Europe’s less familiar genetic axis
When people talk about genetic differences within Europe, they usually reach first for the north-south axis. The familiar stereotypes come with it: tall, blonde northerners contrasted with medium-height, dark-haired southerners. These images are crude, but they reflect how readily Europeans imagine biological variation from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.
East and West are usually discussed in a different vocabulary. Here the reference points are political systems, religion, conservatism, family structure, the historical Iron Curtain, or the Hajnal line separating long-standing European marriage patterns. Genetic differences across the same axis receive much less attention.
This post sheds some light on that neglected comparison. I examine two polygenic scores (PGSs): EA4, built from variants associated with educational attainment, and a score built from variants associated with adult height. I compare Eastern and Western Europeans, then ask whether the scores vary with longitude, latitude, or both. The result is an East-West contrast, but not a simple genetic border.