The Biology of Human Variance

We are a species of primate, one among many. The implications of that simple fact are profound—profound enough to elicit adamant denials that it is even true. From the mid-nineteenth century, when Darwin published his Origin of Species,1 to the present, when some people demand that public schools teach the biblical creation myth as an equivalent to evolutionary theory, our place among the earth’s myriad biological forms has been a deeply contentious matter.