Not a geneticist but I did stay at Holiday Inn last night. Anyway, I *believe* that the most varied region is the oldest because it's had the most time to accumulate variations. Europe and other newer areas have less variation because they were settled later and by a (relatively) few people.
All the research into the past is fascinating but I'd really like to see where scientists think that human evolution is occuring most today. Is it in areas with large numbers of births and deaths? It seems like advanced countries have lower birth rates, which goes counter to evolution.
I have an idea that I've been working on for a while, here it is:
Evolution is occuring every minute, every hour and every day of every year all over the world. Let's take humans.
Women have something called 'spontaneaous abortion' where the union of an egg and sperm is made and immediately aborted, many times even without the knowledge of the woman because of an anamoly.
Now, let's say that anamoly is drugs or pollution. Any pregnacy that makes it to term has made it through the 'spontaneous abortion' barrier because it was a union strong enough to withstand the drug or pollution (or a hundred other factors) present at the time of conception.
I believe this is a continuous 'weeding' process and only the 'strongest' unions survive. I also believe that some retardation at birth is due to causes similar to the one mentioned and the retatded person born was at the bottom limit of the survivability level.
I expect that many of us are 'immune' to many things we would be suprised to learn.
This is a continuous process and if environmental conditions change dramatically , only a small handful of us would survive to pass on those genes.
In the halls of Congress and the courts. They are evolving into nincompoops at a far greater speed than previously realized.