6000 Years!

Ever since reading that Physicist C.P. Snow claimed that Historians were always the best pattern-recognisers, as a historian of sorts (I mean, I do have a degree in it.) I've felt obligated to think about patterns. And yes, it's been a lot of fun because I'm isolating ever so many odd little patterns everywhere in history.

Like, what is it about that strange historical pattern of women in Australia losing a single shoe in the midst of big dramatic events?  Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was only the latest of a long line of Cinderellas.  But what is that about? Does it actually mean anything?

But then there's that thing about Americans always voting for the Presidential candidate with the most letters in his name, and Australians always voting for the fellow with the bushiest eyebrows.  (Seriously, look at all the Prime Ministers Australia has ever had and the guys with the skinny eyebrows are all those who weren't voted in by the people.  And always the bushier the eyebrows the more overwhelming the victory. Check it out some time.) (I think if Oz image doctors recognised patterns, they'd stop these ridiculous make-overs that include trimming and shaping politicians' eyebrows.)

And there's that nearly 400 year long pattern of women called Lady Diana Spencer being offered in marriage to a then-current Prince of Wales but someone in the then-current royal family always saying "This gives me a bad feeling. Such a marriage would end badly."  Now THERE'S a pattern that, if recognised in time, would have saved a great deal of grief.

And that odd historical pattern in China about how those Dynasties always went through the exact same cycles but that's a pattern so complex that it would require an entire post of its own.

However, the oddest of all the patterns I've turned up is how the figure of 6000 years keeps turning up in the study of genetic diseases. Have you noticed that?

If you haven't, let me run through those for you:

First, there was that HK-Singapore study about "Guangdong Cancer" I've already talked about in here. Everyone thought it was caused by eating salted fish but it turned out to be a mutated gene that happened to a man who lived somewhere in Guangdong 6000 years ago.

Next came the study of breast cancer which turned out to be at least 40 different diseases, all entirely different from each other and all caused by different mutated genes. And then the researchers went looking into only one of these different cancers and it turned out that everyone who had it descended from the same woman who lived in Sweden 6000 years ago.

And that Chinese Black-Spot Lung Cancer which turned out that everyone who had it descended from the same man who lived in China 6000 years ago.

And that weird cell mutation that Elton John shares with those Ugandan truck-stop prostitutes and genetic studies showed they all descended from the same woman who lived in Africa 6000 years ago.

(Yes, Elton John freaked out when he found out about this and paid a lot of money to find out how it was possible, and it turned out that he has a Roman legionnaire from North Africa who entered his family tree 2000 years ago, an African soldier sent in as part of the two hastily-put-together new Roman Legions intended to quell the Boudiccan Uprising.)

And then there's my husband Keith and myself being horrified to discover we both descended from the same man whose genes mutated enough to distinguish him as a particular Ancestral Father who lived god-only-knows-where 6000 years ago.

There are lots of other cases I could give you, but I think I've said enough to convince you that something MUST have happened 6000 years ago that caused genes to mutate right across the globe.

But what causes genes to mutate?  The only thing I can think of is radiation. But we're talking 6000 years ago. So what could have caused a blast of radiation right across the planet?

I was up all last night unable to sleep for thinking of this, and the only thing I could come up with was ... well, solar flares. Yup, that's what I think could have caused this.

We've just had a giant solar flare hit earth (here) and lots of scientists and politicians were saying that it would only disrupt all the various electrical systems on the planet, but speaking as a Pattern-Recognising Historian, I think we need to begin thinking that perhaps these radioactive solar flares also cause a great deal more.

So ... am I making C.P. Snow proud?