demographic pressures seem present.) We found a positive trend both for England and the continent but the point estimate was smaller and it was not statistically significant for the continent. Hence we cannot and do not claim "only England" since we cannot support that claim statistically. Only England gives a statistically significant estimate (a much weaker claim) but we would not say that the trend is statistically different in England vs. the continent. That claim requires more data to be confirmed or rejected.
There is now strong evidence for a 12,000 year positive trend in EA PGS for samples from across the Eurasian land area; that trend seems much stronger during the early modern period due to stronger demographic pressures favoring positive EA related traits. The nature of the modern state in Europe, and perhaps particularly in some of the northern European countries including England, facilitated this trend and strengthened it relative to the weaker upward trend in the earlier part of the 12,000 year period.
Any idea why only England? Plague does look like a facilitator, but it seems there was an underlying trend to be facilitated.
Gregory Clark focusses exclusively on England within Europe since England has by far the best surviving demographic records covering the 13th to the 19th century. Clark makes little distinction between England and the continent besides this, except he notes that England and the Netherlands were far and away the most urbanized European countries during this period. We differentiated England and the continent in our empirical research to reflect Clark's use of English-only data. (However in later oral presentations Clark notes that the same trends probably apply to other countries in Europe since many of the same demographic pressures seem present.) We found a positive trend both for England and the continent but the point estimate was smaller and it was not statistically significant for the continent. Hence we cannot and do not claim "only England" since we cannot support that claim statistically. Only England gives a statistically significant estimate (a much weaker claim) but we would not say that the trend is statistically different in England vs. the continent. That claim requires more data to be confirmed or rejected.
There is now strong evidence for a 12,000 year positive trend in EA PGS for samples from across the Eurasian land area; that trend seems much stronger during the early modern period due to stronger demographic pressures favoring positive EA related traits. The nature of the modern state in Europe, and perhaps particularly in some of the northern European countries including England, facilitated this trend and strengthened it relative to the weaker upward trend in the earlier part of the 12,000 year period.