Genetic walkabout

Coming hard on the heels of yesterday's post about a woman who claims to be descended from Joseph of Arimathea, today we have some actual valid research, using mtDNA from two-millennium-old teeth in Syria to show that Mesopotamia deserves its moniker "the Cradle of Civilization" -- that same mtDNA signature shows up today as far away as Tibet.

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA is unique in that it always inherits through the matrilineal ancestry.  In other words, you contain the same mtDNA as your mother's mother's mother's etc., as far back as you like to go.  This takes out the role of recombination in your genetic makeup -- the random scrambling of the chromosomes in the nucleus every time they're passed on makes it damn near impossible that the same two parents could produce two genetically identical (non-twin) children.  But with mtDNA, the only differences occur from mutations, which are infrequent -- so this allows us to determine the relationships between different human populations, and track their movements back into prehistory.

My earliest-known matrilineal ancestor, Marie-Renée Brault (born in France in around 1616) had the mtDNA haplotype H13a1a, places her origin in western Europe (which we already knew), and the "H clade" to which she belongs is the commonest mtDNA in Europe.  So no big surprises there.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Vanesa Álvarez-Iglesias , Ana Mosquera-Miguel , Maria Cerezo, Beatriz Quintáns, Maria Teresa Zarrabeitia, Ivon Cuscó, Maria Victoria Lareu, Óscar García, Luis Pérez-Jurado, Ángel Carracedo, Antonio Salas, Spatial frequency distribution of different sub-lineages of mtDNA haplogroup H, CC BY 2.5]

Likewise, my two known Native American ancestors, both from the Abenaki tribe of Nova Scotia, were proven as such by their matrilineal descendants having a characteristic "A clade" mtDNA signature, which clearly demonstrates their ethnic heritage -- and their ultimate connection to other A-clade members in Siberia, Korea, and Japan.

The research that got me started on all this is not new, but was new to me; I was sent a link by a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia to a paper in PLOS-ONE called, "mtDNA from the Early Bronze Age to the Roman Period Suggests a Genetic Link between the Indian Subcontinent and Mesopotamian Cradle of Civilization," by Henryk W. Witas, Krystyna Jędrychowska-Dańska, and Tomasz Płoszaj (of the University of Łódź), Jacek Tomczyk (of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University), and Gyaneshwer Chaubey (of the Biocenter of Estonia).  And in this paper, we find out that an mtDNA type -- haplogroup M4 and M6, which currently are found only in India -- apparently are older than anyone realized, and came from what is now Syria:

Ancient DNA methodology was applied to analyse sequences extracted from freshly unearthed remains (teeth) of 4 individuals deeply deposited in slightly alkaline soil of the Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa) and Tell Masaikh (ancient Kar-Assurnasirpal) Syrian archaeological sites, both in the middle Euphrates valley.  Dated to the period between 2.5 Kyrs BC and 0.5 Kyrs AD the studied individuals carried mtDNA haplotypes corresponding to the M4b1, M49 and/or M61 haplogroups, which are believed to have arisen in the area of the Indian subcontinent during the Upper Paleolithic and are absent in people living today in Syria.  However, they are present in people inhabiting today’s Tibet, Himalayas, India and Pakistan.  We anticipate that the analysed remains from Mesopotamia belonged to people with genetic affinity to the Indian subcontinent since the distribution of identified ancient haplotypes indicates solid link with populations from the region of South Asia-Tibet (Trans-Himalaya).

The amazing part of this isn't so much in the details, but the method.  Mitochondrial DNA extraction from fossilized teeth can give us information about the movement of people back into prehistory. These ancestors of ours, about whom we know virtually nothing -- not their names, their faces, their professions, their cultures -- tell us about their travels by the genetic information carried in their bodies.

Which I find absolutely fascinating.  It's kind of mind-boggling that I carry a bit of DNA in my cells (lots of bits of it, in fact) that originated in the Middle East twenty-thousand-odd years ago, was carried from mother to daughter as these people moved into eastern Europe, crossing the Alps into France, and thence across the Atlantic Ocean to Nova Scotia for over a hundred years -- then back to France after they lost the French and Indian War and got kicked out -- and finally crossed the Atlantic again in 1785 to settle in southeastern Louisiana.

And each of you carry in your own cells pieces of DNA that have equally long, convoluted, and unexpected histories.

Makes you realize that we're all connected, down to the very instructions that built us, and are far more alike than we are different.

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These days, I think we all are looking around for reasons to feel optimistic -- and they seem woefully rare.  This is why this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is Hans Rosling's wonderful Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.  

Rosling looks at the fascinating bias we have toward pessimism.  Especially when one or two things seem seriously amiss with the world, we tend to assume everything's falling apart.  He gives us the statistics on questions that many of us think we know the answers to -- such as:  What percentage of the world’s population lives in poverty, and has that percentage increased or decreased in the last fifty years?  How many girls in low-income countries will finish primary school this year, and once again, is the number rising or falling?  How has the number of deaths from natural disasters changed in the past century?

In each case, Rosling considers our intuitive answers, usually based on the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the media (who, after all, have an incentive to sensationalize information because it gets watchers and sells well with a lot of sponsors).  And what we find is that things are not as horrible as a lot of us might be inclined to believe.  Sure, there are some terrible things going on now, and especially in the past few months, there's a lot to be distressed about.  But Rosling's book gives you the big picture -- which, fortunately, is not as bleak as you might think.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

All in the family

Coming from the Wishful Thinking department, today we have a woman in Murrysville, Pennsylvania who claims she is the Virgin Mary's first cousin, 65 times removed.

I was sent the link to this story by a friend who knows my fascination with genealogy and my interest in goofy claims, and this certainly hits both pretty well.  In it, we read about Mary Beth Webb, who began her inquiry into her genealogy in 1999 shortly after her brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Like most of us who have done genealogical research, Webb started with census and other vital records, and used online resources like Ancestry.com and Rootsweb.  But this evidently proved inadequate -- she began to run into dead ends, which genealogists call "brick walls."  I have several of these frustrating people in my own family tree, the most annoying of which is the direct paternal ancestor of my grandmother.  His name is recorded as John Scott in all of the records -- but a recent Y-DNA study of one of his patrilineal descendants proved beyond question that he was actually a Hamilton, allied to the Scottish Clan Hamilton of Raploch.  And interestingly... one of his grandsons was named Hamilton Scott, and a great-grandson was Hamilton Grim.

But we have been unable to find anything more about his origins, despite extensive research.

Perhaps, though, we should take a page from Webb's book.  Because when she became stymied by various long-dead ancestors, she adopted a novel method for researching her roots.  She simply asked her parents.

The "novel" part comes in because her parents were both dead at the time.

Fortunately for her, her cousin is a medium, and was happy to contact her parents for her, and (after his death) her brother.  And all three of the dear departed told her all sorts of details about her ancestors, because (after all) the whole lot of them were up in heaven with them.

I don't know if that'd work so well in my family.  I've got some seriously sketchy ancestry, including a guy who spent years in prison in New Jersey for "riot, poaching, and mischief," a Scottish dude who lost his soul to the devil in a game of cards, and a French military officer who almost got hanged for killing a guy he found in flagrante delicto with his wife.  So I might have better success if the medium tried contacting people down below, if you get my drift.

"Yes... great-great-great grandpa Jean-Pierre says to tell you hi, and to let you know you're a direct descendant of Attila the Hun.  Also, please send down an air conditioner and a six-pack of cold beer, because it's a bit toasty down here.  Thanks bunches."

But of course, Webb's relatives all were either nicer or luckier or both, so she got scads of heaven-sent information about her genealogy.  And after a bit of this kind of "research," she found out that she was a direct descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, who was allegedly the Virgin Mary's uncle.  According to Webb's calculations, this makes her Mary's first cousin 65 times removed.

The problem is, the whole thing about Descent From Antiquity (as genealogists refer to any claims of pre-medieval proven ancestry) is that the best historians don't consider much of it to be true, especially the European bit.  (There are, however, apparently people in China who can with a fair degree of certainty trace their ancestry back to Confucius, who was born over 2,500 years ago.  So that's kind of impressive.)

People of European and Middle Eastern descent, however, don't have it so lucky.  The time between the Fall of Rome and the beginning of the Medieval Age is seriously lacking in reliable documentation, and what we have in the way of such records stands a good chance of being (1) a forgery, or (2) a lie.  Or (3), both.  By the time the Medieval Age was in full swing, the Romans were looked upon as being a Golden Age, despite the fact that a good fraction of the nobility in ancient Rome seemed to have some major screws loose.  So there were lots of people claiming descent from the Emperors and Empresses to boost their own stature, with several proposed routes going the proconsul Flavius Afranius Syagrius, and thence to the Egyptian pharaohs and whatnot.

But some people one-up even Webb's claims, and trace their lineages all the way back to Adam and Eve.  I kid you not.  If you go into Rootsweb, you can do a search for people descended from Adam and Eve, and find thousands.

Now that's what I call descent from antiquity.

Sadly, even the descent from the Romans relies on poor historical research and lots of wishful thinking, as does Webb's claim to have proven descent from Joseph of Arimathea.  About as far back as anyone with European ancestry can reliably get is Charlemagne, which sounds cool but isn't because damn near everyone with European ancestry descends from him, because he was proficient at one other thing besides ruling most of Western Europe, which was shagging any women who were willing.

But honestly, that's really not that surprising.  Given the small size of the population back then, if you go back far enough (some geneticists say 1200 C.E. is sufficient), then you descend from everyone in your ancestral homeland who left descendants.  Put another way: prior to 1200 C. E., you can divide all of humanity into two groups; those who were the ancestors of most everyone of that particular ethnicity alive on the Earth today, and those who were the ancestors of no one.  So we're all cousins, really.  And if Joseph of Arimathea left progeny -- which no one knows for sure -- then chances are, Mary Beth Webb is his descendant.

But chances are so am I, and (if you have European or Middle Eastern ancestry), so are you.

But I don't know that because my dead relatives told me so, I just know it because of genetic studies and logic.  Which may be less cool, but is a damn sight more reliable than trying to get a direct line to great-great-great grandpa Jean-Pierre down in hell.

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These days, I think we all are looking around for reasons to feel optimistic -- and they seem woefully rare.  This is why this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is Hans Rosling's wonderful Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.  

Rosling looks at the fascinating bias we have toward pessimism.  Especially when one or two things seem seriously amiss with the world, we tend to assume everything's falling apart.  He gives us the statistics on questions that many of us think we know the answers to -- such as:  What percentage of the world’s population lives in poverty, and has that percentage increased or decreased in the last fifty years?  How many girls in low-income countries will finish primary school this year, and once again, is the number rising or falling?  How has the number of deaths from natural disasters changed in the past century?

In each case, Rosling considers our intuitive answers, usually based on the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the media (who, after all, have an incentive to sensationalize information because it gets watchers and sells well with a lot of sponsors).  And what we find is that things are not as horrible as a lot of us might be inclined to believe.  Sure, there are some terrible things going on now, and especially in the past few months, there's a lot to be distressed about.  But Rosling's book gives you the big picture -- which, fortunately, is not as bleak as you might think.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Reality vs. allegory

When I was about twenty, I stumbled upon the book The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav.  The book provides a non-mathematical introduction to the concepts of quantum mechanics, which is good, I suppose; but then it attempts to tie it to Eastern mysticism, which is troubling to anyone who actually understands the science.

But as a twenty-year-old -- even a twenty-year-old physics major -- I was captivated.  I went from there to Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, which pushes further into the alleged link between modern physics and the wisdom of the ancients. In an editorial review of the book, we read:

First published in 1975, The Tao of Physics rode the wave of fascination in exotic East Asian philosophies.  Decades later, it still stands up to scrutiny, explicating not only Eastern philosophies but also how modern physics forces us into conceptions that have remarkable parallels...  (T)he big picture is enough to see the value in them of experiential knowledge, the limits of objectivity, the absence of foundational matter, the interrelation of all things and events, and the fact that process is primary, not things.  Capra finds the same notions in modern physics.

In part, I'm sure my positive reaction to these books was because I was in the middle of actually taking a class in quantum mechanics, and it was, to put not too fine a point on it, really fucking hard.  I had thought of myself all along as quick at math, but the math required for this class was brain-bendingly difficult.  It was a relief to escape into the less rigorous world of Capra and Zukav.

To get a feel for the difference, first read a quote from the Wikipedia article on quantum electrodynamics, chosen because it was one of the easier ones to understand:

(B)eing closed loops, (they) imply the presence of diverging integrals having no mathematical meaning.  To overcome this difficulty, a technique called renormalization has been devised, producing finite results in very close agreement with experiments.  It is important to note that a criterion for theory being meaningful after renormalization is that the number of diverging diagrams is finite. In this case the theory is said to be renormalizable.  The reason for this is that to get observables renormalized one needs a finite number of constants to maintain the predictive value of the theory untouched.  This is exactly the case of quantum electrodynamics displaying just three diverging diagrams.  This procedure gives observables in very close agreement with experiment as seen, e.g. for electron gyromagnetic ratio.

Compare that to Capra's take on things, in a quote from The Tao of Physics:

Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.  The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another. For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.  As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.  Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes.  In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Arpad Horvath, CERN shiva, CC BY-SA 3.0]

It all sounds nice, doesn't it?  No need for hard words like "renormalization" and "gyromagnetic ratio," no messy mathematics.  Just imagining particles dancing, waving around their four little quantum arms, just like Shiva.

The problem here, though, isn't just laziness; and I've commented on the laziness inherent in the woo-woo movement often enough that I don't need to write about it further.  But there's a second issue, one often overlooked by laypeople, and that is "mistaking analogy for reality."

Okay, I'll go so far as to say that the verbal descriptions of quantum mechanics sound like some of the "everything that happens influences everyone and everything, all the time" stuff from Buddhism and Hinduism -- the interconnectedness of all, a concept that is explained in the beautiful allegory of "Indra's Net:"

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions.  In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.  If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.  Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.  [Francis Cook, Hua-Yen Buddhism, 1977]

But does this mean what some have claimed, that the Hindus discovered the underlying tenets of quantum mechanics millennia ago?

Hardly.  Just because two ideas have some similarities doesn't mean that they are, at their basis, saying the same thing.  You could say that Hinduism has some parallels to quantum mechanics -- parallels that I would argue are accidental, and not really all that persuasive when you dig into them more deeply.  But those parallels don't mean that Hinduism as a whole is true, or that the mystics who devised it were somehow prescient.

In a way, we science teachers are at fault for this, because so many of us teach by analogy.  I did it all the time: antibodies are like cellular trash tags; enzyme/substrate interactions are like keys and locks; the Krebs cycle is like a merry-go-round where two kids get on and two kids get off at each turn.  But hopefully, our analogies are transparent enough that no one comes away with the impression that they are describing what is really happening.  Fortunately, I can say that I never saw a student begin an essay on the Krebs cycle by talking about merry-go-rounds and children.

The line gets blurred, though, when the reality is so odd, and the actual description of it (i.e. the mathematics) so abstruse, that most non-scientists can't really wrap their brain around it.  Then there is a real danger of substituting a metaphor for the truth.  It's not helped by persuasive, charismatic writers like Capra and Zukav, nor the efforts of True Believers to cast the science as supporting their religious ideas, because it helps to prop up their own worldview (you can read an especially egregious example of this here).

After a time in my twenties when I was seduced by pretty allegories, I finally came to the conclusion that the reality was better -- and, in its own way, breathtakingly beautiful (albeit still really fucking hard).  Take the time to learn what the science actually says, and I think you'll find it a damnsight more interesting and elegant than Shiva and Indra and the rest of 'em.  And best of all: it's actually true.

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These days, I think we all are looking around for reasons to feel optimistic -- and they seem woefully rare.  This is why this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is Hans Rosling's wonderful Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.  

Rosling looks at the fascinating bias we have toward pessimism.  Especially when one or two things seem seriously amiss with the world, we tend to assume everything's falling apart.  He gives us the statistics on questions that many of us think we know the answers to -- such as:  What percentage of the world’s population lives in poverty, and has that percentage increased or decreased in the last fifty years?  How many girls in low-income countries will finish primary school this year, and once again, is the number rising or falling?  How has the number of deaths from natural disasters changed in the past century?

In each case, Rosling considers our intuitive answers, usually based on the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the media (who, after all, have an incentive to sensationalize information because it gets watchers and sells well with a lot of sponsors).  And what we find is that things are not as horrible as a lot of us might be inclined to believe.  Sure, there are some terrible things going on now, and especially in the past few months, there's a lot to be distressed about.  But Rosling's book gives you the big picture -- which, fortunately, is not as bleak as you might think.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

A monster of a problem

Apparently, it's easier than I thought to give your soul to Satan.

You don't have to attend a Black Mass, or hold a séance, or even wear an upside-down crucifix.  Nothing that flashy, or even deliberate, is necessary.

All you have to do is drink the wrong energy drink.

I am referring, of course, to "Monster," that whiz-bang combination of sugar, vitamins, various herbal extracts of dubious health effect, and truly staggering amounts of caffeine, which misleadingly does not include "demons" on the ingredients list.

At least that's the contention of the also-misleadingly named site Discerning the World, which would be more accurately called Everything Is Trying To Eat Your Soul.  This site claims that the "Monster" logo, with its familiar trio of green claw marks on a black background, is actually a symbol for "666" because the individual claw marks look a little like the Hebrew symbol for the number six:

Which, of course, is way more plausible than the idea that it's a stylized letter "M."  You know, "M" as in "Monster."

But no. Every time you consume a Monster energy drink, you are swallowing...

... pure evil.

Now lest you think that these people are just making some kind of metaphorical claim -- that the Monster brand has symbolism that isn't wholesome, and that it might inure the unwary with respect to secular, or even satanic, imagery -- the website itself puts that to rest pretty quickly.  It's a literal threat, they say, ingested with every swallow:

The Energy Drink contains ‘demonic’ energy and if you drink this drink you are drinking a satanic brew that will give you a boost...  People who are not saved, who are not covered by the Previous [sic] Blood of Jesus Christ are susceptible to their attacks.  Witchcraft is being used against the world on a scale so broad that it encompasses everything you see on a daily basis – right down to children’s clothing at your local clothing store.

So that's pretty unequivocal. Never mind that if you'll consult the Hebrew numeral chart above, the logo looks just as much like "777" as it does like "666."

Or, maybe, just like a capital "M."  Back to the obvious answer.

Unfortunately, though, there are people who think that the threat is real, which is a pretty terrifying worldview to espouse.  Not only did I confirm this by looking at the comments on the website (my favorite one: "It is truly SCARY that all the little kids who play their Pokemon and video games are being GROOMED to enter this gateway to hell.  Satan wants to devour our young and he will do it any way he can."), a guy posted on the r/atheism subreddit just last week saying that he'd been enjoying a Monster drink on a train, and some woman came up to him and snarled, "I hope you enjoy your drink IN HELL," and then stalked away.

What, exactly, are you supposed to say to something like that?  "Thank you, I will?"  "Here, would you like a sip?"  "Yes, it fills me with everlasting fire?"  Since quick thinking is not really my forté, I'm guessing that I'd probably just have given her a goggle-eyed stare as she walked off, and thought of many clever retorts afterward.

"It's damned good."  That's what I'd like to say to her.

Not, of course, that it would be the truth, since my opinion is that Monster tastes like someone took the effluent from a nuclear power plant, added about twenty pounds of sugar, and let it ferment in the sun all day long.  But that's just me.

And of course, there's my suspicion that the owner of the Monster trademark is probably thrilled by this notoriety -- they pride themselves on being edgy, and their target advertising demographic is young, athletic, iconoclastic rebel types, or those who fancy themselves as such.  So no doubt this whole demonic-entity thing fits right into Monster's marketing strategy.

Convenient for both sides.  The perennially-fearful hell-avoiders have something else to worry about, and the Monster people have an extra cachet for their product.  One hand washes the other, even if one of them belongs to Satan, who (if he were real) would probably approve wholeheartedly of capitalism and the profit motive.

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These days, I think we all are looking around for reasons to feel optimistic -- and they seem woefully rare.  This is why this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is Hans Rosling's wonderful Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.  

Rosling looks at the fascinating bias we have toward pessimism.  Especially when one or two things seem seriously amiss with the world, we tend to assume everything's falling apart.  He gives us the statistics on questions that many of us think we know the answers to -- such as:  What percentage of the world’s population lives in poverty, and has that percentage increased or decreased in the last fifty years?  How many girls in low-income countries will finish primary school this year, and once again, is the number rising or falling?  How has the number of deaths from natural disasters changed in the past century?

In each case, Rosling considers our intuitive answers, usually based on the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the media (who, after all, have an incentive to sensationalize information because it gets watchers and sells well with a lot of sponsors).  And what we find is that things are not as horrible as a lot of us might be inclined to believe.  Sure, there are some terrible things going on now, and especially in the past few months, there's a lot to be distressed about.  But Rosling's book gives you the big picture -- which, fortunately, is not as bleak as you might think.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The tree planter

Yesterday I was thinking about issues of empowerment versus despair.

I guess it's understandable enough, given our current state of affairs, with an ongoing pandemic, and countries all over the world being swallowed up by a me-first populism that values short-term expediency over everything else, including the quality of human lives.  Hard to stay positive in a situation like this.

A lot of times, the issue is framed in a religious context.  Being an atheist, how can I not let my perception that the world is without a divinely-guided plan and final purpose drive me downward emotionally?  And linked to this is the similar question of how, as someone who is very aware of human failings (both in the intellectual and social realms), I don't give up on our species entirely.

I think it has to do with my attitude that even if all I make are small steps, it is still better to make those steps than to give up and stand still.  It is my motivation for writing this blog.  Perhaps a lot of what I do here at Skeptophilia is preaching to the choir; I suspect that most of my readership comes from people who, like myself, are questioners and skeptics and rationalists.  But if by what I write I can prod even one person to take a closer look at his or her basic assumptions about how the universe works, then what I am doing is worth it.

The same impetus kept me teaching for thirty-two years.  I knew all too well that most of my students wouldn't become scientists, but I was (and am) absolutely fine with that.  I also knew I wouldn't be able to reach them all, a truth which is discouraging and perhaps inevitable.  But if I opened up the eyes of some of the people in my classes -- showed them a bit of the world they hadn't ever thought about, made them go, "Wow, this universe is a strange and cool and wondrous place!" -- then in my view, I succeeded.

Which brings me to Wangari Maathai.

In this disillusioned and jaded world, Maathai was a true hero.  She was born in Kenya in 1940, and grew up in traditional Kikuyu culture -- strict gender roles, and an attitude toward the land that it was meant to be used, not protected.  Her shattering of the terribly low glass ceiling for women in east Africa started early, though.  She graduated with a Ph.D. in veterinary medicine 1971, becoming the first east African woman to earn a doctorate, and shortly afterwards was hired to teach veterinary science at the University of Nairobi.

Wangari Maathai [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA, Wangari Maathai in 2001, CC BY-SA 2.0]

But Maathai was not content with being a college lecturer, as groundbreaking as that was for a woman of her culture.  She looked around her at the environmental devastation in her beloved country, and the lack of empowerment many women felt, and decided that there was no reason she had to accept either of those things.

So she changed the world.

She started the Green Belt Movement, a campaign for tree replanting.  "When resources are degraded, we start competing for them," Maathai wrote, "whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals.  So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources."

She fought for the rights of women, successfully instituting a small business loan program in rural Kenya with the hopes of making villages self-sufficient, and making women no longer dependent on men for income.  She fostered tree replanting and environmental protection programs all over east Africa, while simultaneously encouraging sustainable farming practices that did not rely on cutting down forests and exhausting farmland.

And it worked, but it was not without cost.  Her husband divorced her in 1977, claiming that she was "too strong-minded for a woman" and that he was "unable to control her."  The government, then a one-party dictatorship, tried to silence her, first with a disinformation program (they called her women's rights group "a bunch of divorcees controlled by a crazy woman").  She was attacked and beaten by policemen, arrested more than once, and was on a list of people targeted by President Daniel arap Moi for assassination.

It didn't stop her.  "In order to accomplish anything," Maathai said, "we must keep our feelings of empowerment ahead of our feelings of despair.  We cannot do everything, but still there are many things we can do."

Many things.  Yes, she did indeed.  She was instrumental in Kenya's return to a multi-party democracy.  She singlehandedly drove the regreening of Kenya's rural areas.  In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's parliament.

In 2004, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

All this from a woman who would not accept the role she'd been cast in, would not simply sit back and weep over the way things are.  Maathai never gave up on her vision, and because of that, she overturned generations of repression and sexism and environmental degradation.

No, she didn't eradicate those things entirely.  Kenya, and the rest of the world, still has a long way to go.  Yet Maathai never let the pitfalls and backslides get in the way of her belief that humans are fundamentally good, and the world is worth saving.  When she died in 2011 at the age of 71, she had accomplished more than most of us would in ten lifetimes -- all through being steadfast and brave and, most importantly, not accepting that the status quo was inevitable.

She remained, to the end, modest about what she'd done.  Any of us, Maathai said, could do the same; all it takes is a vision and sufficient courage.  "I don't really know why I care so much," Maathai said.  "I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it...  It's the little things citizens do.  That's what will make the difference."

She smiled, and added, "My little thing is planting trees."

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is for people who are fascinated with the latest research on our universe, but are a little daunted by the technical aspects: Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time by Oxford University astrophysicist Becky Smethurst.

A whirlwind tour of the most recent discoveries from the depths of space -- and I do mean recent, because it was only released a couple of weeks ago -- Smethurst's book is a delightful voyage into the workings of some of the strangest objects we know of -- quasars, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, blazars, gamma-ray bursters, and many others.  Presented in a way that's scientifically accurate but still accessible to the layperson, it will give you an understanding of what we know about the events of the last 13.8 billion years, and the ultimate fate of the universe in the next few billions.  If you have a fascination for what's up there in the night sky, this book is for you!

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The long sleep

The concept of suspended animation has been a staple of science fiction for as long as I can recall.  Even the generally abysmal 1960s series Lost in Space got that much right; despite really fast flight speeds, it was still a long enough voyage to Alpha Centauri that the intrepid crew of the Jupiter 2 were better off flash-frozen in big glass tubes for the majority of the voyage through the vast -- and boring -- dark of interstellar space.

Unfortunately, science fiction being what it is, usually something goes wrong.  In the case of Lost in Space, it was a robot that had been corrupted by the evil Doctor Zachary Smith.  Sort of the same thing happened in 2001: A Space Odyssey, if you'll recall; the computer system, HAL 9000, more or less lost its marbles and killed almost the entire crew, all but two of whom were in suspended animation.

Then there's poor Han Solo, frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

So we'd have to be careful with it.  It's an idea with multiple beneficent Earth-bound applications, however.  If doctors had the capacity to induce suspended animation in humans, it could be a literal lifesaver -- in cases of stroke, a short-term shutdown of body and brain might slow the irreversible death of neural tissue, giving surgeons more time to effect repairs.  There's also the possibility of cryogenics, the (safe) freezing of people with incurable diseases, who are then held in stasis until a cure is discovered.

What's curious is that it's been known for years that many animals do this naturally; it's called hibernation.  People usually think of bears, but bear hibernation isn't that remarkable -- their core body temperatures drop by only five or six degrees.  (To be fair, an equal drop would usually be fatal to a human.)  The champion hibernators are Arctic ground squirrels (Spermophilus parryii) whose body temperatures drop to -2 C in the middle of winter.  You read that right; their body temperatures are actually below the freezing temperature of water, but their blood and other bodily fluids stay liquid because the solutes dissolved in them lower the freezing point (for the same reason that salting an icy sidewalk melts the ice).  And when they're hibernating, ground squirrels are mentally gone.  Anyone who has done back-country winter camping knows not to mess with a hibernating bear -- they'll wake up and defend themselves pretty quickly.

On the other hand, you could juggle hibernating ground squirrels and they won't stir.

Not that I'm recommending it, mind you.

It's not known why some mammals can get away with this, and others -- like us -- simply die if our core temperature drops too much.  But one step toward the safe induction of suspended animation was the subject of a paper this week in Nature, in which scientists found that to induce hibernation-like torpor in mice, all you had to do was to stimulate a particular neural pathway.  Block the stimulation, and the mice woke right back up, apparently none the worse for the experience.

In the paper "Neurons That Regulate Mouse Torpor," by a team led by neurobiologist Sinisa Hrvatin of Harvard Medical School, we read about a gene called Fos that is active in neurons when mice are in natural torpor.  Stimulate that gene in awake mice, the researchers believed, and it would induce torpor.

That's exactly what happened.  The gene acted almost like a switch, rapidly flipping mice between being active and being asleep, with no apparent side effects.  Whether humans -- who also have a Fos gene -- would respond the same way, however, is a matter of conjecture at this point.  We don't undergo natural torpor, so it's anyone's guess whether stimulating Fos in the corresponding neurons in a human brain would make us conk out, or if it would just make us tired and grumpy, or something else entirely.

Also unknown is whether individuals in suspended animation for a long time would continue to age while their metabolic processes were being suppressed.  The guess is that they wouldn't -- but that point has yet to be conclusively demonstrated.

But it's a promising start.  "Our findings open the door to a new understanding of what torpor and hibernation are, and how they affect cells, the brain and the body," study lead author Hrvatin said, in a press release from Harvard Medical School.  "We can now rigorously study how animals enter and exit these states, identify the underlying biology, and think about applications in humans.  This study represents one of the key steps of this journey."

Study senior author Michael Greenberg is thinking big, though.  "It’s far too soon to say whether we could induce this type of state in a human, but it is a goal that could be worthwhile," Greenberg said.  "It could potentially lead to an understanding of suspended animation, metabolic control and possibly extended lifespan.  Suspended animation in particular is a common theme in science fiction, and perhaps our ability to traverse the stars will someday depend on it."

Which is a pretty exciting possibility.  I'm hoping that if this becomes a reality, the planners will take into account homicidal robots and computer systems, not to mention huge slug-like crime lords.  Because I'm tempted to volunteer, but I'd rather not end up frozen in a slab of carbonite, hanging as a wall decoration in some intergalactic gangster's palace of debauchery.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is for people who are fascinated with the latest research on our universe, but are a little daunted by the technical aspects: Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time by Oxford University astrophysicist Becky Smethurst.

A whirlwind tour of the most recent discoveries from the depths of space -- and I do mean recent, because it was only released a couple of weeks ago -- Smethurst's book is a delightful voyage into the workings of some of the strangest objects we know of -- quasars, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, blazars, gamma-ray bursters, and many others.  Presented in a way that's scientifically accurate but still accessible to the layperson, it will give you an understanding of what we know about the events of the last 13.8 billion years, and the ultimate fate of the universe in the next few billions.  If you have a fascination for what's up there in the night sky, this book is for you!

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Traces of vanished worlds

Every civilization is built on the remains of prior ones, something that I recall finding a little startling when I first read C. W. Ceram's wonderful Gods, Graves, and Scholars when I was in tenth grade.  Being fascinated with Greek mythology, I had read the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, so I was familiar with Troy -- and shocked to find out that the excavated ruins of Troy span nine levels, bottom to top, and the seventh ("Troy VII"), dating to the 13th century B.C.E., is thought to have been the Troy of Homer.  But the city itself rebuilt itself at least nine times, with previous iterations being abandoned for one reason or another (at least two seem to have been destroyed by earthquakes, and Troy VII shows the expected signs of having been burned and demolished by battle).

This is a well-studied example, but really, everywhere is like that.  We all stand on the ruins of the civilizations that occupied these lands before us, and future civilizations will rise from the ruins of ours.  If you want good evidence of this, check out these two papers that came out last week -- showing that traces of occupation by the Romans are still detectable underground, after the passage of two millennia.

First, in the journal Britannia, we have a paper by Toby Driver, Barry Burnham, and Jeffrey Davies which studied a pattern of dead grass during a drought in 2018 in Wales, and found that the dieback revealed patterns that conformed to Roman roads, plazas, and building foundations.  The compression of the soil from the construction made it more prone to drying out, and as the grass there died, aerial surveys showed what looked like a map of ancient Roman settlements.

It looks like Wales is heading into another exceptionally dry summer, and the archaeologists are a lot more excited about this than the farmers are.  "There are still huge gaps," said study lead author Toby Driver in an interview with the BBC.  "We're still missing a Roman fort at Bangor, we've got the roads, we've got the milestones – but no Roman fort.  We're still missing a Roman fort near St Asaph, and near Lampeter in west Wales we should have one as well."

Next, we have a paper in the journal Antiquity by Cambridge University archaeologists Lieven Verdonck, Alessandro Launaro, Frank Vermeulen, and Martin Millett, describing the use of ground-penetrating radar to produce a detailed map of a city that was abandoned by the Romans 1,300 years ago.

The city was named Falerii Novi, and is first attested in historical records in 241 B.C.E.  It sits fifty kilometers north of Rome, and was occupied continuously during the Republic and Empire periods, and well into the "Dark Ages" -- the site was last inhabited in about 700 C.E., although the exact date (and reason) it was abandoned isn't known.

But gradually the ruins were covered up by vegetation and eventually all visible traces were gone.  But the remains were still there, underground.

And now Verdonck's team has used radar to see where they lie, generating 28 billion data points and a map of the city of astonishing detail.

What's most amazing about this is that the researchers created this map without disturbing the site at all.  As study senior author Martin Millett said, in an interview with Gizmodo, it's taken two hundred years to excavate Pompeii to a similar degree of detail, and -- despite the care that was taken -- in that more famous site, the process of uncovering the ruins undoubtedly damaged some of the structures underneath.

Here, we have a picture, and a quantity of data that will take years to analyze, without moving one speck of dirt.

These papers make me wonder what might lie beneath the soil on which I walk.  Where I live has been occupied (rather sparsely) by people of European descent for only two hundred years or so, but for thousands of years before that by indigenous people of the Cayuga and Seneca Nations.  What traces of those people are under my feet right now?  We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, and even if they're not as celebrated in literature as Homeric Troy and Imperial Rome, they're still there beneath our own dwellings, businesses, and roads, just as ours will lie beneath the ones that will be built by our far-distant descendants.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is for people who are fascinated with the latest research on our universe, but are a little daunted by the technical aspects: Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time by Oxford University astrophysicist Becky Smethurst.

A whirlwind tour of the most recent discoveries from the depths of space -- and I do mean recent, because it was only released a couple of weeks ago -- Smethurst's book is a delightful voyage into the workings of some of the strangest objects we know of -- quasars, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, blazars, gamma-ray bursters, and many others.  Presented in a way that's scientifically accurate but still accessible to the layperson, it will give you an understanding of what we know about the events of the last 13.8 billion years, and the ultimate fate of the universe in the next few billions.  If you have a fascination for what's up there in the night sky, this book is for you!

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]