101 temp layout - atlantis rising magazine library · points out that at the mexican archaeological...

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42 GeneticManipulationDangerous NewPlaying Fields forBig Business

45 The Blessingsof ChaosInside the Mindof MathematicianRalph Abraham

46 Ice AgeMarinersCould Mastery ofthe Seas Be MuchOlder than WeThought?

48 Astrology50 DVD57 Puzzle

29 Enigma of theLong Skulls

32The Engineersof Puma PunkuHard Evidence ofAdvanced Tools forAncient Builders

34 The Garden ofEden in Egypt?The Evidence HasBeen with Us AllAlong, ArguesOne Researcher

38 The Land of Puntand Atlantis

40 Ancient WisdomTeachings of theDogon Priests

7 Letters

10 AlternativeNews

17 JeaneManningIgniting the Youngwith New Fire

19 Michael CremoAncient AustralianFolklore andCosmic Impacts

23 Deep Time inDeep TroubleHave the Time-Keepers Fixedthe Game?

24 Kennewick Man—the JapaneseConnection?

CONTENTSCONTENTS

38

42

45 10

40

#103

January / February 2014

34

23 29®

ANCIENTMYSTERIES

FUTURE SCIENCE

UNEXPLAINEDANOMALIES

PUBLISHER & EDITORJ. Douglas Kenyon

CONTRIBUTORSMichael Cremo

Christopher DunnRalph Ellis

Frank JosephJulie Loar

Cynthia LoganRita Louise, Ph.D.Jeane Manning

Patrick MarsolekSusan Martinez, Ph.D.

Marsha OaksRobert Schoch, PhD.

Steven SoraWilliam B. Stoecker

Carly Svamvour

COVER DESIGNRyan Hammer

GRAPHICSRandy HaraganDenis OuelletteRyan Hammer

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Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 103

ALTERNATIVE NEWS

News of Americans far more ancient thanonce believed possible continues. The

latest report comes from Brazil where a majornew exhibit in Brasilia documenting the pres-ence of humans from 29,000 years ago hascaught the public’s attention. On display areartifacts from Serra da Capivara National Parkin Brazil’s northeastern Piaui state.

Franco-Brazilian archaeologist NiedeGuidon has been carrying out large-scale ex-cavations of the area since the 1970s. She saysthe cave paintings and other relics are the old-est found so far in the Americas. The cave art,she adds, is in greater abundance than at anyother place in the world, including Europe.In fact, the Bazilian cave art is about the sameage as that found in many places not only in

Cavern with ancient art atSerra da Capivara National

Park in Piaui State,Northwestern Brazil

Europe but in Australia and around theworld. Such a finding might not seem un-usual, if academic archaeology had not in-vested so much of its credibility in the ideathat human habitation in the Americas goesback only about 12 thousand years. The so-called Clovis horizon—the presumed arrivalof the Clovis people from Asia across an an-cient ice bridge where the Bering Straits nowexist—has been for many years a virtual articleof faith in the domain of conventional ar-chaeology. That school of thought has takenmany hits lately.

Remains found in Yukon’s BluefishCaves, South Carolina’s Topper site, Alberta’sTaber, as well as in others locations, have al-ready established that humanity in the Amer-

icas goes back far beyond Clovis. Researcherand Atlantis Rising columnist Michael Cremopoints out that at the Mexican archaeologicalsite of Hueyatlaco, in the 1960s, stone toolswere authoritatively dated by Dr. VirginiaSteen McIntyre to an amazing 200,000 yearsago (“Virginia Steen-McIntyre and the Huey-atlaco Saga,” Michael Cremo, A.R. #96). Notsurprisingly these days, considerable doubt isexpressed in many quarters over the authorityof the entire orthodox chronology for humanhistory in the Americas.

Now the Brazilian discoveries could bethe final nail in the Clovis coffin and perhapsopen the way for a much more expansiveview of human history in the Americas, if notthe world

According to a respected German theoret-ical physicist working on gravity, “The

2013 Nobel Prize for the discovery of theHiggs boson would have been consideredridiculous by physics’ greatest minds, such asEinstein, Schrödinger or Dirac.” Dr. Alexan-der Unzicker makes the point in a controver-sial new book The Higgs Fake—How ParticlePhysicists Fooled the Nobel Committee.

In a merciless critique of the LargeHadron Collider at CERN in Switzerlandwhich claimed discovery of the so-calledHiggs, Unzicker says, “The reaction of theSwedish Academy to last year’s discovery of anew particle (known in the media as the“God particle”) is a result of being beguiledby CERN’s attempts to justify the billions ofdollars of public money being spent.” Headds, “If we take a sober look at the facts, thediscovery news is, at best, an abuse of lan-guage; at worst, a lie.” His arguments about

both the standard models of physics as wellas theoretical approaches like strings and mul-tiverses have, not surprisingly, provoked in-tense reaction.

Unzicker, argues that: “1) the so-calledstandard model has grown unbelievably com-plicated, 2) none of the great riddles ofphysics that have persisted for a century havebeen solved, 3) history suggests that the cur-rent model is a dead end, 4) with their ever-more intricate experimental techniques,particle physicists are fooling themselves withalleged results, 5) scientific convictions in thecommunity are established by trust in expertopinions, group-think and parroting, and 6)the data analysis in its complexity cannot beoverseen by anybody.”

With degrees in both physics and law,Unzicker has a PhD in neuroscience. His firstbook, Bankrupting Physics, was chosen bythe German science magazine bild der wis-

senschaft as the “Most Controversial ScienceBook of the Year” for 2010. Its English edi-tion, was published in 2013 by PalgraveMacmillan.

ccording to a respected German theoret-i l h i i t ki it “Th

both the standard models of physics as wellth ti l h lik t i d l

The Higgs Boson Is “Fake” Declares German Physicist

Dr. AlexanderUnzicker

AMERICANSFROM 30,000

YEARS AGO?

In the movie Jurassic Park, DNAtaken from blood in mosqui-

tos, which had been preserved inamber, was used to clone di-nosaurs. Even though the ideasounded plausible enough for amovie, it was dismissed by ex-perts as impossible. Now,though, some are saying, maybenot so much. A new paper in theProceeding of the National Acad-emy of Sciences reports that thefossil of a blood-filled mosquitohas, in fact, been found, albeitnot in amber but in shale.

While containing no DNA which mightbe used for cloning, the ostensibly 46-million-year-old bug apparently still contained theblood molecules of some prehistoric animal.Found in Montana, the female parasite wasfound by a team from the U.S. Museum of

See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74

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n the movie JuJJ rarr saa sss icii PaPP rkrr , DNAt k f bl d i i

Blood-Filled Mosquito Fossil Turns Up

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hhi h i h

Is Dinosaur Cloning Next?

Natural History led by Dr. Dale Greenwalt.Genetic science may not be producing

dinosaur clones yet, but it is providing manyother strange creations. For more on this, seePatrick Marsolek’s article “Genetic Manipu-lation” on page 42 of this issue.

Much to the consternation of the virtualpowers that be, a new scientific survey

confirms that in the U.K. a majority of thepopulation believes in the “paranormal.” Sim-ilar studies have been carried out in America.According to research by the Association forthe Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenom-ena, 52% say they believe in the supernatural.In fact, 62% of women and 41% of men be-lieve in ghosts. The number of people whobelieve in the supernatural has seen a markedincrease over previous years, even as the per-centage of those who believe in UFOs hasdropped. One in five claim to have personallyhad some kind of paranormal experience.

Reporting on the study for Britain’sDaily Telegraph, journalist Jasper Coppingwas at some pains to suggest that while suchbeliefs may persist, they do so in the absenceof any proof and that it might be the badeconomy that is driving people to what he

implies are such clearly irrational extremes.Such pronouncements, as the readers of thismagazine well know, contradict volumes ofresearch which, while dismissed without causeby a conventional press and academic estab-lishment, have a much greater scientific basisthan do many notions—the big bang theory,for instance—which are taken for granted inthe conventional wisdom.

Among the many who have declared abelief in ghosts were Winston Churchill andAbraham Lincoln. Whoever wrote the Shake-spearean plays, clearly took seriously the in-f luence of worlds beyond. The ghost ofHamlet’s father, for example, tormented theprince with tales of unjust murder, drivinghim to tragic behavior. Perhaps the pressshould consider speaking more about the foulmurder of our higher sensibilities at the handsof a coarse and corrupt establishment and lessabout public irrationality.

Horatio, Hamlet and the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father

uch to the consternation of the virtualpowers that be a new scientififf c survey

implies are such clearly irrational extremes.Such pronouncements as the readers of this

Most Believe in Ghosts, Says U.K. Poll

Number 103 • ATLANTIS RISING 11

Number 103 • ATLANTIS RISING 23See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74

ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE


• BY SUSAN B. MARTINEZ, Ph.D.

Continued on Page 59

How old is mankind? How old isthe earth? Lately, there have beenrumblings from the undergroundIntelligentsia that put a giant

question mark next to orthodox GeologicTime and the extravagant dating of early fossilmen—the first hominids, being Africa’s aus-tralopiths and their predecessors. One famil-iar example of Earth Science’s “deep time” isthe Dinosaur Age, supposed to have ended aslong ago as 65 million years. Yet, othersources have pinpointed much more recentdinosaurs; in fact, the sci-ence of radiocarbon (car-bon-14) dating seems to puta 250,000 year cap on anyburied organic matter.Have we been humbuggedby the Darwinian establish-ment?

Now there’s a dazzlingdifference between 65 mil-lion years and 250,000years! There’s also a hugedifference between 4.6 bil-lion years (today’s scientificagreement on Earth’s age)versus the 10 or 15 or 20thousand years suggestedby “young earth” propo-nents of Creation Science.

Have the TimekeepersFixed the Game?

Polarized into such extremes—how could thisdaunting gulf of opinion have arisen? To an-swer this, we have to go back at least two cen-turies for a brief visit with Britain’s foremostgeologists who set in motion the “steady-state” version of our planet’s growth and de-velopment. Called by the 9-syllable name ofUniformitarianism (more succinctly knownas Gradualism), it advanced the idea that na-ture has been doing her thing, without muchof a hiccup, since the Beginning, in more-or-less the same, unvarying way (steady rate ofdepositions, erosion, etc.). And it was thisSnail’s Pace school of thinking (as opposedto the school of Catastrophism) that set the

stage for Charles Darwin’stheory of evolution—sup-posedly accomplished bytiny, minute changes accu-mulating slowly but surelyover vast eons of time. Butright here there is a hitch:“Much to the evolutionist’sconsternation, time is actu-ally a great enemy of or-ganic evolution, not itssalvation. The handiwork oftime is disassociation anddisintegration, not synthe-sis.”

Though not oftenmentioned, Mr. Darwinquietly deleted his sectionon sedimentation as a reli-

able chronometer (timekeeper) from the 1868edition of his book On the Origin of Species,after contemplating Lord Kelvin’s muchyounger dating of Earth—which the great Eng-lish polymath had put at 98 million years(versus today’s 4.6 billion, which incidentally,rose from 3.4 billion in 1947, and that, from1.6 billion in 1934). Charles Darwin’s ownson, Sir George Darwin, would (like Kelvin)arrive at a modest estimate for geological age,about 100 million years, based on analysis oferosion and sedimentary deposits; (his dadhad toyed with estimates around 400 millionyears).

Mentioned in the Mexican Codex Chi-malpopoca is a rain of sandstone falling onthe earth. Indeed “sandstone, limestone,gravel conglomerates, and other formationsextend over exceedingly wide geographicalareas,” noted Vine Deloria Jr., in Red Earth,White Lies. “The problem posed by thesestrata is that they suggest a blanketing of theplanet from extraterrestrial sources. Sedimen-tary rocks are something more than we havebeen taught.”

If this is so, if there were episodes ofsuper-sedimentation, cosmic debris older thanthe earth should enter into the facts of sedi-mentation. Significant sky-falls, such as thetime when “the belt of meteors gave up itsstones, and showers of them rained down onthe earth,” would be a game changer. In theearly life of our planet, meteorites, stones anddust assailed the earth; “clay, stones, ashes,

tmor“cagstds

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Lucy and child(Walk with Beasts exhibition,Horniman Museum, London)

Number 103 • ATLANTIS RISING 29See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on 4

ANCIENT MYSTERIES


• BY RITA LOUISE, Ph.D.

Societies around the world portray dis-tinct characteristics which define thelanguage spoken, and the customs andtraditions that are passed from gener-

ation to generation, each of these can provideinsights into a cultural group. There are, how-ever, a number of universal customs that arepracticed on each continent around theglobe. They include circumcision, death andburial rituals, and cranial deformation. Thesetraditions originated in our remote past, theirpurpose and meaning seemingly lost to thesands of time.

It was once believed that head modifica-tions developed in Egypt and then spreadaround the world. Researchers have con-cluded that this phenomenon was not iso-lated to one geographic area and thendisseminated out into the surrounding areas.Instead, this bizarre hallmark of ancient soci-eties sprang up around the world in differentcultural groups independently. Many havecome to believe it to be an inherent step inthe evolution of a group’s culture.

Cranial deformation is a distinct andpainful tradition. The objective of cranial de-formation is to elongate the shape of thehead. This procedure, once performed, can-not be reversed. More importantly, individu-als who have had the procedure performed,unlike circumcision, cannot conceal it. It is a

permanent visible marker that identifies notonly a cultural group but also select individ-uals within that society. When a child is born,the infant’s head is fashioned or molded intoa unique long and slender shape. The simplestmethod a caregiver employed was to put pres-sure on, or gently massage, the child’s headdaily until the desired shape was achieved.The second method constrained the child’shead in a mechanical device which, over time,would produce the desired elongated shape.Head modifications were always performedduring infancy, when the cranial bones werestill tender and pliable and the sutures be-tween the cranial bones are unfixed. This al-lowed shaping or reshaping the head. But whywould a mother or caregiver subject her childto such a painful and ongoing process?

Skulls displaying clear signs of cranial de-formation surfaced in the archaeologicalrecord of the early Neolithic Era startingaround 10,000 BCE. The practice of headmodifications during the Neolithic era (priorto 5000 BCE) appears episodic. This may bedue to the number of individuals whoseheads were modified, or, could be tied to thelimited number of remains that have been un-earthed. Some of the earliest examples ofelongated skulls discovered were unearthed insouth-eastern Australia in Coobool Creek andKow Swamp. Remarkably, finds that date toabout the same time were also found in theShanidar Cave in Iraq. In the eastern high-

lands of Brazil, a skull was recovered fromConfins Cave that dates back to 7566 BCE.

Starting around 5000 BCE, the traditionof skull modification appears to have ex-panded. This assumption is based upon theincreased number of remains with elongatedskulls recovered. Some researchers believe thatthe convention of cranial manipulation mush-roomed as early hunter-gatherer societiesbegan to coalesce into urban environments.Figurines with deformed crania also begin toappear in the archaeological record, furthersupporting the antiquity and distribution ofthis custom.

In the modern world, the tradition ofcranial deformation is often associated withancient indigenous cultures and not with ad-vanced western civilizations. If it was prac-ticed in the Western world, one might assumethat it occurred sometime in our remote pastand was abandoned by civilized society. Thisis far from the case. In Europe, researchers,such as neurologist and psychiatrist AchilleFoville, documented the practice of cranialdeformation in France. Surveying the craniaof inmates at a French public asylum in 1833,he evaluated 431 individuals at the facility.His findings revealed a remarkable 50% ofthe population with clear signs of deforma-tion, with some of them being considered se-vere in his estimation.

Regardless of where they have been

Why have societiesfrom all over theworld embraced thisstrange practice?


ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY

• BY CHRISTOPHER DUNN

If there is one positive outcome to theAncient Alien series on the HistoryChannel for the past few years, it is thatmillions have been treated to excellent

high-definition photography of very obscuresites around the world and have been amazedat the accomplishments of ancient civiliza-tions. While the series is heavily biased to-wards the belief that ancient aliens wereresponsible, either by creating these wondersthemselves or by directing and guiding indige-nous people, that fact should not dissuadeviewers from appreciating the high produc-tion value and variety of subject matter.

A more conservative approach mightlead one to posit that ancient cultures devel-oped the knowledge and means to shape theirenvironment without extraterrestrial supervi-sion. It is now well established that there havebeen immense catastrophes in our distantpast. The signs of upheaval are unmistakable!To witness the immense damage that has beendone, all one need do is visit these ancientsites. While in Egypt one can find multitudesof immense toppled statues and obelisks; inSouth America there are entire cities buriedunder mounds of volcanic ash. In Tiwanakuin Bolivia, once carefully positioned, preciselycut, gigantic andesite blocks are revealedperched at odd angles on pillars of hardenedmud.

With this article, I hope to present someinformation filmed by Prometheus Entertain-ment (the production company behind An-cient Aliens) that did not make it into thefinal cut, along with other information thatwas not provided to them because it wasdeemed not relevant at the time. Hopefully,after viewing other treatments of the topic,readers who have been led to erroneous con-clusions will recognize what is factual andwhat is not.

My own studies of ancient technologiesbegan in 1977. My first article on the subjectappeared in ANALOG Science Fiction/Sci-ence Fact magazine in August 1984. Withdozens of magazine articles, many in AtlantisRising, and two books published on the sub-ject, as well as innumerable discussions on In-ternet message boards, I have learned not tomake assumptions based on mere photo-graphs. However, the combination of on-sitephysical examination and photography (espe-cially with the latest hi-res technology) can be

powerful tools for gathering and analyzingdata from ancient artifacts.

Over the years, I have been sent photo-graphs of artifacts found out in the fields ofEgypt, in a museum in Mexico City, or stuckin the mud of the high plains of Bolivia. Usu-ally, I am asked if I think the artifact has beenmachined. Without actually physically meas-uring the artifact, my response has alwaysbeen that I don’t have enough informationabout it to draw a conclusion.

I gave this same answer to DavidHatcher Childress when he expressed interestto me in the origins of sites in Peru and Bo-livia. Believing that they were constructed bya highly advanced ancient culture, David waslooking for hard evidence to support thatview. To be able to state unequivocally thatthey were machined would be validationenough. In 2005, we traveled to Peru and Bo-livia together to examine and measure the ar-tifacts to see whether such a claim could besubstantiated.

Traveling through the Andes can be anarduous task, especially if you are carrying aheavy backpack with an assortment of steeltools for measuring whatever unique geomet-ric artifact you might run across. One has notonly to contend with the elevation, whichmeans a reduced supply of oxygen, but thehundreds of steps needed to be climbed toaccess sites such as Ollantaytambo, Pisac, andMacchu Picchu. All of this, though, wouldbe worth the effort, if for nothing else, forthe magnificent and inspiring views along theway.

What I discovered in Peru was that whilesome sites contained blocks of igneous rockwhich were precisely cut, such as ultra flat sur-faces similar to the artifacts I examined inEgypt, I was not able to conclusively arguethat they were made by machines. The greatwalls at Sacsayhuaman are an enigma, not justbecause of the size of the blocks, some weigh-ing in excess of 100 tons, but the precision ofthe fit between the blocks is quite remarkable,considering the seeming lack of geometricregimen. There is no apparent manufacturingconsistency that would prove conclusivelythat they were the result of machining.

On this trip, I carried tools that wouldbe found in many a tool & die maker’s kit; astraight-edge, square, a pair of calipers, an In-terapid indicator, and a surface gage. All werecapable of measuring within .0002 - .0005inch. We left Peru with most of the tools un-used and traveled higher in the Andes to LakeTiticaca and eventually to La Paz in Bolivia.Feeling that most of my tools would not benecessary based on what I saw in Peru, I leftthem in my suitcase in La Paz and carried justmy square and straight edge.

Most attention in this area has been fo-cused on Tiwanaku, considered the capital ofthe most important pre-Inca Andean civiliza-tions. Using archaeo-astronomical dating pop-ularized by Arthur Posnasky in 1945, the site

ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY

• BY CHRISTOPHER DUNNf h i i i h

II gave thhiis same answer to DDaviiddHatcher Childress when he expressed interest

i h i i f i i P d B

TheEngineersofPuma Punku

The precision machining evidenced in this andesite block cannot be explained by

conventional archaeology.

The great wall atSacsayhuaman

Hard Evidence of Advanced Tools for the Ancient Builders


LOST HISTORY


Many authors have at-tempted to identifyand locate the leg-endary Tower of

Babel in Sumer, in modern Iraq.However, with all due respect totheir tireless research efforts, a lo-cation in Mesopotamia for thislegendary pyramid is not the onlyconclusion that we can drawfrom the meager informationavailable to us. And the obviousalternative location can be

gleaned from some of the open-ing verses in the Book of Genesis,which say: And a river went out ofEden to water the garden; and fromthence it was parted, and became intofour branches (Gen 2:10).

Now there is only one riverin this region that passes througha garden and then divides intofour branches, and that is theNile, which runs through the val-ley oasis of Egypt before branch-ing out at the Delta. And whilethe Nile may only have twobranches nowadays, it did havefour in antiquity. Readers, how-ever, might exclaim that theTorah specifically names theTigris and Euphrates rivers, sothis cannot be so. But of coursethe Torah does not actually men-tion these famous rivers at all; inHebrew, it mentions the Chidde-qel and the Parath. But is theChiddaqel the Tigris and theParath the Euphrates? Some of

the biblical references do notreadily support that argumentand point more towards Egypt.

Besides, if we turn to Jose-phus Flavius’ record of this Gen-esis account, we see that theactual names and locations of therivers of Eden had been lost to usby this time. Josephus says ofEden: Now the garden was wateredby one river, which ran round aboutthe whole earth, and was parted intofour branches (Antiquities 1:1:3).

The four branches men-tioned here are then identified byJosephus as being the: Ganges,Euphrates, Tigris, and the Nile.Now that is some garden! Clearly,by the time Josephus was writinghis version of the Old Testament,the name and location of theserivers had been corrupted or lost.And yet Josephus was copyingfrom a much older version of theTorah/Tanakh than the classicalOld Testament in use today. Jose-phus was using the Torah thathad been taken from the Templeof Jerusalem in AD 70, whichdated from the time of the Baby-lonian exile. Yet even this earlyversion of the Torah appears tohave been confused as to wherethe four branches of the Edenriver lay.

But if the names of thebranches had been garbled by thesixth century BC, the descriptionof the layout of this river might

well be more reliable—it was along river running through a gar-den that had four branches. Solet’s run with that idea and seewhere it takes us. The possibilityexists, therefore, that the Book ofGenesis was referring to Egyptand to the Nile, and not toMesopotamia at all. But this is asuggestion that opens some fur-ther interesting possibilities, likethe precise location and meaningfor the Garden of Eden.

The prospect, however, offinding a comprehensive explana-tion and location for Eden andits integral Adam-and-Eve storyonce seemed impossible, as thenarrative and genealogies fromthis early part of the Bible appeartoo fragmented and confusing toprovide a verifiable history. How-ever, if Eden was in Egypt, and ifEden contained a famous gardenand a famous first lady and firstman, then there may well be agood explanation for this story,and a comparable description ofit in the historical record.

So what did the term ‘Eden’refer to? Firstly we should notethat the Aramaic ayin can betransliterated into English as ei-ther an ‘e’ or an ‘a’, so the nameEden could easily be read as anAden. If the Garden of Eden wasin Egypt then we may well havea direct Egyptian counterpart ofit, for we know that there was a

Garden of Aden (Aten) located inMiddle Egypt. That garden wascreated by Pharaoh Akhenatonfor his god, the Aton. There is afurther similarity here, for thename for the Aton can also bespelled as Adon. (The god Atonor Aten is spelled as Aden in TheBook of Precepts of Amenemapt, theson of Kanekht) In addition, thegod Aton was spelled with thereed glyph, which is the Egyptianequivalent of the Hebrew ayin, sothe god Aton could equally bepronounced as Iten or Eten (andas Iden or Eden). The similarityhere begins to look interesting.

Furthermore, if we spell thename of the Egyptian Aton orAdon with an aleph instead of anayin, then we might well derive aword like Adon, which just hap-pens to be one of the manynames for the Israelite god (inJoshua 3:11 and Psalms 12:4,among many other verses). So wecan be fairly certain that one ofthe many guises of the Israelitegod had an Egyptian character;which should not be very surpris-ing to readers, since that is from

The StartlingEvidence

for a VeryUnorthodox

Argument

• BY RALPH ELLIS

Course of the River Nile

Hieroglyphs for Aten or Aden


ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

444444444222222222 AAAAAAAATTTTTTTLLLLLLLAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL NNNNNNNTTTTTTTIIIIIIISSSSSSS RRRRRRRRIIIIIIISSSSSSSIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGG •••• NNNNNNuuuummmmbbbbbbbeeeerrrr 111111000000333333

New research and applicationsfor genetically manipulated or-ganisms are in the news almostdaily. Genetic manipulation is

the new playing field and has many poten-tial uses—and abuses. Are we ready for it?With more refined equipment and com-puters to work at the sub-cellular level,combined with better understanding ofthe organic chemistry of DNA and chro-mosomes, literally anybody who wants to,can do genetic research. Multinational cor-porations like DuPont and Monsanto aregoing full steam ahead, and your neighborcould be, too.

In a San Francisco home, a 31-year-old computer programmer is working tocreate a safer, genetically altered yogurtbacteria so that it will glow green in thepresence of melamine. An internationalgroup called DIYbio is organizing com-munity labs worldwide where the publiccan use lab equipment to do their own re-search. Some so-called biohackers want topush the boundaries and spread knowl-edge, make the world safer, or just usesquid genes to make tattoos glow. Thatidea isn’t so far-fetched. The GloFish is apatented and trademarked brand of genet-ically modified (GM) fish that is availablein pet stores right now (unless you live inCalifornia where such GM organisms areillegal) in bright red, green, orange-yellow,blue, and purple f lorescent colors. This isone of the first genetically modified ani-mals to be available as a pet. Of course, ifyou try to breed your own, you could besued for patent infringement.

Embryonic stem cells were found toimprove the vision in two women whowere legally blind. Stem cells are also beingused to test artificial f lavors for our food.Because human stem cells are a hot polit-ical topic, researchers have found ways totransplant human DNA into rabbits tocreate viable eggs. A team of researchers atthe U.S. National Cancer Institute has re-cently engineered mice with an extrahuman artificial chromosome (HAC) in

their cells. The scientists used a syntheticchromosome made “from scratch.” Theirgoal was to create a vehicle for gene deliv-ery into human cells to study gene func-tion. They want to be able to take skincells from a diseased patient, turn theminto stem cells, insert HACs with healthyversions of a diseased gene into the stemcells, then insert these cells back into thepatient to treat a wide variety of illnesses.

If any of this doesn’t sound threaten-ing to you, then consider the possibilitythat your next-door neighbor could be thebiohacker who accidentally unleashes thenext global virus. Though many peopleare concerned about the safety and ethicsof this research, many scientists, and the

SSuubbssccrriibbee oorr OOrrddeerr BBooookkss, DDVVDDss aanndd MMuucchh MMoorree!!

industries that fund them, are going fullsteam ahead in manipulating the genes ofanimals and plants for a wide variety ofdifferent applications. So far some peo-ple’s need to make money and others’need to ‘save humanity’ outweigh thesafety concerns. The Vatican recentlyshifted its stance on genetic manipulation.The old line was that scientists shouldn’tbe playing God. The current position isthat the scientists have a moral duty to bethe “stewards of God” by genetically mod-ifying crops to help the world’s poor. Shallwe play God, even though we don’t reallyunderstand how genes work or what long-term effects the organisms we create willhave on the world?

ew research and applicationssfoff r genetically manipulated or-rrganisms are in the news almostd il G i i l i i

GeneticManipulation

Understanding the DangerousNew Playing Field for

Big Science, Big Business,and Ambitious Little Guys

GloFish

ew researchhh anddd appllliiicatiiionss

• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK


Though genetically modified organ-isms (GMOs) are largely banned in the 28-nation European Union, they are widelyused in the U.S. and in developing coun-tries. The much-publicized movement inCalifornia to label foods containingGMOs was squashed by corporate money

in the 2012 election. GMOs are big busi-ness in the U.S. and the politicians con-tinue to push Europe to ease itsrestrictions. The first genetically modifiedcrop to be mass-produced was tobacco in1983, and it’s been grown heavily all overthe world since then, especially in Braziland China. Currently, more than 85 per-cent of the corn, soy, cottonseed, andcanola produced in the U.S. comes fromGMOs. Pesticides are an integral part ofthese plants, and we ingest these pesticideswhenever we eat anything with (for in-stance) corn syrup in it. Though they’vebeen ‘proven’ safe by the industry, thesepesticides kill insects. What might they bedoing to us?

The U.S. Government treats GMOsas pesticides, not food products. Consul-tation with the Food and Drug Adminis-tration (FDA) is voluntary for companiesdeveloping crops. Most of the research onGMOs is done by the companies that pro-duce them and shows arguably favorableresults. In some cases, though, when unfa-vorable results were found, the seed com-panies would not allow them to bepublished. Research critical of GM prod-ucts is vigorously attacked, and the re-searchers are discredited. GM agricultureis a multi-billion dollar industry, so obvi-ously, it can manipulate the publicly avail-able facts.

Others argue that the core f law of ge-netic research is the assumption that onegene affects one protein and has a simpleand direct causative effect. The HumanGenome Project showed us that we havefar fewer genes than we suspected, so theireffect on our biology isn’t easily under-stood. Even when a gene has been identi-fied as related to a particular illness, it isn’tthe only gene involved; that particulargene doesn’t always trigger the illness.Genes seem to have multiple functions,and all exist in relationship with eachother. The companies doing research ongenes are still operating under the ideathat changing a single gene is as simple asswapping out a part in a complex ma-chine.

Transgenic manipulation is when agene is taken from one species and putinto another. An article in Nature reportedthat these transgenic genes can be up to30 times more likely to escape the organ-ism than the plant’s own genes; they canthus spread more easily ‘horizontally’from one organism to another via mi-croorganisms or mutation. This is alreadyoccurring with the Roundup-resistantplants being developed by Monsanto. Thesame Roundup resistance is showing up inweeds around the crop. These highly re-sistant super-weeds are much harder to kill,requiring much more herbicide than waspreviously needed. Within a couple yearsof planting GMO seeds, farmers need touse much higher concentrations of chem-icals.

Not surprisingly, the potential dan-gers of horizontal transfer disturb manypeople. In taking genes from one speciesand transferring them into anotherspecies, we are bypassing natural safe-guards and defenses that exist in all lifeforms. According to Dr. Joseph Cummins,a professor of genetics at the University ofWestern Toronto, “The greatest threatfrom genetically altered crops is the inser-tion of modified virus and insect virusgenes into crops... It has been shown inthe laboratory that genetic recombinationwill create highly virulent new viruses from

Corn has long served as a model organism for studying genetics because many of itsimportant genetic traits are expressed in kernels, so are easily observed. (NationalScience Foundation)



PROFILE

Sitting in his home office nestled in aredwood forest above the Universityof California, Santa Cruz, where he’staught mathematics since 1968, chaos

theorist Ralph Abraham expresses concernabout our connection. It’s not that we’venever met; he’s just not confident that Oomais reliable out in the woods. “Nothing worksbetter than a land line,” he says, though he’sdumped it in order to save money. “And Ilove Skype, but I have never-ending problemsusing it.” Surprising, since he’s a techie fromway back, even writing The Web Empower-ment Book, How to get started on the World-wide Web in 1995 (with Frank Jas and the lateWill Russell). He’s also addressed The Cyber-sphere as a Complex Dynamical System andhas his own YouTube and Vimeo channels.

In fact, Abraham believes it was the com-puter revolution that allowed both chaos the-ory and the closely related field of fractalgeometry (pioneered by the late IBM researchscientist Benoit Mandelbrot) to develop.While chaos theory suggests there is order inrandomness and vice versa, fractal geometrygoverns the behavior of natural phenomena,from coastlines to newborn babies’ cries tobrain waves. “The computer extends our in-tellect, which helps us create the future,”states Abraham, an avowed Mac man. “It of-fers a door to perceiving complex space-timerealities.” And over the past 55 years, themathematical pioneer has at times alteredboth his perception and his space-time realityin order to bring forth the ‘chaos revolution’he thinks is “at least as big a deal as thewheel.”

Still, he admits that though physics nowdepends almost entirely on it, chaos theoryis a leap, whether you’re a layperson or amathematics professor. And though the dis-cipline has a more formal name—dynamicalsystems theory (dynamics for short)—he feels‘chaos theory’ is a good popular description.For those interested in a good primer, Abra-ham, who has been at the forefront of thefield since 1958, says science journalist JamesGleick did ‘a fairly good job’ with his book,Chaos. Abraham is himself a prolific author:he’s penned 12 books, with translations inChinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Dutch,German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, andCzech. Among the works are math texts, in-cluding The Geometry of Behavior withChristopher Shaw, and philosophical bookssuch as Chaos, Gaia, Eros, and Chaos, Cre-ativity and Cosmic Consciousness (with cut-ting-edge scientist Rupert Sheldrake and thelate Terence McKenna, known to some as“Mr. Mushroom”).

Which brings up the psychedelic ques-tion. At 77, Ralph Abraham still lectures andleads seminars worldwide and is unabashedabout touting the benefits of psychedelicdrugs, with which he experimented early in

• BY CYNTHIA LOGAN

his career. “I feel I owe everything to psyche-delics. They provided an opening. There werepeople who suggested I try meditation orother paths to enlightenment. I think thatcould have worked, but it would have takenmuch longer and the effect would have beendifferent. I took the accelerated route.” In afield where talent peaks at a young age, therewas ‘a communion’ between hippies and topmathematicians in the 1960’s—Abraham issure of this because, as he told journalist Wal-ter Kirn in a 1991 interview for GQ magazine,

he was a purveyor of psychedelics to themathematical community. “Today when wesay the word drugs, it brings up bad drugs,those that are highly addictive and take awaypeople’s health, like meth and crack cocaineand heroin. Psychedelic drugs are not bad; inmy view they’ve had an extremely positive ef-fect.” (Abraham is featured in the 2010 docu-mentary, DMT: the Spirit Molecule,discussing his experiments with psilocybin,LSD, and DMT.) Still, back in the day, hekept his interest in psychedelics fairly quiet.“My friends all knew, but I didn’t speak in

public about the benefits of these things.” Benefits or not, he doesn’t do drugs any-

more. Hasn’t for many years. “I stopped afterfive or six years because I became convincedI’d had enormous benefit and couldn’t expectmore. If I was going to realize the benefit I’dgained in appreciating the Universe, goingforward without drugs would give me a betterchance to materialize what I’d alreadylearned.”

Having earned his Ph.D. from the Uni-versity of Michigan in 1960, Abraham has

held positions at Berkeley, Columbia, andPrinceton in addition to his longstanding ap-pointment at UC Santa Cruz. He has alsoheld visiting positions in Amsterdam, Paris,Warwick, Barcelona, Basel, and Florence.Turning to the subject of history, in which hedeclares an amateur interest, the math profes-sor notes the relationship between language,music, and dance in the development in con-sciousness in early hominids. In 1975 hefounded the Visual Mathematics Project atUC Santa Cruz, which became the Visual

Inside the Mind of Mathematician andRevolutionary Theorist Ralph Abraham


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