Evolutionary Impact of Mass Killings: Gene Pool Alteration

Key Insight

Genocides and politicides drastically and disproportionately alter the destruction and reproduction rates of different gene pools. According to statistics, these mass killings occurred in 28% of all state failures in the latter half of the twentieth century. In some genocides, the goal is absolute extinction, with women and children killed at similar rates to men. Other instances, often politicides but sometimes genocides, disproportionately target enemy males while sparing females for reproductive purposes, demonstrating a 'reproductive logic'.

Historical examples illustrate this. During the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, between 10,000 and 30,000 Protestants died. Catholic mobs mutilated the genitals of male Protestants and cut open pregnant female Protestants, indicating an intent to destroy reproductive potential. Nazi Germany's Holocaust, which systematically murdered six million Jews and millions of others, began with state policy in 1933 to sterilize 300,000 to 400,000 Germans deemed 'inferior' due to conditions like epilepsy, schizophrenia, or mental retardation. This aimed to 'improve' the German gene pool by destroying the reproductive potential of those believed to carry deleterious genes. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws further prevented intermarriage and sexual relations between Germanic peoples and Jews, explicitly preventing contact between fertile German women and Jewish men, and sterilizing 'Rhineland Bastards' in 1937.

The Rwandan and Burundian genocides also reflect efforts to gain relative fitness advantages. Hutus and Tutsis, despite intermarriage reducing some differences, have distinct ancestral histories, with Tutsis likely migrating from the Horn of Africa. Genetic studies corroborate these origins: Rwandan Hutus share sickle-cell gene proportions with central African peoples, while Tutsis virtually lack this mutation, suggesting a history in lower malaria regions. Tutsis also predominantly possess a lactose-digestion gene, common in desert pastoralists, supporting an East African origin. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (1975-1980) disproportionately destroyed Vietnamese, Cham, Thai, and Chinese genes, with males targeted at nearly a two-to-one ratio compared to females, giving a reproductive advantage to surviving males. Gender-biased killings also occurred in the Bosnian War, with Serbs executing 263 Croat men in Vukovar and 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, leaving 'extra' women alive.