Nietzsche's observation about the superiority of certain races is an anathema to modern political thinking on racial equality. This repudiation is not just a matter of political correctness, but reflects the fact that his ideas are wholly contrary to the evidence of genetic mapping presented in earlier chapters that shows how we are all so closely linked in terms of genetic origins. As Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, recently observed in a review article (Pääbo, 2003), ‘[evidence] suggests that we expanded from a rather small African population. Thus, from a genomic perspective, we are all Africans, either living in Africa or in quite recent exile from Africa.’ Nevertheless, in exploring how modern humans and their social structures evolved from the depths of the ice age and how climate change may have left an indelible imprint on our make-up, we will need to consider the more violent aspects of human behaviour. So, while we can have no truck with Nietzsche's notions of ‘aristocratic races’, blond or otherwise, the issues of the ‘predator’ and of ‘victory and plunder’ have been a major feature of the analysis our prehistory and more recent history.