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(*) For example, take the Mukogodo.  Over the last century, the Mukogodo people living in Northern Kenya went from being foragers and beekeepers living in rock shelters to pastoralists with herds of cattle.  They adopted new rites of passage and rejected their ancestral language.  Now the Mukogodo, seeking to be part of the dominant ethnic group, call themselves Masai.  The Mukogodo have pulled off an impressive feat of "ethnicity management."

But why?  The most plausible answer has to do with the effects of British colonialism.  The Masi pastoralists were displaced into the Mukogodo homeland, and their ~bride prices~ paid in cattle trumped the traditional ~bride wealth~ of the Mukogodo bee hives.  For the Mukogodo males to get wives in such a competitive marketplace required that they turn to cattle herding.  In shifting their mode of subsistence, all else followed.

Conversely, Ashkenazi Jews as a group manifest a distinct genetic profile which, is has been argued, "may result from the demanding social niche into which they were forced between roughly 900 and 1700 CE, and the nimbleness required to be useful to their unpredictable hosts." [NY Times] Other examples of how changing environments may have reshaped genes in recent times through natural selection can found on the Genes & Culture  page.

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