SPERM DONORS

 

I don't much like what genetics has to say about being a male. My growing disappointment sharpened when I read a 2003 paper in the “American Journal of Human Genetics”, which uncovered an “unusual linkage” on the MSY (the Male-Specific region of the Y chromosome) of some 400 million current male residents of Asia. They all share a distinct thousand year old chemical inheritance from an ambitious, foul tempered, cut throat, power crazed Mongol named Temujin, AKA Genghis Kahn. 

Among the Great Ruler's favorite past times was killing his enemies and then “to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.” Through serial rape, Temujin scattered more sperm around than Secretariat. Genghis Kahn's successful evolutionary strategy was to treat women as if they were horses, and to treat horses as disposable live stock. 

About 5,000 years ago, when traders first appeared in ancient Mesopotamia selling equines, the Sumerians had to borrow words from the Hittites to describe the beasts - calling them “akk asca”, literally “mountain asses ”. And as anybody who keeps horses can tell you, horses ain't cheap. They eat a lot and require a lot of land to run around on. 

By about 2,100 B.C.E., rich and royal Sumerian speakers were breeding horses to pull their war chariots. Horses were worth their weight in bronze for men like 20- something Shulgi, who became King of Uruk,  in 2069 B.C.E.

The first bronze weapons were developed by the Elam people, Shulgi's southern neighbors, who lived on the Iranian plateau. Elam was lucky because their copper ore was naturally contaminated with arsenic, and it was the contamination which turned soft copper into harder bronze. But bronze also ain't cheap, either.

Melting copper requires almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees C), which means burning a lot of wood. And trying to make the best bronze required technicians, and experimentation. When the Sumerians replaced the arsenic with tin, they produced an even harder weapon, with which Shulgi could boast he “broke the weapons of the highlands over my knees, and in the south placed a yoke on the neck of Elam.”

Like a bronze age Donald Trump, the narcissist Shugli (above) described himself as “a horse of the highway that swishes its tail”. “Let me boast of what I have done!” And then he did. He claimed to be able to run a hundred miles, out fight, out quote, out cook and even out math everybody. “None of the nobles could write on clay as I could.” After he was dead his critics accused him of being “untruthful”. 

His claim to have defeated the Elam is instructive. Early in his reign, in 2065 B.C., he married his daughter to the governor of the Elam border town of Awan (above, center). Then when the locals overthrew his son-in-law in 2061 B.C., Shulgi crossed the border and sacked the town. But he did not linger, as Elam sent their own army to escort Shulgi home - "thanks for the help, but really, we aren't telling you to leave, but you can't stay here. Shulgi left and we read of no more of his boasts about beating the Elam. 

Curiously, our Temujin-want-a-be left no record of his sexual conquests. It was almost the only thing he didn't boast about. Maybe he was gay, or just sexually repressed, but Shulgi would not be a candidate for one of the three “fathers” of 64% of all living males in Europe. According to a 2015 study in the journal “Nature Communications”, a similar MSY mutation to the Asian G. Kahn one, indicates the first Euro Daddy Dearest was probably pater to the Vikings. About the same time a second Papa progenitor was spreading his sperm around the southern Atlantic coast of Europe, just before the last but not least forefather breeder-in-chief appeared in north-central Europe. And all four of these guys throwing their sperm around correspond to the local arrival of bronze, and the use of war horses in those regions.

The latter study co-author, Dr. Chiara Batini, from the University of Leicester, explained the social-genetic implications. “We think that a social structure in which resources and power are more easily accessible to only some men may allow for a few paternal lineages to become very frequent in a short amount of time.” In other words, converging technologies created a few rich bronze age sires who controlled the sperm receptacles, i.e. women. Or, to the put this “jus primae noctis” in capitalistic terms, corporate management used unlimited secret political donations to create and protect tax loop holes for their bonuses, while preventing a raise in the minimum wage for the female workers. Do you detect that my Irish is up?

In truth the rise of Genghis Kahn had nothing to do with his sexual productivity, that was just a by product of his personal indecency. But you can't argue with success. And the name “Temumin” means “iron worker”, which was the next great technological advance after the invention of bronze. It was iron weapons that were the strength of “Harold Tangled Hair”, who, not long after the founding of the Mongol Empire, swore not to cut his own ginger locks until he had conquered all of Norway - which “Harold Fair Hair” then did, followed by the large scale forced impregnation of many of the females living in in Norway.

Those Nordic tribes not wanting to carry Harold's genes around, scattered across the North Sea, looking for a safe haven, freedom, and easy loot and rape victims of their own. Their Celtic victims called them Vikings, or “Sea Rovers”, and they reached as far west as Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and as far south as Normandy, Scotland and northern Ireland, where Niall Noigialallach (above) - in English “Neal of the Nine Hostages” - carved out his Kingdom of Tara.

For centuries scholars insisted King Neal was mythological. Then, in 2006, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin found yet another MSY marker in 21% of males from north west Ireland - the core of Neal's “mythical” kingdom - and in 8% of Scottish males, just across the 20 mile wide North Channel of the Irish Sea, where Neal liked to do a little raping, er, raiding. Some 3 million Irish and Scottish men with two dozen family names are members of the “Ui Neil”, descendents of the clearly non-mythical “most fecund man in Irish history”, Neal of the Nine Hostages.

An Irish bishop would later describe pre-Viking Ireland as “Rich in goods, in silver, jewels, cloth and gold”, which may explain in part the island's attractiveness to the randy pagan, who could claim 12 “legitimate” children. And then there are what Irish schoolchildren are taught were the offspring of Neal's “romantic conquests”. Odd how rape becomes less vile when described by the rapists. Consider the treaty Neal reached with the Airgialla tribe, ( literally the "hostage-givers"). Rather than fight a bloody protracted conquest of the Airgialla's Sperrin Mountains, known for their dreary weather, Neal agreed to respect the borders in exchange for one hostage from each of their nine clans.  And it seems likely to me that maybe all of those hostages were women.

During one of his Scottish raids, legend says Neal captured a 16 year old Celtic boy of Roman heritage, and after transporting him back to Ireland, sold the young man into slavery. It was the kind of business the Vikings were famous for.  It seems Neal was just participating in Celtic and Viking tradition. For six years the captive labored as a stable boy, until finally escaping and stowing away on a ship back to Scotland. The young man returned to Ireland 10 years later as missionary, now named  Bishop Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  Or so says the Catholic legend, which is at least as believable as the pagan ones. Legend also says that Neal, first High King of Ireland, died on one of his Scottish raids, murdered by his own son. Such was the barbarous tradition among the pagans (see Macbeth) , and the following Christian English Kings, (see Henry II and Richard I, Edward II, Richard III, etc, etc - basically anything by Shakespeare.)

But nowhere in any of these legends and history, does anyone get an opinion from the women. For that we are reduced to the next best thing – investigating the lives of living women. Sometime during their life time, 20% of all women will be raped, 1,300,000 American women each year,  according to the Centers for Disease Control. According to the F.B.I., 90% of all American murderers are male. And of all those murders/rapists, how many carry the MSY markers from a Daddy Dearest? Genetics is not only who we were and are, it is who we want to be. And I don't want to be that. Do you?

- 30 - 

INNOCENCE LOST

 

I would have been on pins and needles after the decision had been made. It took an never ending 90 minutes to gather all the men and horses back into formation. They had been scattered because of the threat of an air attack.  But eventually they were formed up, again. And only then did the Aussies and their horses make the historic charge.

When  the Australian Fourth Light Horse Brigade advanced at the gallop they were not waving sabers but bayonets. Still it may have been one of the most successful cavalry charges in military history. It is also usually credited with being the very last. 

It was 31 October , 1917 – Halloween - when the British Army made a third attempt to break the Turkish line anchored on Gaza. They had a new General, 56 year old Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 

and a new plan. Instead of again attacking the barbed wire and trenches close to Gaza,  Allenby decided to try the other end of the Turkish defenses, at Beersheba. It was a similar choice to the sweeping left hook sent against Iraq forces in 1991: then, fast armored columns were supported by fleets of fuel trucks. But the limiting factor in 1917 was not gasoline but water. 

There have been wells at Beersheba as far back as the biblical Abraham. In 1917 there were 17 wells producing dependable potable water.  It was the wells which made the capture of the village vital for any army coming out of the Negev desert, because the weapon of maneuver in 1917 was not the tank but the horse.

It is simply astonishing that a prey animal, a grass eater, could be so powerful a weapon of war. Since 4000 B.C. humans have trained horses to assist in killing other humans and other horses. We have ridden their backs into close combat where Equus caballus was shot with arrows, pierced with spears and slashed with swords. 

And beginning in the 17th century, horses were then cut by shrapnel and surrounded by deafening gunfire and explosions. And what is most astonishing is that for a horse, such combat is much more frightening than for a human.

Horses have the largest eyes per body size of any land animal. The construction of those lovely huge eyes also gives them a field of vision of 350 degrees, far wider than a humans’. 

Humans hear in the range of 30 to 19,000 hertz. Horses, with their 180 degree rotating ears, giving them the equivalent of sound depth perception, hear 55 to 33,500 hertz.  In short, hoses can see and hear much more of the horrors on a battlefield more accurately than a human can.

And the sound of a rifle or pistol in their own riders’ hands is more frightening because it is closer. So given this higher level of horror why have horses joined us in war?

It has been pointed out that war horses actually lived much more happy lives than their pampered domesticated stabled pets of today because a war horse is constantly surrounded with other horses – a herd. 

An army is a strict hierarchical social structure that mimics the herd. Every combat maneuver used by cavalry is based on herd behavior. A column of horses willing follows the horse in front rather than run for safety alone, and a horse in a charge will run because all the other horses are running as well.

But the actual charge of Napoleonic cavalry (and the Australian Light Horsemen of 1917) was a good deal slower than the paintings might suggest. Sabers might be wildly waving and lances glinting in the sunlight, but charging horses do not slam into enemy troops at the end of a charge. 

The “shock” effect of a cavalry charge was more about human psychology then physical. No horse will 

ride onto spikes or spears, or even willingly ride down a human. Horses have no country, no national pride. They will defend young  members of their own herd, but not to the death.  They are aggressive only when they cannot escape. Running is freedom. Running is life. To a horse the very idea that "Into the valley of death rode the 600" is insanity, illogical and inconceivable. 

The 800 mounted men of the 11th and 12th regiments formed up to the east of Beersheba, behind a ridge. 

Their commander was Lieutenant Colonel William James Bourchier (above)  and he had trained his men to fight as mounted infantry.  

But this afternoon with their rifles slung across their backs and their bayonets gripped tightly in their right hands, they were pure cavalry, straight from the ancient steppes of Eastern Europe and the rolling fields of Belgium. They crossed the ridge line at 4:30pm,  in three waves at a trot, moving at about 8 miles an hour, with five meters between each horse.

The three lines advanced across the open desert toward the Turkish infantry trenches four miles away.  After a mile a battery of Austrian-Hungarian artillery (above) began to bark at them. Shells exploded just behind them as the Axis gunners tried in vain to adjust their range to match the horsemen’s advance.  About two miles out they broke into a canter, advancing now at about 15 miles an hour. 

The Turkish machine guns began to pepper the advancing cavalry. But most of the Turkish infantry were holding their fire, waiting for the horsemen to dismount and attack on foot. 

Instead, a half mile from the trenches, they broke into a gallop, and fell upon the stunned Turkish soldiers at 30 miles an hour.

Trooper Eric Elliot remembered, “It was the bravest, most awe inspiring sight I’ve ever witnessed ...the boys were wild-eyed and yelling their heads off.” And Trooper Vic Smith would write years later, “Of course we were scared, wishing to hell we weren’t there…But you couldn’t drop out and leave your mates to it; you had to keep going on.”  And the horses must have mimicked that same feeling.

In fact the Turkish infantry were so stunned by the cavalry’s audacity that they failed to adjust their sights and most of the Turkish rifle fire that finally began, went sailing over the horsemen’s heads. As the cavalry drew nearer their formation dissolved, which made it harder for the gunners to pick a target, 

And suddenly it seemed to the Turkish soldiers’ that their gun sights were filled with the barrel chests of charging horses, each carrying a screaming mad man directly at each Turkish private and corporal.

The Australian horses leapt across the first trench line. And many of the Turkish soldiers, brave men and determined, well led and well disciplined, threw down their rifles and ran away. To the horses, they were not charging into danger, but trying to escape it. And once over the first trench line, in fact they had. 

The Australian regiments carried the trench and the vital wells and the village beyond. The attack captured 38 officers, 700 men, 9 field guns and 3 machine guns and killed perhaps 500 Turkish soldiers. Many more Turkish soldiers, having run into the desert, came back to the wells over the next few days and surrendered. The cost for this triumph was 31 Australians troopers killed and 36 wounded, almost all of them in the fight for the trenches. 

By five-thirty the battle was over. The Turkish Gaza line had been turned. But so surprised and stunned were the victors themselves that it was almost another hour before anyone thought to send word back General Allenby at headquarters. Instead they took the time to enjoy the cool waters from the Wells of Beersheba. 

It is estimated that 70 horses died in the battle. And afterward an Australian trooper noted, “It was the horses that did it; those marvelous bloody horses.”

- 30 - 

SPERM DONORS

 

I don't much like what genetics has to say about being a male. My growing disappointment sharpened when I read a 2003 paper in the “American Journal of Human Genetics”, which uncovered an “unusual linkage” on the MSY (the Male-Specific region of the Y chromosome) of some 400 million current male residents of Asia. They all share a distinct thousand year old chemical inheritance from an ambitious, foul tempered, cut throat, power crazed Mongol named Temujin, AKA Genghis Kahn. 

Among the Great Ruler's favorite past times was killing his enemies and then “to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.” Through serial rape, Temujin scattered more sperm around than Secretariat. Genghis Kahn's successful evolutionary strategy was to treat women as if they were horses, and to treat horses as disposable live stock. 

About 5,000 years ago, when traders first appeared in ancient Mesopotamia selling equines, the Sumerians had to borrow words from the Hittites to describe the beasts - calling them “akk asca”, literally “mountain asses ”. And as anybody who keeps horses can tell you, horses ain't cheap. They eat a lot and require a lot of land to run around on. 

By about 2,100 B.C.E., rich and royal Sumerian speakers were breeding horses to pull their war chariots. Horses were worth their weight in bronze for men like 20- something Shulgi, who became King of Uruk,  in 2069 B.C.E.

The first bronze weapons were developed by the Elam people, Shulgi's southern neighbors, who lived on the Iranian plateau. Elam was lucky because their copper ore was naturally contaminated with arsenic, and it was the contamination which turned soft copper into harder bronze. But bronze also ain't cheap, either.

Melting copper requires almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees C), which means burning a lot of wood. And trying to make the best bronze required technicians, and experimentation. When the Sumerians replaced the arsenic with tin, they produced an even harder weapon, with which Shulgi could boast he “broke the weapons of the highlands over my knees, and in the south placed a yoke on the neck of Elam.”

Like a bronze age Donald Trump, the narcissist Shugli (above) described himself as “a horse of the highway that swishes its tail”. “Let me boast of what I have done!” And then he did. He claimed to be able to run a hundred miles, out fight, out quote, out cook and even out math everybody. “None of the nobles could write on clay as I could.” After he was dead his critics accused him of being “untruthful”. 

His claim to have defeated the Elam is instructive. Early in his reign, in 2065 B.C., he married his daughter to the governor of the Elam border town of Awan (above, center). Then when the locals overthrew his son-in-law in 2061 B.C., Shulgi crossed the border and sacked the town. But he did not linger, as Elam sent their own army to escort Shulgi home - "thanks for the help, but really, we aren't telling you to leave, but you can't stay here. Shulgi left and we read of no more of his boasts about beating the Elam. 

Curiously, our Temujin-want-a-be left no record of his sexual conquests. It was almost the only thing he didn't boast about. Maybe he was gay, or just sexually repressed, but Shulgi would not be a candidate for one of the three “fathers” of 64% of all living males in Europe. According to a 2015 study in the journal “Nature Communications”, a similar MSY mutation to the Asian G. Kahn one, indicates the first Euro Daddy Dearest was probably pater to the Vikings. About the same time a second Papa progenitor was spreading his sperm around the southern Atlantic coast of Europe, just before the last but not least forefather breeder-in-chief appeared in north-central Europe. And all four of these guys throwing their sperm around correspond to the local arrival of bronze, and the use of war horses in those regions.

The latter study co-author, Dr. Chiara Batini, from the University of Leicester, explained the social-genetic implications. “We think that a social structure in which resources and power are more easily accessible to only some men may allow for a few paternal lineages to become very frequent in a short amount of time.” In other words, converging technologies created a few rich bronze age sires who controlled the sperm receptacles, i.e. women. Or, to the put this “jus primae noctis” in capitalistic terms, corporate management used unlimited secret political donations to create and protect tax loop holes for their bonuses, while preventing a raise in the minimum wage for the female workers. Do you detect that my Irish is up?

In truth the rise of Genghis Kahn had nothing to do with his sexual productivity, that was just a by product of his personal indecency. But you can't argue with success. And the name “Temumin” means “iron worker”, which was the next great technological advance after the invention of bronze. It was iron weapons that were the strength of “Harold Tangled Hair”, who, not long after the founding of the Mongol Empire, swore not to cut his own ginger locks until he had conquered all of Norway - which “Harold Fair Hair” then did, followed by the large scale forced impregnation of many of the females living in in Norway.

Those Nordic tribes not wanting to carry Harold's genes around, scattered across the North Sea, looking for a safe haven, freedom, and easy loot and rape victims of their own. Their Celtic victims called them Vikings, or “Sea Rovers”, and they reached as far west as Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and as far south as Normandy, Scotland and northern Ireland, where Niall Noigialallach (above) - in English “Neal of the Nine Hostages” - carved out his Kingdom of Tara.

For centuries scholars insisted King Neal was mythological. Then, in 2006, geneticists at Trinity College in Dublin found yet another MSY marker in 21% of males from north west Ireland - the core of Neal's “mythical” kingdom - and in 8% of Scottish males, just across the 20 mile wide North Channel of the Irish Sea, where Neal liked to do a little raping, er, raiding. Some 3 million Irish and Scottish men with two dozen family names are members of the “Ui Neil”, descendents of the clearly non-mythical “most fecund man in Irish history”, Neal of the Nine Hostages.

An Irish bishop would later describe pre-Viking Ireland as “Rich in goods, in silver, jewels, cloth and gold”, which may explain in part the island's attractiveness to the randy pagan, who could claim 12 “legitimate” children. And then there are what Irish schoolchildren are taught were the offspring of Neal's “romantic conquests”. Odd how rape becomes less vile when described by the rapists. Consider the treaty Neal reached with the Airgialla tribe, ( literally the "hostage-givers"). Rather than fight a bloody protracted conquest of the Airgialla's Sperrin Mountains, known for their dreary weather, Neal agreed to respect the borders in exchange for one hostage from each of their nine clans.  And it seems likely to me that maybe all of those hostages were women.

During one of his Scottish raids, legend says Neal captured a 16 year old Celtic boy of Roman heritage, and after transporting him back to Ireland, sold the young man into slavery. It was the kind of business the Vikings were famous for.  It seems Neal was just participating in Celtic and Viking tradition. For six years the captive labored as a stable boy, until finally escaping and stowing away on a ship back to Scotland. The young man returned to Ireland 10 years later as missionary, now named  Bishop Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  Or so says the Catholic legend, which is at least as believable as the pagan ones. Legend also says that Neal, first High King of Ireland, died on one of his Scottish raids, murdered by his own son. Such was the barbarous tradition among the pagans (see Macbeth) , and the following Christian English Kings, (see Henry II and Richard I, Edward II, Richard III, etc, etc - basically anything by Shakespeare.)

But nowhere in any of these legends and history, does anyone get an opinion from the women. For that we are reduced to the next best thing – investigating the lives of living women. Sometime during their life time, 20% of all women will be raped, 1,300,000 American women each year,  according to the Centers for Disease Control. According to the F.B.I., 90% of all American murderers are male. And of all those murders/rapists, how many carry the MSY markers from a Daddy Dearest? Genetics is not only who we were and are, it is who we want to be. And I don't want to be that. Do you?

- 30 -