Institutions leave genetic traces

If social institutions that systematically reward certain skills (for example, generations of Confucian exam systems favoring scholars) persist long enough and affect reproductive or social‑mobility patterns, those demographic effects can produce detectable shifts in ancient polygenic scores tied to those skills. Robust tests require larger ancient DNA samples, corrected date assignments, revised polygenic predictors, and placebo experiments (e.g., applying the same milestones to unrelated regions) to rule out artifacts. — Shows how claims that culture/institutions alter genetic composition can be empirically tested and constrained, with consequences for debates about heredity, meritocracy, and historical causation.