What's actually fantastical about this paper (and maybe why it's written the way it is... more on that later) is that while they show clear correlation between bear genetics and Indigenous language groups, their analysis to try to determine what biophysical and geographical factors might be influencing these distributions came up basically blank. Once physical distance was removed, their remaining factors (terrain ruggedness, waterways, modern and ancient settlements, modern forestry, and language groups) could only explain a very small percentage of the distribution in bear populations.<p>So, on one hand, this is fantastic, since it plays into the whole notion that ecological systems (and how humans and human cultures interact with and shape ecological systems) are resistant to "straightforward" reductive analyses, which is very much in the spirit of this research.<p>On the other hand, it means this paper is kind of weird to write. Like it's a very enticing positive result (bear genetics and indigenous language groups are correlated), but basically empty handed in terms of explanation.<p>I've never written a real scientific paper, but plenty of engineering reports, and always found reports which are basically summarized to "here's ever measure and correlate we tried, and nothing is conclusive or explanatory" to be awful to write. Because you don't have a positive result to anchor onto, you're just... enumerating a bunch of stuff with no payoff.