The Alien World

Model of human migration based on Mitochondrial DNA

Recently my wife was reading Kathy Reichs novel where she has described about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Kathy Reichs is also producer & writer of the popular TV series Bones. Before hearing about mtDNA, I had very little idea about any types of DNAs, except  Y & X chromosomes. My DNA knowledge is/was limited to doing paternity test ews. Scientists believe that all origin of human life on earth can be traced back to East Africa. Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup are used to represent the mtDNA tree. Using this, evolution of life can be traced back to Africa approximately 170,000 years ago. Surprisingly mtDNA is transferred (or inherited) from one’s mother.  

mtDNA & Y-chromosome are used to trace ancestry. mtDNA is generally passed unaltered from mothers to children of both sexes, along the maternal line. Whereas DNA in the Y-chromosome, called yDNA, from father is passed only to son. Y-chromosome is highly susceptible to mutation due to environment they are housed in or the process of passing it thru sperm. This means that a male may never pass his  Y-Chromosomes if he only has female offsprings.  But what’s the point of passing the gene if its not the same?

Reading more on this I realized how misinformed our society is. Unlike common belief, it is the female lineage that is carried forward, not the male. Our society behaves quite opposite to that, where bloodline & lineage is primarily associated with men. In reality men are just the source of providing the sperm for the egg. mtDNA of a man are transferred thru sperms & are destroyed by the egg after fertilization, so in a way male mtDNA is not carried forward. yDNA is highly mutable so may not be same as that of grand fathers.

Egyptian and Indian culture are the testimony of the power and intelligence that was with the people of these civilization thousands of years back. Perhaps the science was more advance then, than it is now. I was recently reading a book on Teleportation – the science of moving from one place to another with the blink of an eye, remember watching Star trek. Incidences related to teleportation are widely used in Indian mythology. Other few technological marvels like Pushpak Viman, Lost City of Dwarka, weapons like Bramastra (equivalent to today’s Atom bomb) are abundant in many of the Hindu epics as Ramayana, Mahabharata. Incidences related to Dwarka mentioned in Mahabharata are now scientifically proven to be correct.

I believe that more than 5000 years ago science was at its peak in these civilizations. If we were so advance then, than why do we have to reinvent the wheel? In all the famous & old civilizations, say Egyptians or Mesopotamian or Indian, people believed that the knowledge was passed to them by Gods. Who were these Gods? Where did they come from? Where did they go?

There are no answers to the above questions.

Egyptians are considered to be the source of birth of modern medical science. The Eye of Horus was believed to have healing and protective power, and it was used as a protective amulet, and as a medical measuring device, using the mathematical proportions of the eye to determine the proportions of ingredients in medical preparations) to prepare medications. The Egyptians did write prescriptions. Those prescriptions were first magical verses and then the real prescription. The Eye of Horus was an important part of the magical part of the prescription. With time the magical part became smaller, and the real prescription more important.  Eventually, all that was left of the magical verse was the Eye of Horus. The sign has remained in pharmacist’s shorthand to this day with Rx being the sign for a prescription! Archeologists have found many tools dated 4000 years old on bank of river Nile & other sights, which closely resembles modern surgical tools. These tools were made of volcanic glass, which on research have found to be much superior to surgical steel. Who gave all this knowledge to Egyptians and why did it all lost. If science was so advance then, than why do we have to reinvent all again?

Today’s science is still no able to find answers to many of the things. Like the iron pillar in Delhi that was built around 4-5 AD & still does not show any signs of rust and corrosion. It is testimony to the high level of skill achieved by ancient Indians. It was originally made in centeral India, but how it moved to Delhi 1000 years ago still remains a mystery.  It has been something of a riddle for people—historians, archaeologists, palaeographers, metallurgists, etc—for close to a century and a half.

“Nearly everything about the pillar is surrounded by acute controversy: For whom was it made? Exactly when? Where did it originally stand before it was moved to Delhi? What is the true import of the long inscription in Brahmi characters engraved upon it? Who placed the later inscriptions on it, and when? Who had the pillar moved to its present location, and why? What exact processes were followed in forging it into shape at that early a point of time, the 4th/5th century AD? Above all, from the scientists’ point of view, what is the secret, the great mystery, behind the fact of its being virtually non-rusting? There seems to be no end to the questions.” - Enigma of the Iron Pillar, B.N. Goswamy

 
Or consider magnificent pyramids built 4600 years ago. The three pyramids of Egypt were built at different times, the amazing fact is that the largest one is also the oldest and shows much finer work then the later two. It is still highly debatable who built the pyramids. Were they actually humans who designed and architected it or someone else designed and used humans as labors. Many people try to find answers of how it was build. You will find one of the links on my blog under “Great Mysteries”, which describes how the Great Pyramid was constructed. But given the time it was constructed, I doubt how 20000 people can complete the work in 20 years. Is it possible that the first pyramid was solely built by people from outer space and later the knowledge was passed to humans to built second and third and other pyramids?

These are just few of many mystries that show the grandure of science thousands of years ago. It is very likely that we have received help from somewhere in evolution of science.

Yesterday I was having discussion with my team for externalizing all labels and strings of the our new application in development, so that it is easy to localize the application for different languages. The application that we are currently working deals extensively with graphs and images.

While having all this discussion I had an spontaneous idea what if it is possible to localize images… Well this sounds rather absurd to localize images. Consider this, if you have your image in an application configured for Africa, and you want to localize it for China, so how will your image change… Your localization should be intelligent enough to shrink you in size, change color of your skin to white, make your eyes small…

Is this possible to localize images? Well I guess ‘Yes’… because nothing is impossible, only we need to wait for it for someone to develop it.

It is true that we are observing the fastest rate of extinction of many species on the planet. Currently humans are the main cause of this widespread extinction of many species (refer http://alienworld.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/man-%e2%80%93-a-reason-for-extinction-of-many-species/). But before humans, the nature was the key player in deciding what species to evolve or extinct.

In Darwin’s words it is also known as Nature’s selection. If you see how the animals mate for reproduction only the best or most powerful male gets a chance to mate. This is only because the best genes should be passed to next generations, also known as survival of the fittest. Let me give you an example- fully grown male elephant seals can weight up to 2 tons and can be as long as 18 ft. One of the surprising facts is that 97% of the male elephant seals do not get a chance to mate in their entire life. The 3% who does get the chance are the most powerful in the clan. Their power can be estimated from the fact that in a week they can mate with 300 female seals. Now this is what we call the survival of the fittest – only best genes get a chance to pass on to next generation.

Will Durant said “The sciences are the windows through which philosophy views the world”.  I could not make out much from this quote, but I guess he is trying to say that science and philosophy go hand in hand. But my view is that they are quite opposite to each other.

There are many things that are beyond “proven” science. To bring them under the scope of science, scientists define theories around them. This allows them to talk about them in the scope of science. But just defining theory doesn’t mean that it is true. Theory is accepted not on the grounds of its certitude, but on the grounds that nobody has yet disproved it.

“The best anyone can say of a theory is that it has not been disproved.” –Ferguson

This principle forms the basis of modern scientific knowledge. >

Ironically, the same principle is considered a fallacy (mistaken belief) in classical philosophy; “the fallacy of argument from ignorance”. An argument that says something is true because nobody has proved it false, or that something is false because nobody has proved it true, is held to be invalid according to this rule of fallacy.