Genetic link to tonality?

Very cool research out of Scotland that appears to have found a genetic determinant for language type.

[Robert] Ladd and [Dan] Dediu compared 24 linguistic features—such as subject-verb word order, passive tense, and rounded vowels—with 981 versions of the two genes found in the 49 populations studied. Most of the language contrasts could be explained by geographic or historical differences. But tone seemed to be inextricably tied to the variations of ASPM and Microcephalin observed by the authors. The mutations were absent in populations that speak tonal languages, but abundant in nontonal speakers.

Of course, I'm a little concerned about one thing. Some (who am I kidding...many) idiots are going to latch onto the fact that the populations with the recent (~37K years) variation in the genes speak non-tonal languages. With snobbery and no understanding of either linguistics or evolution, these simpletons will conclude that tonal languages such as Chinese are "primitive" when compared to non-tonal languages.