Viral Mythology

by Marie D. Jones

  But can we ascribe this to some mystical-sounding implicate mass consciousness or some field of information that is accessible to everyone and anyone at any given time, containing within it all ideas and knowledge? We will tackle that big issue later. Yet even Carl Jung felt there were two ways that human beings could transmit information to each other. One was by genetic transmission, and the other was by some other type of communication, including cultural, mythological, and symbolic. Jung believed that archetypes, or specific mental patterns of information that exist within all human minds and consciousness, were genetically transmitted information, as well as genetically inherited. The powerful symbolism of archetypes was to be understood on a level of communication that wasn’t obvious, but was still a part of the psyche. In fact, to Jung, contact with archetypes led to both the rise of myth and religion.

  The Ghost in Our Genes

  By Lorraine Evans

  There can be no doubt that the world of our ancient ancestors has shaped our modern modular mind. Yet the scarcity of hard evidence from prehistoric times, especially with regards to physical changes in the brain, makes it impossible to delve inside the minds of our forbearers to extract information. Psychologists and cognitive archaeologists have tried their best to provide an insight into this conundrum and have proposed varied hypotheses, which include “cognitive fluidity,” a developmental process whereby our prehistoric ancestors acquired the skills to use artifacts to store and transmit information; a “mythic” culture, which involved the ability to construct conceptual models in the form of material symbolism, closely associated with the evolution of language; and the rise of a human consciousness, which can best be described as a “global database that integrates the output of modular processes.” Valiant though these efforts may be, it is guesswork at best. But what if our ancient ancestors had indeed left some residual clues in our genetic code? What if experts could dig into the brain, like an archaeologist, and uncover the history and meaning of our ancient past?

  It has long been known that our physical appearance, together with certain diseases and biological disorders, is determined by our parents’ genetic material, their DNA. The conventional viewpoint argues that a person’s DNA sequence acts as genetic blueprint for development, it carries only heritable information, and nothing an individual does in his or her lifetime can be biologically passed onto their respective offspring. In spite of this perceived notion recent studies from around the world are now challenging this perspective and suggest that our inherent encoded DNA may affect every aspect of our lives. Although controversial within the scientific community, some have even called it “heresy”; a number of scientists are now questioning the accepted view of the DNA sequence and believe that our individual genes are shaped, in part, by our ancestors’ life experience. As the Rockefeller University molecular biologist C. David Allis stated, “It has really been a watershed in understanding that there is something beyond the genome.”

  This new avenue of scientific research is referred to as “epigenetics,” literally meaning “on top of genetics,” and is the study of how individual gene switches can be activated or deactivated by life experience and environment, together with the appearance of individual genes through the distribution of DNA. In effect, a chemical tag, known as an epigenetic mark, is attached to the DNA that subsequently tells a cell to use or ignore that particular gene. These tags act as a kind of cellular memory. As cells grow and divide, cellular machinery faithfully copies these epigenetic tags alongside the DNA. This is especially important during embryonic development, as past experiences inform future choices. Epigenetic tags give the cell a way to “remember” long-term what its genes should be doing and allows cells to remember their past experiences long after the signals fade away.

  An example of such research was made public a short time ago by Professor Wolf Reik, from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, who has spent years studying this hidden genetic world. Working specifically with rodents he found that by manipulating the embryos was enough to activate such epigenetic “switches” to turn the genes on or off. Moreover, he also discovered that the “switches” themselves could be passed down from one generation to the next, signifying that a “memory” of an event could similarly be inherited. Other tantalizing evidence, from a remote town in northern Sweden, found that by analyzing the parish records of births and deaths and accompanying harvest data it revealed that famines experienced by the grandparents had an overwhelming genetic effect on subsequent generations. I would like to make it clear that this is the not the first time such an idea has been put forward. Before Charles Darwin had laid out his principles of natural selection in On the Origin of Species, an 18th-century French naturalist, Jean–Baptiste Lamarck, had already proposed a very different theory of evolution, whereby organisms could pass on traits they had acquired over their lifetime via their genetic makeup. Ridiculed after Darwinism took hold, by applying today’s notion of epigenetics, it appears that the Frenchman may have been onto something after all.

  The notion of hidden DNA memories is also not a new one. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of medical studies were carried out utilizing isolation tanks and chemical stimulants to supposedly unlock the genetic mind. The researchers claimed they had successfully gained access to both DNA memories and experiences alike, although such research has now been discounted due to the lack of reliable scientific data it produced. All the same these studies did spawn a rather intriguing Hollywood film in 1988 entitled Altered States, whereby a research scientist, played by William Hurt, relives various experiences of his ancestors via his consciousness and genetic origins. Equally the ideas expressed in epigenetics could also be applied to those of past life regression and the concept of “déjà vu.” Rather than dismissed as mere fanciful folly by the scientific fraternity, unlike before I believe epigenetics offers a tangible quantifiable method of recording such experiences within a systematic and learned framework.

  The field of epigenetics is now at the forefront of a paradigm shift in scientific thinking and many other fields of academic study are striving to keep pace. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, has recently come to light, which complements those working in epigenetics. Instead of focusing on DNA sequencing, scientists here have been examining the neurological patterns within the brain and have discovered that spontaneous waves of activity bear the imprints of earlier events long after the experience has taken place. In short, it is claimed that the pattern of resting brain waves may represent “archives” for earlier experiences. Let me explain further. When a person is resting with closed eyes, with no visual stimuli, the normal bursts of nerve cell activity associated with incoming information are replaced by ultra-slow patterns of neuronal activity. These patterns then travel in a highly organized manner throughout the brain cortex, its outer layer. It is thought that past experiences would thus be incorporated into the network between the nerve cells within this cortex. This research suggests that spontaneously emerging brain patterns could be used as a “mapping tool” for unearthing cognitive events from an individual’s past.

  So what does this new innovative research have to do with the concept of viral mythology? Evidently if ancient human experience can be passed through the generations via our genetic blueprint, it opens up a world of possibilities when trying to solve many of the questions asked in this book. Epigenetic inheritance adds another dimension to the modern picture of evolution whereby the secrets of the ancient world, once thought lost, could conceivably be retrieved. Today those at the forefront of epigenetic study focus their attention upon the treatment of sickness and disease. A noble cause I hasten to add.

  Yet personally I believe by adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, i.e. gene inheritance combined with brain wave mapping, the mysteries of our archaic past could one day be unlocked. It is a path I intend to follow for my own doctoral research and I am hopeful that many of you who are reading this may wish to accompany me on this extraordina
ry journey into the unknown.

  Lorraine Evans is a Research Fellow in Egyptology and Ancient History at the IIPSGP and is currently studying for her PhD on the ancient Egyptian concept of Maat. She is author of the best-selling book Kingdom of the Ark, examining the links between Egypt and Ireland, together with Warrior Women of Northern Europe and Murder at Medinet Habu—A Heritage Tour Guide. Lorraine is regarded as a groundbreaking academic researcher, writer, and broadcaster. Her research skills are often in demand and comprise the best-selling books Tutankhamun: The Exodus Theory, The Tutankhamun Deception, Act of God, Moses the Legacy, and Gods of Eden, among others. She has worked as an academic advisor on many internationally acclaimed TV documentaries, including Secrets of the Dead, The Tutankhamun Deception, Gladiatrix, and The Soaring Stones (The History Channel), and has served on a number of archaeology committees including the Institute of Field Archaeologists, the Museology Committee, Egyptian Museum Cairo (FEMC), and Lanista Ancient Warfare Academy, to name but a few.

  But before we tackle those two realms, we need to point out that although we’ve been talking a lot about how information is spread and transmitted today, these same theories and concepts could have easily been at work in ancient cultures, along with other theories we will dig into a bit later. The way information spreads always begins with the person spreading it, and how he or she chooses to do that does depend on the times, and the means at hand. But in the end, we know that ideas catch on like wildfire, like disease, and we are infected with them on a regular basis. Sometimes those ideas are hidden within a greater context, or presented to us in something other than words. Sometimes ideas fail to reach a tipping point and are relegated to memory or nostalgia. And sometimes, they stick for good and become a part of who we are as human beings.

  Sometimes, ideas and innovations spread so quickly our minds boggle. Many theories point to an exponential increase in the amount of novelty and new information we are being bombarded with, and how it might affect our brain’s capacity and ability to process it. One such humorous idea is the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon created by Robert Anton Wilson as part of a long lecture he gave in 1986 titled “The Acceleration of Knowledge.” Wilson proposed that we use a “Jesus” as a new measurement to comprise the sum of known scientific fact starting from the year 1 CE. To arrive at just one “Jesus,” then, it took our species between 40,000 and 100,000 years. But since then, each doubling of accumulated information happens in an increasingly shorter period of time, so that it would take less and less time to reach more and more “Jesus” units. Wilson was being comedic, but many researchers took his theory and developed it into their own novelty theories about how information is doubling exponentially faster, leading to a point of “singularity” possibly, when we will suddenly and spontaneously know everything all at once!

  By the way, the term Jumping Jesus refers possibly to the use of “Jesus on a pogo stick” as a mild curse or exclamation—but then can we really count on the accuracy of that information? And that is the problem we face: more and more information coming at us, from more and more sources, not all of them based upon solid fact or certainty, and we are left trying to sort truth from rumor, wisdom from wackiness, knowledge from complete and utter BS.

  While we are looking for the drivers and mechanisms by which information gets transmitted throughout time, from one person to another person, or one culture to another culture, we cannot ignore the fact that very often information isn’t passed on in direct ideas, behaviors, styles, or gestures. In fact, sometimes information is transmitted not as ideas at all, but as stories, and that the truth can only be found when, and only when, we read between the lines.

  Chapter 2

  Every Picture Tells a Story (Don’t It?): Image, Art, and Symbol

  I know of no other group of artists, be they painters, architects or composers, who have not gone into their own pasts, keen to gather all that had a bearing on their art.

  —Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller

  The earliest forms of story-telling were basically oral, either spoken or sung, and later art in the form of symbols and images meant to convey information on cave walls, rocks, dirt, sand, clay, pottery, stone tablets, animal skins, parchment, and even in the trunks of trees. Nature provided both easel and drawing implement with crude stones and even dyes that acted like paints—primitive crayon art, if you will. Even the paint used on the bodies of various tribal and indigenous peoples served to tell a story, as these earliest forms of tattoos were truly symbolic.

  Visual Stories

  Visual story-telling has been around as long as 300,000–700,000 (the age is still disputed) years ago, with the crude petroglyphs discovered in the Auditorium Cave and Daraki-Chattan Cave of the ancient quartzite Bhimbetka caves in India, and 40,000 years ago, when pigment was used to create painted images on the walls of caves in Europe, most notably in Spain and France. The oldest cave paintings to date have been found on the walls of the Cave of Altamira in Santander, Spain, dating back some 40,000 years to the Aurignacian period. These Paleolithic cave paintings are found throughout an 11-site subterranean system along Spain’s Cantabrian seacoast. The oldest paintings are in the El Castillo, which some archeologists claim date back to almost 40,800 years ago. If this date is correct—and there is some controversy as always in the often indirect dating methods that are required—then El Castillo would also don the title of oldest known dated cave paintings in the world.

  What makes these paintings so special, other than their sheer age, is the possibility that they could have in part been created by Neanderthals, who populated that part of Europe at the same time, along with modern Homo sapiens. Classified as “symbolic art,” the images correspond to other recent discoveries of body paint, art objects, and pigments at Neanderthal sites that show our ancient cave men and women weren’t as primitive as we might have thought. Neanderthals, in fact, have shown the same type of evolutionary trajectory that our human ancestors emerging from Africa showed, as they progressed toward the use of art.

  The oldest cave art at El Castillo is made up of disks, dots, and hand stencils, but there is also plenty of “figurative art” of animals such as horses and bison. It may be a part of what many scientists call the “upper Paleolithic Revolution,” or the Late Stone Age, which dates from 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, when we as a species experienced a huge leap forward in agriculture, culture, and communication, as these images may have actually been meant to communicate information to others, possibly even in a ritualistic and religious sense. This revolutionary period led to a marked diversity in artifacts, tools, blades, and weaponry, and, of course, art, which soon led to more complicated and sophisticated carvings and engravings, figurines and petroglyphs, which often were distinct in cultural differences as more complex social groups emerged.

  This ancient art was thematic, with images of large wild animals prevailing, usually those species that were able to be hunted and used for food and clothing, but some animals may have been more symbolically depicted for ritual purposes, as in shamanic practices of taking on an animal’s power, rather than a “story” of what the hunters brought home for dinner that night.

  Humans were not often depicted, perhaps because of religious taboos, although on later figurines and artifacts, women—especially pregnant or nursing women—were often objects of fascination. Nature and fecundity was a popular theme, mirroring what goes on in the wild just as it did in the realm of the human.

  Often, the art was more engraved than actually painted with ochre, hematite, and charcoal, some of the favored tools of prehistoric artists, but are still defined as cave paintings.

  Other cave art in Africa and Australia depicts flora and fauna, some now extinct. African cave art is more likely to feature humans, and one cave, the Laas Gaa’l in northwestern Somalia, even depicts human animal herders. Australian cave art points to unusual animal species that may have been extinct more than 40,000 years ago and may give us a glimpse far into the past of a worl
d where animals and birds we will never know of existed.

  Africa is also home to the first known rock art including one site of thousands of engravings and drawings time lining various climate shifts, animal migrations, and human inhabitation patterns dating back to 6000 BC. Rock art was the natural progression of cave art.

  The second oldest known cave art comes from France. Known as the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, this is one of the most important prehistoric art sites, and one of the oldest, although again the dating is a bit controversial. In the Chauvet Cave (named after one of the initial French speleologists to explore the cave, Jean-Marie Chauvet, who left a detailed account of the explorations), humans who lived during two time periods, the Aurignacian (30,000–32,000 years ago) and the latter Gravettian (25,000–27,000 years ago), the cave may feature the oldest known human footprints as well. In the cave are a variety of highly detailed depictions of more than a dozen species of animals, some now extinct or rare for other regions at the time, in various forms of interaction with one another, which served to tell a story about the natural world the artists existed in. These artists were not as crude as we might think, and often found a way to smoothen the cave walls by some early form of sanding that allowed for better use of the space. Often, images were actually outlined first, then filled in, and the cave walls themselves added to the dimensional effect by providing various textures.

  Scholars have done radio-carbon dating on the cave, which some say date back to the later Early Magdalenian period, although in general the cave art is believed to be far older. Luckily the cave has been cut off from public tourism to best preserve what may have been symbolic imagery used in shamanic and religious “hunting” rituals. (We will discuss this use of symbol and ritual in a later chapter.)