Tag Archives: Neanderthal

In Hybrid Humans, Australian Writer Daniella Fenton Makes A Compelling Case The Homo Sapiens Are The Product Of An Alien Genetic Manipulation Program


Review by: KEN KORCZAK

DANIELLA FENTON opens this book telling of her lifetime encounters with strange beings, alien or otherwise. It began when she was just 18 months old. These range from a 1-meter tall ape-like creature which showed up to bounce around menacingly in her bedroom to a “classic” tall gray-type alien with bulbous head and wrap-around almond eyes.

She was able to assimilate her experiences and embrace them, however, as she grew up. She took training as an Andean shaman and past-life therapist. She experienced her own past-life encounters in which she found herself living in Central America among the Maya in 7th Century Palenque. (Note: Ms. Fenton is an Australian of Ecuadoran heritage).

Daniella Fenton

Those who don’t read further might think this is one of those alien-UFO books that veers heavily toward the esoteric, New Agey (and some might even say “woo-woo”) genre of this field – but as we move along the author brings on some bona fide hard-science red meat. The latter will engage and satisfy those who prefer a more academic approach.

So immediately what I like about Daniella Fenton is that she appears a well-rounded visionary kind of person with a natural inclination in the mystical realm while also displaying the quality of an intellectual with her feet firmly planted on scientific ground. The best of both worlds.

The Pleiades

The central premise of this book is the idea that aliens originating in the Pleiades Cluster star system came to earth in a time period of about 800,000 years ago. For complex reasons, the aliens embarked on a genetic engineering program using the native biological lifeforms they encountered on earth. They selected certain species of primates for an evolutionary acceleration program that would springboard them to become what all of us see in the mirror every day – ourselves – home sapiens.

The idea that our creators are aliens has been a popular concept in ufology or ancient astronaut theory (for lack of a better terms) in recent years. Perhaps among the most prominent example is the work of ZECHARIA SITCHIN and his theory that an alien race called the Anunnaki (of ancient Sumer) genetically engineered primates to become higher-functioning humans so they could be used as slave labor.

Nobel Laureate Francis Crick

But wait … it must be noted that even the likes of Nobel laureate Francis Crick, the discoverer of the DNA molecule, believed the bilogical life we know today could not have originated on earth. Crick suggested an alien source for complex protein chains that were seeded to earth millions of years ago. The complexity of the basic amino acids and protein structures simply could not evolve in a time frame of a planet that is “just” four billion years old. He didn’t say it was an intelligent alien civilization. He seemed to suggest a more general panspermia concept.

Panspermia is the theory that life was seeded throughout the universe, most likely spread by means of comets, cosmic dust, meteors, planetoids or even ancient alien exploration spacecraft that unwittingly contaminated other worlds with the basic building blocks of biological life.

Panspermia

The panspermia concept is ancient. It was first suggested in the 5th Century B.C. by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. It has cropped up again and again throughout the centuries. Panspermia finally became a mainstream scientific hypothesis thanks to the great Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1903.

Panspermia was embraced more recently in the 20th century by two intellectual giants, the world-renowned British astronomer Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, the Sri Lankan-born British mathematician and astrobiologist.

Ms. Fenton acknowledges panspermia, but then perhaps makes a quantum leap forward by suggesting that a gigantic Pleiadian alien spacecraft crash-landed on our planet some 800,000 years ago. Its earth-marooned occupants then instigated a genetic engineering program to produce the modern human species.

Her thesis is multi-pronged. One line explores the curious fact that humans have 46 chromosomes with each cell containing 23 pairs. Our close cousins, the Neanderthal and Denisovans, had 46 chromosomes and 23 associated pairs. Monkeys, chimps and apes all have 48 and 24 pairs. She writes that the time of the human divergence to 23 pairs happened about 780,000 years ago. She also points out that modern science still has no satisfactory explanation for why or how this divergence from 24 to 23 chromosomes happened, other than perhaps a chance mutation.

Ms. Fenton then takes us on a cogent and lucid discussion of some of the tricky details looking at relevant factors on the DNA level involving the four nucleotide “letters” that make up the famous spiral molecule, A, C, G and T – adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine.

Fenton writes:

“The (chromosome) fusion event has the fingerprints of the Pleiadian scientists all over it. The pattern we see matches well with the deliberate scientific experiment involving a group of hominins implanted with modified test-tube babies. There would have been an entire generation of potential breeding pairs born sharing this fusion.”

Australites are tektites found in Australia.

In addition to genetics, Ms. Fenton offers corroborating evidence of a crash-landed spacecraft by considering a class of minerals called tektites. These are tiny glassy objects formed from terrestrial debris ejected during large meteorite or small asteroid impacts. There are just four known tektite-strewn fields in the world. Among the best known is a central European field where tektites called Moldavite are found. It is believed to have impacted earth about 14 million years ago.

But there is also a tektite field in Australia that produced fused-glassy objects called Australites. This field is estimated to have been created by an impact 0.78 million years ago. This date would come close to the 780,000-year timeframe in which Fenton says homo sapiens diverged from other primates by shedding a chromosome. She suggests further, then, that the Australite-strewn field may have been caused by the crash of a massive Pleiadian spaceship.

This, in turn, posits that the origin of the human species was on the Australian continent, not African. As it happens, Ms. Fenton’s husband, Bruce Fenton, has authored a book which argues just that, His book is titled, THE FORGOTTEN EXODUS: THE INTO AFRICA THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION.

And there’s even more – such as Ms. Fenton’s fascinating discussion of neoteny in the human species, and evidence presented by ancient rock art found in remote regions of Australia. It’s remarkable how much is packed into a book of a mere 171 pages. Despite the heady scientific elements, this book makes for a fast read that is highly accessible to a general audience.

There’s no better sign that a writer is truly in command of her thesis than one who can write is all down lucidly in a short book that lays out a complex theory in a concise, readable manner.

It reminds me of what Albert Einstein once said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible — but not simpler.”


PLEASE CHECK OUT MY REVIEWS OF OTHER UFO-RELATED BOOKS, LINKED BELOW:

BLACK SWAN GHOSTS by Simeon Hein PhD

SYMBIOSIS by Nancy Tremaine

PASCAGOULA: THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER by Calvin Parker

INCIDENT AT DEVIL’S DEN by Terry Lovelace

MANAGING MAGIC by Grant Cameron

Follow @KenKorczak



Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

All NEW: KEN’S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING


Analog Science Fiction Tale by Bill Johnson About Time Travelers to Ancient Ski Lodge Will Challenge Readers, But Entertain Those Who Can Bring Something To The Table


Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Just a few paragraphs into the lead-off science fiction story in the Nov-Dec 2017 issue of ANALOG, I began to feel a strange swoon – it was borne of a certain brand of déjà vu that I’ll call … um? … synchronistic familiarity?

Let me explain:

The story is titled HYBRID, BLUE, BY FIRELIGHT. The setting is a ski-lodge sort of facility with a fine restaurant, rooms and other creature comforts for travelers – except this place is positioned in the year 42,967 BCE in a remote Arctic-like region — and the “guests” are time travelers from a variety of future timelines.

As it happens, I have been to this place many times. For real.

I call it The Restaurant on the Edge of Time (The RET for short) – and the way I get there is through the practice of lucid dreaming.

Years ago (somewhere in the 1990s) I perfected the practice of lucid dreaming after reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming written by Stanford University psychophysiologist STEPHEN LABERGE – even though I was a spontaneous lucid dreamer years before confronting LaBerge’s ground-breaking work.

Rather than retell everything here, I will now refer you to the first article I published on my visit to The RET – the earliest publication of this story (that I can find) appeared on one of my blogs in 2006 – but for right now I suggest you pause before you read the rest of my review of Bill Johnson’s science fiction story, read about my dream adventure at The RET which I have re-posted here:

THE RESTAURANT ON THE EDGE OF TIME

Okay! Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed the trip to The RET!

So now let’s talk about this novella, Hybrid, Blue, by Firelight. It’s a challenging piece of fiction, to be sure, which is often the case with hard science fiction crafted in the best tradition of the genre. The author is BILL JOHNSON. He won science fiction’s top honor, the HUGO AWARD, in 1998.

I like science fiction that makes you think – even sweat a few bullets out of your forehead – if you are going to understand what is happening in the story. Grapple you must with solid, meaty scientific theory based on … you know … real science. ‘Hybrid’ is that kind of story.

A short synopsis: This tale involves two brokers of genetic goods – one is a man (a homo sapiens sapiens) by the name of Martin. His partner is a kind of omnipresent  AI figure, appropriately named “Artie.”

An artists conception of a Red Deer Cave individual.

Martin and Artie ply their trade at the Stone Eagle, a luxury ski-lodge hotel positioned some 40 thousand years in the past. Time travelers of multiple species of man – NEANDERTHALS, DENISOVANS, RED DEER CAVERS and others – all meet at this exotic nexus to wheel and deal on what they need to manage the future timelines of their races.

Accouterments of trade include things like human female ova, resistance to diseases, whole intact species of animal, such as dogs, and so forth.

But the set-up is unstable, in that, maintaining the Stone Eagle is subject to problems, such as time quakes and wobbly reality shifts that quaver amid an array of future timelines … this precarious footing adds tension and sense of urgency to the narrative.

It’s an ambitious premise and difficult to pull off.

Author Bill Johnson is counting on his readers to be intelligent and informed about the latest theories concerning the origin of the human species – but I also believe Johnson expects his reader to contribute mightily in another way toward making the story a coherent whole.

Alexei Panshin

I could be wrong, but I believe the writing technique Johnson is using is what science fiction literary critic ALEXEI PANSHIN described as: “… a provocative vagueness deliberately introduced in order to prevent … readers from understanding too clearly and exactly what was happening and thereby losing their sense of mystery.”

Panshin ascribes the genesis of this writing technique to the legendary science fiction master A. E. VAN VOGT. The great man himself confirmed Panshin’s theory, saying:

A.E. van Vogt, Golden Age science fiction author who left subliminal gaps in his prose which he expected his readers to fill in.

“Each paragraph – sometimes each sentence – of my brand of science fiction has a gap in it, an unreality condition. In order to make it real, he reader must add the missing parts. He cannot do this out of his past associations. There are no past associations. So he must fill in the gap from the creative parts of his brain.”

When this technique works, it can create fiction that is rich, compelling and delicious beyond belief. Unfortunately, leaving subliminal gaps within a narrative tends to leave many readers baffled – such is the nature of their personal thought processes that subliminal promptings invoke no response for them – and the effect is only confusion. Some readers can “auto-fill,” some can’t.

On the other hand, there are some aspects of Hybrid, Blue, by Firelight that are problematic for less exotic reasons. For example, there is a scene where the characters come upon some dead bodies, and these are covered in buzzing flies – and yet, they are in a cold climate. Our characters are wearing animal skins and fur, there is snow on the ground, they’re traveling by dog sled – so how can there be carrion-eating flies under these frigid conditions?


There can’t be flies, and so this makes no sense. It’s a small detail, but jarring enough to sow uncomfortable confusion in the mind of the reader, who then begins to question the fundamental integrity of the overall scenario.

As for me, though, I enjoyed the story. My subconscious mind was auto-filling like mad. I felt I was treated to a vivid, sensual and luxurious science fiction feast. Also, I was delighted to confront an intelligent fictional scenario that so closely matched a beloved location so near and dear to my own dreams — literally.




Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Stan Gooch’s theory about Neanderthal influence, interbreeding was years ahead of mainstream science

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Has Stan Gooch been vindicated?

I think the short answer is yes. Of course, it’s more complex than that. But I think there should be little doubt that when scientists finally confirmed through DNA analysis that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred to produce “hybrid” children tens of thousands of years ago – a huge glob of retroactive respect should have been heaped upon the legacy of Stan Gooch.

But that never happened.

It was Gooch who concluded decades before anyone else that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. (Note: To be totally accurate, Gooch actually said Neanderthal interbred with Cro-Magnon man, and that in turn created modern humans, us – Homo sapiens).

Sadly, Gooch was scorned by mainstream and science academia. He was also dismissed and ridiculed. Perhaps worst of all – he was ignored. Even the 14 books he published sold poorly among the general public.

Poor Stan Gooch died living in near-poverty and obscurity in 2010. He spent his last days alone in a shabby trailer home, or what the Brits call a “caravan.” By all accounts, he was a deeply bitter man who felt abandoned by his fellow intellectuals, robbed of the accolades and scientific respect he felt he so richly deserved.

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Stan Gooch

It’s a shame because his books, including this one, Cities of Dreams: The Rich Neanderthal Legacy, are fascinating. Gooch was not only an innovative thinker who was years ahead of his time – he was a lucid, engaging and entertaining writer.

Yes, the 20/20 vision of hindsight has also poked some significant holes into Gooch’s overall thesis. On the other hand, this can be said of even the greatest of scientific theories, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Sure, Darwin was broadly correct, but in the more than a century since he first brought out his ideas, Darwin had been updated, corrected and modified considerably.

So if Stan Gooch is to be corrected and modified by recent discoveries should not tarnish the luster of his amazing achievement, not only in his theories about Neanderthal, but his insights into the global cultures of modern man. That said, there is a recent discovery – thanks again to genetic archaeology – that drives a major wrecking ball through the entire infrastructure of Gooch’s thesis.

It’s the discovery on an all-new species of human beings that Gooch could never have known about – the so-called Denisovans – identified the same year Gooch died.

In March 2010, scientists found a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived about 41,000 years ago. It was found in a remote mountain cave in Siberia, known as the Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains. Artifacts show that the cave has been inhabited for thousands of years by both modern humans and Neanderthal people – and now we can add Denisovans to the guest list.

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Denisova Cave

Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of the finger fragment found in Denisova Cave prove it was genetically distinct from the DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans. It was a whole new species.

This is an especially big problem for Gooch’s theory that all human culture today has its fundamental origins in Neanderthal culture. It’s especially significant in regards to Australian aboriginal peoples, who Gooch contended were the closest modern descendants of Neanderthal. In City of Dreams, he argues that their ancient religious/cultural practices most resemble that of the Neanderthal.

Well, guess what? Genetic analysis of Australian aborigines shows only a tiny amount of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, but a very high or significant percentage of Denisovan DNA – as much as 6 percent.

So the native Australians are not the modern human most closely relate to Neanderthal. They are among the closest living relatives of the Denisovans. This could mean two things: Gooch was still correct, in a way, because the Australian natives may still be manifesting the cultural practices of an ancient forgotten ancestor, except that it was not Neanderthal, but that of the Denisovans. Or it could mean that Gooch is totally wrong and that the aborigines simply developed their own unique cultural/religious practices as modern humans over the past 50,000 years or more. (Gooch would argue this could not be so because so many of the aborigine practices are reflected in other cultures around the world; thus, they could not have been developed in isolation).

But I’m going to leave this subject there because a proper discussion of all this is enormously complex, and way beyond the venue of the comments I am making on this book for this brief review.

However, I want to mention one more item that Gooch got wrong because it demonstrates the danger of his approach – that is, that of the “archaeologist of ideas” (as he called himself) rather than an archaeologist that is working strictly from “facts” derived directly from examining actual artifacts, physical locations and clues provided by the recent advances in genetics, and so forth.

Gooch claims that the culture of Neanderthal not only shapes the fundamentals of our culture and religions today, but he also contends that Neanderthal never truly went extinct!

He cites several examples of reports where Neanderthals have been seen in the wild in modern times – and one of his lynchpin stories is that of Zana, a “wild woman” captured near a small village in Abkhazia, a small country that was once a part of the former 19th Century Russian Empire.

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Abkhazia, highlighted in green at left.

To make a long story short: Zana seemed to exhibit all the physical features that would match up with what is known about Neanderthal today. Her body shape, large skull with brow ridge, heavy body hair of a reddish color, muscular build, amazing strength, etc.

Indeed, when one reads the accounts of Zana as described by the villagers who captured her it seems an almost slam-dunk case that what we have here is a surviving Neanderthal woman.

Although Zana was as wild as an animal at first and kept in a cage, she was eventually “domesticated” and even engaged in sexual intercourse with the men of her village. She bore several children, some of whom survived, and went on to live relatively normal lives – although they, too, were described to be of unusual appearance, including “ape-like” features in terms of skull shape and facial structure.

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Zana’nin Torunu, granddaughter of Zana

Well, scientists recently obtained DNA samples from Zana’s children – and the results were unambiguous – it was clear that Zana was of 100% modern human make-up — and that her origin was an exact match with that of peoples from Sub-Saharan Africa.

It became clear that Zana was no Neanderthal at all, but almost certainly had been brought to Russia years earlier as a slave. She was most likely the descendant of African slaves and had somehow come to live as a “wild woman” in the hinterlands of this remote region of the former Russian Empire.

Again – Stan Gooch and the accounts he cites describing the story of Zana are incredibly compelling. Without the proof positive of a DNA test, the circumstantial evidence seems absolutely overwhelming that she was a long lost Neanderthal – except that she was not.

Stan Gooch had every reason to believe that he had found an air-tight case study which proved that Neanderthal survived to modern times. Despite all, he was wrong.

So, yes, I began this piece by stating that I believe that Stan Gooch has been vindicated, but as you can see, the devil is in the details, and the situation is far more nuanced and complex.

I say: This is still a “must read” book because the overall thesis that Gooch lays out in these pages is breathtaking, fascinating, mind-bending and will leave the reader expanded and encouraged to think outside the box.



Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

All NEW: KEN’S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING

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