Few papers have attempted to address the potential of extended kinships of twins to resolve the complexities of biological and cultural inheritance in humans. Since the mid-80s these issues have largely been buried beneath the quest for specific genes that contribute to individual differences in complex traits and liability to disease. The articles of Keller et al. and Medland and Keller (current issue) revisit these issues. History will decide whether these new papers represent the final gasp of a paradigm superceded by the ‘new’ genetics or contain the timely seeds of new birth in the face of a 30-year genetic research program otherwise poised on the cusp of degeneration (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970).