Joe Henrich and Cosimo Posth: the weirdest people in the world and the genetics of Ice Age Europe

Between 2017 and 2020 Razib co-hosted the podcast The Insight. A year ago it went offline, but now the archives are back! On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib re-posts two important episodes from The Insight. First, a conversation with evolutionary anthropologist Joe Henrich about his 2020 book The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Second, starting at 51 minutes and 45 seconds, Razib interviews Cosimo Posth about a paper on which he was co-author, The genetic history of Ice Age Europe.

With Henrich Razib initially discusses the emergent field of cultural evolution, and his earlier book The Secret of Our Success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smart. Then, they discuss the confluence of history, anthropology and economics that led him to propose, along with his colleagues, the thesis that psychological peculiarities of medieval Europeans explains their dynamic success down into the modern period, leading to the emergence of “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.”

Changing tacks, Razib’s conversation with Posth surveys the field as it was in the late 2010s, and in particular focuses on what we had learned about the genetics of Upper Paleolithic Europeans. This refers particularly to the period between 45,000 and 11,700 years before the present, the end of the last Ice Age, when various big game hunting societies dominated the continent after the extinction of Neanderthals.

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