There may well be something to that, but by the time that really could be studied, everyone from that era will be, well, dead.
That being said, epigenetics is a 'thing' with some fairly good research (as far as 'we were so thrilled when we sequenced our genome and then we found out that was totally not the whole story so we don't know what this means' type of research goes). The problem with studying it in humans is that unless you can take the samples before and after an event that you don't know if about to happen, it can really only be studied indirectly. There are some really interesting studies about multigenerational birth rates, death rates, diabetes and fertility across generations done by researching the church and medical records of teeny tiny, genetically isolated villages in Europe that are really interesting. But there are no blood samples to really see what is going on in the DNA. So we know *something* is happening, but we don't really know what.
There was a documentary called . . . crap, what was it?
(Thank you Google)
The Ghost In Your Genes which was a Nova special on PBS a while back that dealt with epigenetics. (I don't recall if they dealt with war issues or not, I watched it a few years ago), but that had some fascinating work with identical twins and autism (stuff with twins in general and one set of twins where only one was autistic). A lot of epigenetics in humans is just theory right now, because we haven't known about it long enough to test it in multigenerational human populations, so a lot of stuff is just conjecture now, but they are starting to get into the molecular work, even if it's only to say 'hmm, there's a difference'. Regardless, it's fascinating but thank god I don't study it because I'd never be able to write persuasive grant application. (Not that I do that anyway, I'm a lab monkey).
That being said, epigenetics is a 'thing' with some fairly good research (as far as 'we were so thrilled when we sequenced our genome and then we found out that was totally not the whole story so we don't know what this means' type of research goes). The problem with studying it in humans is that unless you can take the samples before and after an event that you don't know if about to happen, it can really only be studied indirectly. There are some really interesting studies about multigenerational birth rates, death rates, diabetes and fertility across generations done by researching the church and medical records of teeny tiny, genetically isolated villages in Europe that are really interesting. But there are no blood samples to really see what is going on in the DNA. So we know *something* is happening, but we don't really know what.
There was a documentary called . . . crap, what was it?
(Thank you Google)
The Ghost In Your Genes which was a Nova special on PBS a while back that dealt with epigenetics. (I don't recall if they dealt with war issues or not, I watched it a few years ago), but that had some fascinating work with identical twins and autism (stuff with twins in general and one set of twins where only one was autistic). A lot of epigenetics in humans is just theory right now, because we haven't known about it long enough to test it in multigenerational human populations, so a lot of stuff is just conjecture now, but they are starting to get into the molecular work, even if it's only to say 'hmm, there's a difference'. Regardless, it's fascinating but thank god I don't study it because I'd never be able to write persuasive grant application. (Not that I do that anyway, I'm a lab monkey).
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-ghost-in-our-genes/
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