Beyond Mendel's Ghost

Abstract

At a major conference on genetics in 2003, a team of researchers reported that the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, are far more likely than Caucasians to carry a variant of the MAOA gene that has been associated with aggressive behavior. The scientists argued that the difference made sense and reflected the fact that more aggressive individuals survived the migratory journey by which the Maori originally populated Aotearoa, the islands that would later become New Zealand.