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A new study by Stanford University biologists finds an explanation for the idea that physical characteristics such as skin pigmentation are only skin deep. Using genetic modeling, the team has found that when two populations with distinct traits combine over generations, traits of individuals within the resulting admixed population come to reveal very little about individuals ancestry. Their findings were published March 27 in a special edition of the
American Journal of Physical Anthropology on race and racism. When two founding groups first come together, a visible physical trait that differed between those founders initially carries information about the genetic ancestry of admixed individuals, says Jaehee Kim, a postdoctoral research fellow in biology at Stanford and first author of the study. But this study shows that after enough time has passed, that s no longer true, and you can no longer identify a person s genetic ancestry based only on such traits.