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Mendel was very very lucky that he chose the traits that he did. They happened to be single gene traits. If he had picked any number of multigene traits, it would be very difficult if not impossible to work out how simple gene inheritance works.
Perhaps there were many before him that tried with multi-gene traits that were not successful, and we never heard of them.
You mean, they became extinct?
Lucky, or observant?
EDIT: To clarify, I suspect he already had observed that there was a pattern present and based his hypothesis on that before doing any real testing to prove it.
Maybe he only reported on the ones that followed the patterns he could explain. A statistical analysis showed that he most likely fudged some data, too.
Pea breeding memes? I like it
Give peas a chance!
