A seed and an examination paper belonged to very different chapters of East Asian history. Farming arrived thousands of years before the schools and court traditions that we associate with Confucianism. Yet an ancient genome from a later century sits after both events. That makes it surprisingly easy to mistake one long genetic trend for evidence of two different causes.
In Did Farming Make Us Smarter?, I found a change in an education-related genetic score around local crop arrival. In Did Confucianism Select for Education?, I found another near regional Confucian milestones. Now I put both dates into the same analysis and add a score linked to fluid intelligence. If the Confucian bend was farming in disguise, it should shrink. It barely does. The farming signal, meanwhile, tells a more complicated story.