[Aztlan] Natural selection for Indian Alcoholism?

[Robert Evans]

Indians across America have a reputation for not being able to hold their
liquor, and alcoholism is disproportionately represented on Indian reserves.
Yet Indians made and consumed numerous types of liquor, well before contact
with Europeans. Alcoholism is at least partly hereditary, and the Indian
gene pool is more homogeneous than that of the west. Indian populations were
decimated by western infectious diseases. Assuming the prior statements to
be true, would anyone care to shoot holes in the following theory: Those
Indians who were regular consumers of alcohol would be somewhat more
protected from infectious diseases than non drinkers. After the massive
population reduction from the infectious diseases, the alcoholism trait
would have been naturally selected and unusually represented in the
remaining population.

 

 

Robert Evans

 <mailto:revans at atoda.com> revans at atoda.com