Atavism...Alive and Well

 

“The fruit falls not far from the tree.”  That’s atavism.

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Atavism…I loved the word when I first met it. It explains the inexplicable in people’s brains before their mouths speak. 

Several years ago I bought a DNA testing kit. Who’s not curious about their lineage and the atavisms that linger there? Here’s what I discovered. 

Don’t let anybody fool you…there are some traits and family traditions you’re not responsible for. They were dumped on you by some twisted act of fate. Like chips off the old block, you might say, the luck of the draw. 

These aberrant idiosyncrasies are peculiar to birth and genetic malfunctions.  They’re passed down through some wild gene, pulsating through our ancestral blood.  Watch your actions, your vocal inflections. Your proclivities are like ancient arrowheads, fragments of the past that keep popping up. 

That settled, we can relax in absolute assurance of self-acquittal, right? Wrong. There’s one small detail: the atavistic volcano can erupt at any time. The iniquities of the fathers continue to visit the children well past the 3^rd and 4^th generations. The mirror is a liar…there’s more to us than we see. 

Martin Amis wrote Koba the Dread. When you sit around feeling sorry for yourself, enjoying a pity party and lamenting on how life has let you down, read a few chapters.  It details the atrocities of Josef Stalin, a man who displayed a certain sadistic enthusiasm for violence in the maniacal extermination of 20 million countrymen. It offers an interesting perspective on Russian morals. 

And if that’s not enough to jolt you back to reality, pick up your Bible and read about the apocalyptic consummation of history in John’s book, The Revelation.  Volcanic flare-ups, bimbo eruptions and mea culpas extracted by #Me Too are entertaining, but they’re no comparison to the bowls of wrath and the lake of fire. 

Who knows where atavism starts, or where it ends? It’s systemic to the species. I speculate it originated with Cain, Adam’s first son, who murdered his brother, Abel. He was, you know, the de facto progenitor of the human race; and he was a murderer. We live in savage times. 

I witnessed firsthand an atavistic sideshow on an excursion to the Louisiana Angola State Prison rodeo. Yes, the prisoners were the cowboys in a real live rodeo. Obviously the warden utilized his own gulag goading to encourage volunteerism.

We sat packed in a tight phalanx among several thousand spectators, many of whom reflected familial resemblances to the inmate cowboys. Their lifeless smiles and wild, glittering eyes gave them away. Maybe there were too many mug-shot cameras that exposed their atavistic throwbacks. Not their fault…who asks to be born? 

Societies swim in their own atavistic current. They drift along with the memes prevailing at the time.  Look around.  The jungle drumbeat of tribal affinities activates the latent atavistic juices. Meanwhile, unawares the herd is being culled and the crowds separated into the appropriate camp of red, blue or rainbow. 

Today’s tabloids are bloated with deeds of bigshot moguls, control freaks and political hacks.  They’re crazed with hubris and stand at the front of the line on full narcissistic display.  They sow whirlwinds by mixing money, power and perversion without restraint. It’s a visual of atavism at its low-rent apotheosis.   

But they’re not alone. Daily doses of decadence assail our sensitivities. The genes of lust and greed are raging fires, shut up in our very bones and flowing hot in the circuits of our blood.  Men everywhere are running for cover, hiring ‘fixers’ for their follies and proving that atavism is rampart among us.     

Now back to my DNA test. It pays to be cautious about these tests.  A friend discovered he had two children in California he didn’t know about. His wife was more than curious. I was hoping for no such surprise. 

The results of the test were unremarkable: 65% English-Irish, 15% French-German, 15% Northern Europe, a tiny bit Eastern European and some Iberian tossed in.  Harmless enough, except for one small detail. 

At the bottom of the report, almost like a postscript, these words appear: “Of special note, your DNA indicated 79% more of the Neanderthal variant than all of the other tests we have ever performed.”

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Like today’s Royal Family dilemma, when the shock wore off, my family accepted the news. They weren’t all that surprised. It answered a lot of heretofore unanswered questions. 

But thankfully I have no children in California and I no longer drag my knuckles.  All of which goes to prove that Neanderthals are atavistically monogamous and it’s probably the reason the species in now extinct.

  

Bud Hearn

March 12, 2021