Friday, May 7, 2010

Recent DNA studies reveal the truth: Some of us are wilder!

More interesting clues and theories from the Fantastic Voyage-like world of DNA exploration ...

Seems that scientists have found remnant Neandertal DNA blended in with some people's Homo Sapien DNA. Some of us, it seems, are a bit more Neanderthal than others.

I, for one, am relieved to hear this, for I have long used Neandertal genes as an excuse for some of behaviors and tendencies. And I am also proud to say that I postulated that this very condition existed for others in the modern human race some time ago.

How did this intermingling occur? Scientists also recently posited that early Homo Sapien women found Neandertal men to be objects of their primal lusts. It would be logical to conclude, then, that the most handsome and manly of the Neandertal would be the ones most like to have gotten into Homo Sapien women's genes. So to speak.

This, I believe, is good news. Confirmation of this root-level genetic difference between some modern people and others -- those on my side of the family, for example -- can explain a lot of conflict throughout recorded history and today. For it's seems to me that rather dividing people along traditional, common lines -- race, country, religion, political party, sexual orientation, even gender -- you get a far more relevant and meaningful framing of how the world works -- and clashes -- if people are sorted into two categories:

  • Domesticated: Those who are obsessed with control, of self and others, and imposed ways of doing things -- that whole agricultural/farming/factory/military/bureaucracy world, sometimes called "Civilization." Think of farm animals: linked to the mega-machine for so long that they're no longer wild or able to function on their own. And further breeding among this weakened gene pool only furthers the un-wilding. 
  • Feral: Not "wild," because pretty much everybody today is "born on farm," so to speak. But there's those who can help but ... act wild. Be as wild as they can within the framework of the civilized social and cultural world they happened to exist in. So they go feral -- wild where they are, amidst the world of civlized control. They are self-willing, self-reliant, independent, tribal, curious and tolerant of others, and downright mutinous when conditions are necessary. Pirates, but often pirates plying the waters of the so-called "normal" daily world. They are Hunter-and-gatherers finding a way -- each his or her own way, because that's their nature -- in the modern paved-over landscape and economy. 

If you think about it, this one dichotomy is behind damn near every conflict, whether between the Romans and the Barbarians, the Cavalry and the Indians, or the boss and the empolyee. It even illuminates things like why the Democrats and Republicans are equally vile and FUBAR. Because they're the same species. And  a different species from many of the rest of us, who are not much represented.

Why? Because Neandetals don't often make good politicians. Or wage serfs. Or cubicle dwellers. Or businessmen. Or fascists. Or underlings. Or farmers.

The next question for research, then, might be: Where did all these Homo sapiens who supplanted -- and somtimes bedded -- my Neandertal forebears come from? 

Seems some scientists who are traveling on a bit more fantastic (and perhaps chemically aided) of a fantastic scientific journey have a theory for that, too: Ancient alien astronauts inserted genetic code (and probably more) into a select group of ancestral humans, forging those that went on to found agriculture, build cities, fight frequent and epic wars, and finally soil the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

Well, that explains A LOT.

Some of us really are wilder.

And modern chicks find us hot.

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