Are there such things as distinct ‘races’ of human beings having distinct physical and intellectual (or even moral sense?) features?

The classic answer is, these days, "Hell, no!"

But what if DNA research did start to show disconcerting patterns – different categories of people could be identified with high levels of accuracy?

Are ‘nations’ in part genetic entities?

And if so, does any policy need to emerge from that thought?

One intriguing consequence of EU citizens moving to and fro is that these historical DNA patterns may become blurred, so making it harder to know where we all came from:

As you can see, there is population substructure within Germany. We need to map these things out now before the EU mobility wipes clear many of the historical information signals.

These data will be a great boon to historians trying to understand the patterns of ethnogenesis in pre-modern Europe. There are textual support for the contention that the medieval German drive to the east resulted in the Germanization of many West Slavic peoples; these sorts of data can test these hypotheses.

Blood and Soil. Does today’s science show us that it should be no surprise that ‘nationalistic’ or even ‘anti-European’ ideas are so ingrained in so many people?