A closer look
Bicycles completely altered human genetics in rural England by allowing young men to easily travel to neighboring villages and court women outside their immediate gene pool. Before the popularization of the affordable safety bicycle in the eighteen-nineties, the average working-class person rarely traveled more than five miles from their birthplace for their entire life. This extreme isolation meant people were mostly marrying their third cousins just because they were the only ones within walking distance. Once folks could comfortably pedal ten miles down the road, the radius of potential romantic partners exploded, drastically reducing inbreeding and massively diversifying the local DNA. It's frankly hilarious that the greatest leap forward in British genetic health wasn't driven by advanced medicine or royal decrees, but by a bunch of horny Victorian youths furiously pedaling their newly purchased two-wheelers just to find a date who didn't already share their last name
