&gt;&gt; So only physical characteristics are heritable?<p>See my point above - physical characteristics are directly observable, and therefore, measurable. Mental, emotional etc psychological characteristics are not directly observable, so are only measurable through a proxy.<p>In the case of intelligence, the proxy is an IQ test and we don&#x27;t even have a good definition of what it is we&#x27;re proxying, so it might not even be a single characteristic, but rather the combination of many traits.<p>So yeah, we can say very safely that you can get your eyes or your height from your parents, but not so about your IQ.<p>Corollary, maybe you can inherit your _intelligence_ but since we don&#x27;t have a good definition of that and no way to measure it directly, there&#x27;s no solid ground to stand on arguing that this or that &quot;race&quot; has more or less of it. And the same goes for any other group, really.<p>Full disclosure: I&#x27;m interested in this discussion too, mostly because I believe the whole idea of IQ measurements is bogus to begin with.