Let’s Recap The ‘DNA Games’: Segregation Returns To The London Olympics, With A Vengeance
Saturday, August 11, 2012 - 20:40
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Led by 100-meter world record holder Usain Bolt, Jamaican men swept the sprinting events at the London Olympics. It was a stunning feat for the small Caribbean nation. But as part of a broader trend, it’s hardly surprising. Runners of West African descent are the fastest humans on earth. For decades, male sprinters from a bushel of developing countries—Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts, Barbados, Grenada, Netherlands Antilles and the Bahamas in the Caribbean and Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Namibia in western Africa each, as single countries, have produced more elite sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined. Yet West African descended runners are laggards at the longer races. read more