Out of Our Neanderthal Trees

Original Neanderthal skull. Photo Don Hitchcock, donsmaps.com

Family history research has come a long way since I began looking into my own ancestry in 1978. In those days the only resources accessible were parish registers in records offices or microfilm copies in large libraries. Today there’s the internet and many records are reproduced online. Family history research has never been so easy - or so easy to get wrong. Too many inexperienced researchers rely on false information that other inexperienced researchers assume to be correct rather than look for themselves.

One innovation of the 20th century is becoming increasingly popular – DNA testing. People can now discover where their ancestors were living before there were written records. DNA has also helped to identify new species of prehistoric human, or hominid. Before DNA the most well-known ancient hominid was Neanderthal Man, and in recent years Neanderthal DNA has been found in us. This has led to the obvious conclusion that our early ancestors interbred with Neanderthals.

While it’s something that is still being researched we should give a nod to the openly bisexual Swedish scientist who was the first to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome. His name is Dr. Svante Pääbo (b.1955).

In his book “Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes” Svante chronicles the long search for Neanderthal DNA. He includes events in his personal life that occurred along the way, making it a sort of autobiography. A handful of references mention his sexuality and falling for the wife of a colleague and eventually marrying her.

Whether genetics influences a person’s choice of career in doubtful, but Svante has the right scientific family background to become a geneticist. His father was Sune Bergstrom, who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1982. His mother was Karin Pääbo, an Estonian chemist.

Svante studied medicine and biochemistry at Uppsala University, helping research into human DNA and the immune system and the effects of diseases, not unlike the HIV research being carried out by Dr. Devin Sok. But it wasn’t medicine and biochemistry that took Svante to Uppsala. It was archaeology. It was after two summers of unexciting excavation work that he decided on a change of subject. Inspired by his father he turned to medicine.

With the intention of becoming a medical practitioner Svante joined the lab of a professor who had been leading the way in cloning DNA of molecules in immune cells. His doctoral theses was on the subject. Yet throughout his work Svante retained his life-long interest in archaeology, particularly Ancient Egypt, and one thought struck him – could DNA survive in ancient Egyptian mummies?

Spurred on by this thought Svante rummaged through libraries and academic journals to find out if anyone had found ancient DNA. They hadn’t. So, like a red rag to a bull, Svante set off on a hunt for an Egyptian mummy. He obtained several pieces at a museum in Communist East Berlin and took them back to Uppsala.

With some excitement Svante discovered enough DNA to offer science the possibility of reproducing a whole ancient Egyptian genome in the future. He published his results in 1985. By being the first to publish research into pre-modern DNA Dr. Svante Pääbo had “invented” the science of palaeogenetics.

In 1990, with his own lab and professorial position in Munich, Svante embarked on the search for even older human DNA. By this time other scientists had joined the hunt. Some even went further and looked for DNA in prehistoric insects trapped in amber millions of years ago. If you’re a fan of “Jurassic Park” thank Svante Pääbo for kickstarting the whole dinosaur DNA thing (not that he approves of the idea himself).

In 1991 Svante “met” someone I wrote about several years ago, Ötzi the Iceman. Unsure of how old Ötzi was – did he die 100 yeas ago of 1,000? – Svante’s lab was asked to sample the Iceman’s DNA. They discovered that Ötzi’s DNA confirmed suspicions based on the object found with his body that he lived over 5,000 years ago.

Finding Neanderthal DNA was the next step. The first Neanderthal bones were discovered in 1856. They belonged a new Homo species and evolved from a common ancestor to us – Homo sapiens sapiens – about half a million years ago. The Neanderthals became extinct about 30,000 years ago. Svante was actually allowed to test a sample from one of those first Neanderthal bones, such was his reputation in this field of work. Headlines appeared around the world when the news was released in 1997 that DNA had been successfully extracted from a Neanderthal bone.

Nine years later Svante was ready to replicate the genome of a Neanderthal. I followed the story at the time, palaeontology being one of my other interests, so I was very pleased to find in my files the article (below) which proclaimed that Svante had successfully reproduced a Neanderthal genome in 2009.

What took Svante and geneticists by surprise was that 2% on European and Asian DNA contains Neanderthal-specific genes. In Svante’s words “Neanderthals were not totally extinct”.

But Svante’s work hasn’t stopped there. His team were asked to test a finger bone that had been discovered in the Denisova Cave in Siberia. It turned out to be a previously unknown Homo species that was named Homo denisova. It showed that three human species – sapiens (us), Neanderthals and Denisovans – co-existed in Siberia 30,000 years ago. Further research found that Denisovan DNA survives in 5% of human DNA in people in the area between Burma and northern Australia.

Svante Pääbo’s pioneering palaeogenetic research has led to a new understanding of human origins. It now seems that some early humans who migrated out of Africa interbred with Neanderthals of eastern Europe, and with Denisovans in central Asia, passing parts of their DNA down to you, me and almost everybody with European-South Asian ancestry.

One intriguing future direction for palaeogenetics is research for a cure for HIV. The Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in humans carries left-overs genes from ancient viral infections. About 90% of all DNA, even ours, is “junk” – it isn’t used to produce anything, it just sits there in the genome waiting to be passed on to the next generation.

Those ancient viral remains are part of this “junk”, However, they belong to the same virus family as cancer and HIV. Very occasionally several pieces of junk-virus combine to produce cells which in turn produce cancer cells. Some HIV patients have a higher risk of developing cancer, for reasons that was not fully understood. Perhaps the answer is in their genes. Perhaps a way of totally deactivating the junk-virus DNA will lead to a treatment to slow down the development of cancer.

So we have come full circle. Svante Pääbo began his scientific career researching into viruses and their effects on the human immune system, and because of his pioneering palaeogenetic research scientists can now look at ancient Neanderthal DNA to discover a treatment for HIV and cancer patients.

Advent 2 : A Topsy-Turvy Bean Feast

Last Sunday we looked at how a 2nd century Christian sect called the Gnostics encouraged same sex activity as a means of saving the world and were the first to choose a date to observe the birth of Christ on January 6th. The date spread, but it wasn’t a time to party. It was a religious observance and a time of prayer.

In the 3rd century a man called Sextus Julius Africanus wrote down what I think is the best theory of why December 25th was chosen as Christmas. The Roman Christians didn’t approve of the Gnostics or their beliefs and tried to discourage people from using their date to observe Christ’s birth, so they came up with their own preferred date. They placed the conception of Christ (a feast now called The Annunciation) on Roman New Year’s Day – March 25th. That put his birth 9 months later on December 25th. Even when they’d done that, there was still no partying.

However, people had got used to the Gnostic date and found it hard to change. The solution the Roman Church arrived at was to use January 6th as the last day of the religious observance of Christmas, specifically to commemorate the arrival of the “Three Kings” at the Nativity. The Gnostic name of Epiphany was retained, but it also gained the popular name of Twelfth Night. That’s how we got the 12 Days of Christmas.

Among most communities across the whole of the Christian world at this time there were folk traditions of celebrating winter, hang-overs from pre-Christian times which the Church didn’t officially approve of. During the 12 Days of Christmas the Church preferred people observed the religious aspect and leave the celebrations and partying until January 6th. Most of our Christmas celebrations originate from Twelfth Night parties, including the Christmas cake. By the Middle Ages partying was common throughout the whole Christmas season, even though the Church preferred otherwise.

In the Middle Ages scholars began linking Christian religious observances with those ancient festivals based purely on dates, not continuity. The most common belief was that Christmas was based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia held from December 6th to 21st. Because they were scholars, people believed them, even the Catholic Church. A lot of people still do. But as we have seen Christmas didn’t originate in December, so couldn’t be based on Saturnalia. However, some of the party aspects of Saturnalia were common to most winter festivals across Europe, and were introduced into the celebrations in the Middle Ages (centuries after festivals such as Saturnalia had been forgotten). One aspect was the idea of gender and role swapping. That idea still survives in the traditional British pantomime (more of that in ten days time).

To illustrate another topsy-turvy Christmas tradition I’ll bring in the gay King Edward II of England (1284-1327). He loved Christmas, and we know exactly what he was doing every Christmas of his 20-year reign because they’re all recorded in court documents. He and his court spent at least part of the Christmas season here in Nottinghamshire at least five times. His Christmas routine in Nottingham was probably the same as every other year, wherever he spent it. He would gamble on Christmas Eve (probably dice), go to church on Christmas Day, and go hunting on December 26th (in Sherwood Forest when in Nottinghamshire).

A Medieval Feast

One topsy-turvy Christmas customs began in the Middle Ages in France in which bishops chose a boy chorister to become Boy Bishop for part, or all, of the Christmas period. This boy would perform services and preach sermons and be treated exactly like his adult counterpart. He would be paraded around the diocese and receive gifts from landowners. Even the king had to treat the boy as a proper bishop and give him a gift.

In 1315 and 1316 King Edward, his queen Isabella and the entire court spent Christmas at the royal palace at Clipstone, just over 19 miles due north of Nottingham. On the second occasion it is recorded that Edward gave a gift of money to the Boy Bishop of his chapel there, a boy called John, son of Alan de Scrooby. This was on December 6th, the traditional date on which Boy Bishops were chosen. By December 28th King Edward was at Nottingham Castle where he gave another gift to the Boy Bishop of St. Mary’s Church, the main parish church in Nottingham.

Also in 1316 Edward gave gifts to another topsy-turvy character called the King of the Bean. It’s customary in the UK to put a coin in the Christmas pudding (if you’re baking it yourself and not buying one from a supermarket). The person who finds the coin when eating the pudding is considered lucky. Originally the coin was a bean. At large Medieval communal festivities, and small family ones, the person who found the bean in his pudding was treated like a king for the day – the King of the Bean. This was a traditional event for Twelfth Night, January 6th. Some of us “up north” in the UK still call a big party a “bean feast”.

At King Edward’s celebrations on 6th January 1317, ten days after meeting the Boy Bishop of St Mary’s, one of his courtiers, William de la Beche, became King of the Bean. This meant he was allowed to take on King Edward’s role as leader of the festivities. Edward gave him a gift of a silver-gilt basin. The following year, at the Twelfth Night party in Beverley, Yorkshire, King Edward gave gifts to a young squire who became King of the Bean.

During the 19th century these age-old celebrations of Twelfth Night moved to Christmas Day itself, probably because in 1834 the British parliament created Christmas Day a public holiday, which meant that for the first time in history people didn’t have to go to work that day.

These topsy-turvy celebrations which originate in European-wide winter festivals, including Saturnalia, weren’t the only non-Christian festivals that have been suggested as the “true” origins of Christmas. As we shall see next Sunday there’s one alleged origin which didn’t even exist when the Gnostic Christians began observing Christmas Day. In fact, in a topsy-turvy kind of way, it was created because Christmas had already become too popular.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays: Part 34) Burning Desires

Previously on “Another 80 Gays” : 70) Count Francesco Algarotti (1712-1764) was involved in a love triangle with 71) Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu (1689-1762) and 72) John Hervey, Lord Hervey (1696-1743), who was satirised as a Roman emperor’s boy husband called 73) Sporus (c.49-69).

When Alexander Pope satirised 72) John, Lord Hervey, in “An Epistle from Mr Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot” in 1735 he chose to identify him as 73) Sporus very deliberately because of Hervey’s openly effeminate, flamboyant, bisexual “macaroni” behaviour which made him an obvious target. In his turn Lord Hervey wrote insulting comments about Alexander Pope, mocking his physical deformities and his non-aristocratic background.

One of the reasons for the antagonism between the two is that Pope was jealous of Lord Hervey’s friendship with 71) Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu. In one of his letters Pope referred to Hervey and Lady Mary as “Lord Fanny” and “Sappho”.

Lord Hervey’s political career brought him into direct contact with the king and the royal family. Several modern government ministers are still hold of offices in the Royal Household. Lord Hervey was appointed Vice Chamberlain to King George II, a government appointment made by the Prime Minister. Hervey’s job was to report directly to the King on proceedings in the House of Commons every day. The current Vice Chamberlain is Andrew Stevenson, and openly gay Conservative MP, and his responsibilities are much the same. In 1740 Lord Hervey was “upgraded” to Lord Privy Seal, one of the highest offices of state in England, again a political government appointment, as it still is.

So, who was 73) Sporus? We don’t know much. What we do know comes from the last two years of his short life. He is said to have been about 20 years old when he died. Even his name isn’t his real one, but a nickname given to him by the man who married him, 74) Emperor Nero (37-68). Sporus is a name derived from the Greek word for “sowing a seed”, the inference of sex being deliberate.

Sporus may have been a freed slave. Whether Nero was his master isn’t known but Sporus certainly came to the emperor’s attention after the death of his wife Poppea.

Imperial politics was very complicated in Roman times. There was no properly defined laws on succession and many emperors died at the hands of their successors. One tactic was to marry into, or be adopted by, the reigning imperial family. That’s how Nero himself became emperor.

Although descended from several previous emperors himself Nero gained the throne through the machinations of his mother Agrippina, niece of Emperor Claudius. To ensure her son’s succession she married her uncle and, in due course, Nero became his successor.

Nero had several wives – and husbands. First was his step-sister, Claudius’s daughter. After executing her over false adultery charges Nero married his mistress Poppea in 62. In 64, the year of the Great Fire of Rome, Nero married Pythagoras (not the famous Greek mathematician), so now he had a wife and husband (Nero is known to have taken the passive role with Pythagoras). The following year Poppea died. It is usually said that Nero kicked her to death when she was pregnant, but historians now think she died in childbirth. Whatever the reason, Nero was devastated by her death. But with Sporus she could be with him forever.

Nero married Sporus in 65 because of his resemblance to Poppea. To give Sporus an unusually high profile in public life Nero had the boy castrated and demanded all citizens treat him as his empress. He was dressed in the empress’s royal regalia at public events. As for Pythagoras, non-one knows what happened to him. But Nero married yet again. In 66 he married Statilia Messalina, who wisely kept a low profile and outlived both Nero and Sporus.

Sporus seems to have actually loved Nero, even though there was a 12-year age gap. He was one of the few people who remained loyal to the emperor right up to Nero’s death in 68.

The Senate and the army eventually rebelled against Nero and he committed suicide. Sporus, however, was spared and treated as an imperial “wife” by two other Romans vying for the throne. However, when Vitellus became emperor in 69 Sporus was planned as the victim in a gladiatorial show. Thankfully, Sporus chose suicide was a less painful death.

Let’s go back to Nero and the Great Fire of Rome. In an earlier article on Nero I mentioned that he was in Antium when the fire took place. This is one of several locations where ancient writers place Nero at the time. One writer puts him in the Gardens of Maecenas. These were part of a villa on the Esquiline Hill in eastern Rome which came into the possession of the emperors after the death of the villa’s builder, a Roman statesman called 75) Gaius Maecenas (68 BC-8 BC).

Over the centuries Maecenas’s name has become a byword for a generous patron of the arts. He came from a wealthy, influential family and a glittering political career could have been his for the asking. Instead, he refused all invitations to become a Senator and spent his life and wealth in promoting the arts. He also built his villa which included the first heated swimming pool in Rome. It also had places where plays and songs were performed in a sort of theatre. It was from a temporary platform or stage that Nero is said to have watched Rome burn, dressed in his theatrical costume and singing of the destruction of Troy.

Maecenas was primarily a patron of the performing arts rather than the visual arts. He loved all types of performance, and he loved a pantomime performer called 76) Bathyllus (c.60 BC-pre 2 BC).

Next time : From Rome to Britain – the pantomime tradition gets an Oscar nomination.

Advent 1 : Making the Yuletide Gay

My regular pre-Christmas mini-series covers aspects of dating and celebrating the birth of Christ. On each Sunday in Advent I’ll present one common theory on the origin of the dates chosen and the lgbt connections they have. This first article is perhaps the most controversial. Researching into the very first dates for Christmas I read that the first people to celebrate the birth of Christ was an Egyptian Christian sect who actively encouraged same-sex activity. You could say “gay” men created Christmas Day, and it wasn’t on December 25th.

No matter what any religious or secular organisation will tell you nobody knows why 25th December was chosen as Christmas Day, not unless they have private access to some 1st century document that historians have spent the last 2000 years looking for. In recent centuries many people have favoured pagan origins for Christmas Day. This idea was first made at least 1000 years after the time of Christ and aren’t based on documentary proof but proximity to a specific date in a pagan calendar. Even some of the commonly alleged pagan origins of Christmas traditions can’t be proven.

Personally, I like the theory that the early Christians placed the conception of Christ on Roman New Year’s Day – March 25th. Nine months later Christ was born – December 25th. It’s a very neat and tidy theory which I’ll return to next Sunday. You probably prefer one of the other theories that are around, or even none of them.

The first Christians, those mentioned in the Bible and their followers, didn’t celebrate the birth of Christ. They celebrated his death and resurrection instead, after all that’s the whole reason behind Christianity. In fact, no Christian wrote anything about Christ’s life until about the year 70 (the Gospel of Mark). After that many people started writing their own version, filling in any gaps themselves.

In the 2nd century the Christian Church was beginning to get more organised and they collected all the hundreds of books together to decide which ones were most authoritative and closest to their beliefs. These formed the New Testament. The other books, which often said the same things as the ones they selected or didn’t say anything important, were put aside. Despite modern conspiracy theorists these books weren’t rejected, forbidden or supressed, they were merely put aside and then lost (like something you put in a safe place until you need it and then forget – and when you find it you’ve forgotten you put it there and why). Many elements of medieval Nativity plays came from these alleged suppressed gospels.

The first Christian to write about a date for Christ’s birth was a scholar called St. Clement in around the year 200 when he visited Alexandria in Egypt. He wrote that Gnostic sects in the city had tried to choose a date and he gave a list of all the possible dates the Gnostics suggested. Please note that it was just another ordinary date on their liturgical calendar and not the holiday we know today. It wasn't even called Christmas until 1038, and even then it was day of prayer not celebration.

The Gnostics were a varied bunch of Christian sects spread all over the eastern Roman Empire. What they had in common was that they didn’t believe Christ was resurrected so they didn’t celebrate Easter like other Christians. But they did believe in the divinity of Christ and wanted to celebrate his birth instead. To them the God of the Old Testament created an evil world. On the other hand, the God of the New Testament sent Christ to show the world how to combat the evil all around them (that’s an over-simplification of their beliefs).

The Gnostics also had interesting ideas about sex. Because the world is evil, including all the people in it, it made sense to the Gnostics to ensure that no more people are born. They believed that procreative sex was bad and that non-procreative sex with the same gender would save them from the evil world. Of course, the “catholic” Christians in Rome were all in favour of having babies, they still are, so they accused the Gnostics of being promiscuous and of having gay orgies. But there’s nothing in Gnostic writings to indicate they were having any more sex than the “catholics”. This period has been seen as the origin of the Roman Catholic Church’s problems with homosexuality.

One other Gnostic belief was that all religions are the same. In Egypt there were two popular festivals that celebrated the births of two deities on the same day. One was Osiris, the Egyptian god who was chopped into bits and resurrected. The other was a virgin goddess. To the Gnostics Orisis and Christ were the same deity, and the virgin goddess was the Virgin Mary, so they decided to celebrate Christ’s birth on their joint festival day, which on our calendar is January 6th.

The Gnostics believed that the birth of Christ was a manifestation of their God’s message of goodness. The Greek word for “manifestation” is “epiphany”, the name by which January 6th is still known.

This date caught on with other Christians, even ones who thought the Gnostics were heretics (disproving the theory that Christmas is a continuation of the Roman Saturnalia which ended several weeks before). Epiphany is still celebrated as Christmas in the oldest surviving churches – the Orthodox and Coptic churches. The Roman Catholic Church changed their Christmas to December much later.

But what happened to the Gnostics? The more organised Roman Christians persecuted them as heretics over the next few hundred years. Some Gnostic sects were pretty horribly perverted anyway, even by our modern standards. But some of their beliefs continued into later sects, including the Cathars, famous in the Holy Grail legends. Another sect in medieval eastern Europe was the Bogomils. The Catholic Church had by now got the military power and might of the Holy Roman Empire behind them and the Bogomils were suppressed. The same-sex activity promoted by the Gnostics was attributed to the Bogomils and their name became a new derogatory name for gay men. From “Bogomil” we get the word “bugger”.

By tracing “bugger” back through the Bogomils and the Gnostics we have discovered why early same-sex-loving Christians decided to celebrate Christmas Day. So, the Yuletide really is gay!

But where does that leave the popular theory of Saturnalia as the origin of Christmas? That’s what I’ll write about next Sunday, and a right royal topsy-turvy Christmas celebration it is.