Joan Hus - Issue 37

Joan Hus is the pseudonym of Martine Lejeune. Martine Lejeune graduated summa cum laude in Philosophy from Ghent University. She obtained her PhD from the University of Antwerp with a thesis on speculative logic.

She’s a visual artist and the author of fiction and non-fiction books. Her artist name refers to Jan Hus (c. 1369–1415), the Czech reformer who was condemned as a heretic and executed at the stake.

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Genetic Engineering

The cashier at the checkout was a Neanderthal. Judging by his upper body, a male one. Of course, I could be wrong about his sex. A uniform makes uniform. Anyway, he had all the characteristics of a Neanderthal: low forehead, thick brow ridge, elongated skull, bulbous back part of the head, stocky body, relatively short, no more than five feet tall.

Last week, I read a book about the origins and evolution of humankind, with illustrations by Ronny Dell, one of my artist pals. I learned, among other things, that the term paleoanthropology is composed of the Greek words palaiós (παλαιός) "ancient", ánthropos (ἄνθρωπος) "human" and the suffix -logía (from λόγos) "rational explanation". Ever since I read that book, there's no trouble at all in recognising specimens of extinct human species.

Neanderthals are not our direct ancestors. But they did contribute to the genetics of modern humans. Recent DNA research shows that between one and six percent of the modern human genome consists of Neanderthal DNA.

The cashier's appearance, however, seemed to substantiate the statement that there were creatures among us whose ratio of Homo sapiens DNA to Neanderthal DNA was the reverse, with only a percentage of one to six of Homo sapiens DNA, the remainder being Neanderthal DNA.

To be honest, that didn’t surprise me at all. On the contrary. If you know human nature as well as I do, then you’ll also know that a team of biologists, paleoanthropologists and geneticists are currently conducting experiments with DNA of extinct human species somewhere at a remote laboratory on an island in the Indian Ocean, where they are staying with their families. A secret project, comparable to the Manhattan Project.

As Aristotle made clear, the possible is not impossible. The possible is something that involves no impossible consequence. It is something whose contrary is not necessarily false. But that’s not the point.

The gargantuan obese man, in the queue behind me, emanated an acrid zoo-like odour of unwashed genitals. It smelled worse than ape dung in the zoo. The taxonomic designation ‘short snout, small brain,’ came to my mind. Mr. Motley, our biology teacher at secondary school, told us that humans have short snouts like apes, but that their brains are larger than those of apes.

A woman nudged me. She was like a midget, extremely small, with a tall face and a delicate brow ridge. Judging by the size of her skull, an Australopithecus. Her jaw protruded like that of Lucy, her best-known ancestor. She laughed with a sound that was vaguely reminiscent of human laughter. I realized she was in a hurry. I let her go first. She walked with difficulty. 

Scientific research into brain size, hand morphology and technology suggests that a number of essential Homo attributes were already present in the Australopithecus species. The female Australopithecus who gave me a nudge seemed to confirm this conclusion.

Looking about nothing indicated the presence of large brains. The only thing I saw were biped animals with short snouts, wearing sneakers. Somehow, that made me happy. Even more, I felt elated. I no longer felt out of place. After more than sixty lonely years, I finally had come home: an animal among animals.