In a population closed wrt mating, genetic variety among individuals diminishes along time as the population adapts to environmental conditions. At the same time, its genetic content drifts wrt to other populations. Populations are not fully closed wrt to mating, therefore inter populations mating happens, although at a much lower rate than intra population mating. This state of affairs is very advantageous for the species as a whole – the set of all populations. Each population can be seen as a “probe” that explores a part of the genetic evolutionary space by genetic drift. Inter-population mating assures that “good genetic discoveries” of a population are spread through the species. Evolutionary potential and resilience are maintained as genetic diversity is in a sense maximized. That would not be the case if the species would be reduced to one only mating population with the relative restriction on genetic diversity.

Now, I did not intend to say that there are “nation’s genes”. I do intend to say that there are homogeneities in the variation of genes along individuals; that these homogeneities and their interplay are at the root of the phenomenon that we call “nations”; that both are crucial to human evolution in the long term as far as we know. And that they should not be ignored or dismissed as something old-fashioned to be crushed by economic globalization. And if they are, the results are not good, as with a more general concept of nation one can see in the EMU.

I’m not saying that states or nation-states are the best and terminal stage of socio-political evolution. States are “double-swords” for nations. Nor I’m saying that humanistic globalization is a bad thing. What I’m saying is humanistic globalization must depart from the recognizance of the reality of nations as interlinked genetic, social, cultural aggregates rather than reinforce the neoliberal idea of “national barriers” as obstacles to progressive evolution. Maybe one can generalize the peer to peer concept to nations: the species as a peer to peer relational space of nations.

so, when the different tribes become the Iroquois Federation after the intervention of the “Peacemaker”, that’s a biological event, and somehome the ‘nation genes’ have awakened through a political event? Sorry, this is really gross reductionism … Yes, states and nations are different, and nations can exist without a state, but the state form is equally very old and nations are equally a historical development, strongly related to the state form in any case. Nations are a historical, social and political phenomenom (but of course rooted in the biological life of our species). If you know of any discovery of ‘nation genes’, I’d really be surprised.

Animals and humans spread over a territory. The probability of a woman mating a given man first depends on distance between them. It follows that reproduction condensates in “islands” of beings, as the probability of a given person having both parents from the same “island” is (much) greater than from different “islands”.

Each “island” or “quasi-island” is a nation. Carl Sagan makes a beautiful description of the phenomenon at early times in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

wow … strange that a biological construct did not exist until so late in human history …