Top misconceptions of Theory of Evolution you had to deal with

[The Grand Nudger]

Try telling that to a Native American.

Germans, Scandinavians, Russians - all have the traits of cold-climate cultures, but typical facial features are less divergent within than across cultural boundaries.

Divergence happens of a physical nature, and then when it comes to behavioral traits, they, like everything else, are very much physical.

Populations can be reproductively isolated based upon behavior -alone-.  I'm not sure why you thought that anything you mentioned above was a response to the quoted portion of my statements.  Care to elaborate?

I believe the genes which ensure we teach and protect our young was long ago decided with, or prior to our lower ape ancestors, therefore not sure why this is interesting. Altogether, it sounds a bit too Lamarkian to say that changes in phenotype (if I understand your use of that in a non-genetic sense) cause changes in genotype. Those which already have the right genotype learn how to care for their offspring, and consider teaching them survival skills.

Do those genes ensure -what- we teach our young?  They may, but I don't think we're anywhere near a point where we could say that with any certainty even if they do..meanwhile, some strategies are better than others, and if you teach your offspring a superior survival strategy it won't matter how well or how much others teach inferior survival strategies.   Natural selection acts upon phenotype as efficiently as it acts upon the more limited set, genotype.  If, by lamarckian, you mean the notion that we can pass attributes on to our children which we've picked up..we clearly can.  I plan on teaching all of my children to read...I assume you do as well.  If reading is a survival advantage, despite there being no gene that confers the ability to read, natural selection will favor the readers.  If you had twins and taught one to read while leaving the other illiterate, what would your expectations be?  

Genotypes happen through mutation, and they survive when they influence a physical culture. If the new genotype influences the behavior of teaching offspring survival behaviors, then it's still the genotype which is responsible for this. Learned behavior may be genetically influenced in some, and with others it may be through intense cultural programming, and nobody at this point seems to understand clearly the limits of genetic influences, but what is sure is that what you learn the hard way is not going to be passed on to your offspring unless you are alive and present to teach it to them, which was not necessarily the case when the human life span topped out at age 30.

Genotype influences phenotype, ofc.  Phenotype also influences genotype.  You think that "what we learned the hard way" wasn't passed on?  Where did all of this -looks around him-  come from, then?  Is there a gene that confers the ability to start a fire, to make a clovis point and haft it to a spear?  A gene that tells us which plants are safe to eat and which are not?  Is there such a thing as a "born physicist" who falls out of the womb with a piece of chalk and begins to scribble quantum equations on the floor of the delivery room?  The different behaviors we've learned, and that we teach, have influenced our genotype. To use your example above...there aren't many native americans left round these parts. Bang bang. This would be an example of what Dawkins was referring to with "extended phenotypes". Natural selection, in that instance, appears to have favored the more proficient metalworkers in the same way that it favors the beavers who build better dams. The populations were -somewhat- reproductively isolated in that those favored metalworkers were notoriously racist...and now, today...you'll see a much larger concentration of european genes here in the states, than native genes. Sure, resistance to disease was a clincher - but it was the presence of attributes in one population not determined by genetics (or at least not determined in any way that we can work out) that ultimately decided the genetic makeup of todays Murica. Even within that subset, the ratio of "native genes" left today are largely the result of those native populations absorbing and coopting the europeans non-genetic attributes. You'll find more collaborater left than resister. The latter is disproportionately represented in our population. This is a crystal clear example of phenotype influencing genotype.