As Indian Americans continue their socioeconomic ascent, the relevance of caste evaporates.

Yet researchers have found evidence this social technology was sustained for thousands of years. What are its next thousand?

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Humanity has not yet even reached its final form.

The conventional view is a spacefaring future will create the threat of human speciation. But speciation implies total isolation.

Rather, perhaps, the human future will be more like India's castes: a constellation of subpopulations united by communication and a common ethos.

But the fact that the kaleidoscopic caste system has lasted as long as it has, preserving not just its roles but the genetic lineages within them, shows that humanity is capable of such long-term socioeconomic differentiation.

In the future, will Martians marry Terrans?

When geneticists finally began investigating Indian castes, they were shocked to find that the lowest castes were as genetically distinct from their upper-caste neighbors as Swedes are from Sicilians.

Upper castes spread out across India, meanwhile, were genetically close!