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Is tendency to be religious in the
genes?
For all the armchair detectives browsing these pages, here's
a deadly mystery that foxed investigators for more than 60
years.
More than 200 bodies, mostly killed by heavy blows to the
head, have been discovered, still clothed and packed in ice,
by Indian investigators.
Forensic teams are uncovering more bodies every week, and
the most gruesome estimates suggest as many as 600 corpses
could eventually be found.
It's thought most of the dead were related. Ritual sacrifice?
The nightmarish end of some apocalyptic cult or the work of
the most frenzied serial killer of all time? Whichever it
is, why have the police refused to become involved?
For decades after the horrific find, beside a glacial lake
in the Himalayas, archaeologists assumed they had stumbled
across a lost army that had been ambushed or engulfed by an
avalanche.
But the injuries on most of the bodies showed no sign of
battle and, although the ice at 16,500ft above sea level had
preserved flesh, hair and even fingernails, few of the dead
appeared to be armed.
Many had suffered fractures to the tops of their skulls,
the bone shattered as if by a sharp blow from a rock about
the size of a fist.
Judging by their clothes, the bodies had lain undisturbed
for 800 years. Historians argued over the party's motive for
attempting such a deadly trek - had they perhaps been Tibetan
traders, struck down by bandits or swept by a nameless plague,
or nomads seeking new pastures?
This month, a National Geographic team announced it had solved
the riddle, by overturning almost all the previous assumptions.
For one thing, these bodies were much older than anyone had
guessed: Oxford University's radiocarbon accelerator unit
dated them to the ninth century, the era of Charlemagne and
Alfred the Great on the other side of the world.
DNA samples showed the group was an extended family, a tribe,
and found matches with a community of Brahmin Hindus in central
India.
Dr Dibyendukanti Bhattacharya, of Delhi University, said:
"The skeletons are of large and rugged people. They are
more like the actors John Wayne or Anthony Quinn. Only a few
have the characteristics of the Mongoloid hill people of the
Himalayas."
In other words, most of the dead had come hundreds of miles
to march into the mountains, probably hiring native guides
along the way.
The people who might be their nearest relatives today form
a devout enclave, which suggests the dead could also have
been pious Hindus.
The most likely explanation is that these were religious
pilgrims. But who or what killed them?
"Hailstones," says Dr Subhash Walimbe, a physical
anthropologist from Deccan College, Pune, in India.
"Extremely large hailstones. It's the only plausible
explanation for so many people sustaining such similar injuries
at the same time: something fell from the sky. The injuries
were all to the top of the skull and not to other bones."
This painstaking, logical, imaginative science thrills me.
Sceptics often accuse me of being anti-science, but if every
scientist was as innovative as the Roopkund Lake team, I'd
be poring over Particle Physics Weekly the way I gobble up
detective tales.
Sadly, a lot of science has become destructive, negative
and deceitful. The men in white coats are desperate for headlines
and they've learned that a cheap way to win publicity is to
launch an attack on God.
Dr Dean Hamer got a taste of fame 11 years ago with a claim,
now widely discredited, that homosexuality was genetic: your
sexuality was predestined and depended on whether you inherited
the "gay gene" from your parents.
This month Dr Hamer, director of the gene structure and regulation
unit at America's National Cancer Institute, announced he
had identified the "god gene", a twist of DNA which
was usually present in the genetic make-up of individuals
who had spiritual faith.
The gene, VMAT2, supposedly regulates the action of mood-altering
chemicals in the brain, and Dr Hamer's tests on 2,000 volunteers
found that the people who expressed the strongest religious
principles were also the most likely to have the VMAT2 link.
We're not told what else might have linked these people -
whether they came from similar social backgrounds, or whether
they'd shared life-changing experiences such as bereavement.
I'd love to go back to these volunteers and ask each one,
"Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke?". In such a small
sample, there's a strong chance that one of the colas would
surge ahead - and what a great headline that would make: "Coca
Cola brings you closer to God: Professor Geller's incredible
proof!" It might not win the Nobel prize, but Professor
Geller would no doubt pocket a fabulous thank-you from the
fizzy drinks people.
Dr Hamer's research seems ridiculous, but that doesn't stop
him from making the most outrageous claims: "Buddha,
Mohammed and Jesus all shared a series of mystical experiences
or alterations in consciousness, and thus probably carried
the gene. That means that the tendency to be spiritual is
part of the genetic make-up."
Since we don't have DNA samples of any of the founders of
world religion, Dr Hamer can claim anything he likes. And
because he's that kind of scientist, he will.
The Roopkund Lake pilgrims, a tribe whose DNA samples closely
matched each other, knew the real meaning of spiritual faith,
more than 1,000 years ago. They undertook an incredible trek
and, by a unique twist of fate, they suffered an extraordinary
disaster.
I despair at the scientists who want to reduce their story
to a scrap of genetic code - and I salute the investigators
who solved a 1,200-year-old mystery.
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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