The Cosmic Serpent

by Jeremy Narby

  Confronted by this kind of complexity, some researchers no longer content themselves with the usual explanation. Robert Wesson writes in his book Beyond natural selection: “No simple theory can cope with the enormous complexity revealed by modern genetics.”16

  Other researchers have pointed out the improbability of the mechanism that is supposed to be the source of variation—namely, the accumulation of errors in the genetic text. It seems obvious that “a message would quickly lose all meaning if its contents changed continuously in an anarchic fashion.”17 How, then, could such a process lead to the prodigies of the natural world, of which we are a part?

  Another fundamental problem contradicts the theory of chance-driven natural selection. According to the theory, species should evolve slowly and gradually, since evolution is caused by the accumulation and selection of random errors in the genetic text. However, the fossil record reveals a completely different scenario. J. Madeleine Nash writes in her review of recent research in paleontology: “Until about 600 million years ago, there were no organisms more complex than bacteria, multicelled algae and single-celled plankton.... Then, 543 million years ago, in the early Cambrian, within the span of no more than 10 million years, creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with the suddenness of apparitions. In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom.... Since 1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia, and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation occurred at virtually the same instant in geological time all around the world.... Now, . . . virtually everyone agrees that the Cambrian started almost exactly 543 million years ago and, even more startling, that all but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 to 10 million years.”18

  Throughout the fossil record, species seem to appear suddenly, fully formed and equipped with all sorts of specialized organs, then remain stable for millions of years. For instance, there is no intermediate form between the terrestrial ancestor of the whale and the first fossils of this marine mammal. Like their current descendants, the latter have nostrils situated atop their heads, a modified respiratory system, new organs like a dorsal fin, and nipples surrounded by a cap to keep out seawater and equipped with a pump for underwater suckling.19 The whale represents the rule, rather than the exception. According to biologist Ernst Mayr, an authority on the matter of evolution, there is “no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty.”20

  A similar problem exists at the cellular level. Microbiologist James Shapiro writes: “In fact, there are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject—evolution—with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses work in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.”21

  In the middle of the 1990s, biologists sequenced the first complete genomes of free-living organisms. So far, the smallest known bacterial genome contains 580,000 DNA letters.22 This is an enormous amount of information, comparable to the contents of a small telephone directory. When one considers that bacteria are the smallest units of life as we know it, it becomes even more difficult to understand how the first bacterium could have taken form spontaneously in a lifeless, chemical soup. How can a small telephone directory of information emerge from random processes?

  The genomes of more complex organisms are even more daunting in size. Baker’s yeast is a unicellular organism that contains 12 million DNA letters; the genome of nematodes, which are rather simple multicellular organisms, contains 100 million DNA letters. Mouse genomes, like human genomes, contain approximately 3 billion DNA letters.

  By mapping, sequencing, and comparing different genomes, biologists have recently found further levels of complexity. Some sequences are highly conserved between species. For example, 400 human genes match very similar genes in yeast. This means these genes have stayed in a nearly identical place and form over hundreds of millions of years of evolution, from a very primitive form of life to a human being.23

  Some genetic sequences, known as “master genes,” control hundreds of other genes like an on/off switch. These master genes also seem to be highly conserved across species. For example, flies and human beings have a very similar gene that controls the development of the eye, though their eyes are very different. Geneticist André Langaney writes that the existence of master genes “points to the insufficiency of the neodarwinian model and to the necessity of introducing into the theory of evolution mechanisms, either known or to be discovered, that contradict this model’s basic principles.”24

  Recent gene mapping has revealed that, in some areas of the DNA text, genes are thirty times more dense than in other areas, and some of the genes appear to clump together in families that work on similar problems. In some cases, gene clumps are highly conserved across species, as in the X chromosome of mice and humans, for example. In both species, the X chromosome is a giant molecule of DNA, some 160 million nucleotides long; it is one of the pair of chromosomes that determine whether an offspring is male or female. The mapping of the X chromosome has shown that genes are bunched together mostly in five gene-rich regions, with lengthy, apparently desert regions of DNA in between, and that mice and humans have much the same set of genes on their X chromosomes even though the two species have followed separate evolutionary paths for 80 million years.25

  Recent work on genetic sequences is starting to reveal much greater complexity than could have been conceived even ten years previous to the data’s emergence. How are scientists going to make sense of the overwhelming complexity of DNA texts? Robert Pollack proposes “that DNA is not merely an informational molecule, but is also a form of text, and that therefore it is best understood by analytical ways of thinking commonly applied to other forms of text, for example, books.”26 This seems to be a sensible suggestion, but it begs the question: How can one analyze a text if one presupposes that no intelligence wrote it?

  Despite these essential contradictions, which I sum up here in a few lines but which could fill entire books, the theory of natural selection remains firmly in place in the minds of most biologists. This is because it is always possible to claim that the appropriate mutations occurred by chance and were selected. But this un-demonstrable proposition is denounced by an increasing number of scientists. Pier Luigi Luisi talks of the “tautology of molecular Darwinism . . . [which] is unable to elicit concepts other than those from which it has been originally constructed.”

  The circularity of the Darwinian theory means that it is not falsifiable and therefore not truly scientific. The “falsifiability criterion” is the cornerstone of twentieth-century scientific method. It was developed by philosopher Karl Popper, who argued that one could never prove a scientific theory to be correct, because only an infinite number of confirming results would constitute definitive proof. Popper proposed instead to test theories in ways that seek to contradict, or falsify, them; the absence of contradictory evidence thereby becomes proof of the theory’s validity. Popper writes: “I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme —a possible framework for testable scientific theories.... It is metaphysical because it is not testable”27 (original italics).

  Biology is currently divided between a majority who consider the theory of natural selection to be true and established as fact and a minority who question it.

  However, the critics of natural selection have yet to come up with a new theory to replace the old one and institutions sustain current orthodoxies by their inertia. A new biological paradigm is still a long way off.

  PRESUPPOSITIONS, POSTULATES, and circular arguments pertain more to faith than t
o science. My approach in this book starts from the idea that it is of utmost importance to respect the faith of others, no matter how strange, whether it is shamans who believe plants communicate or biologists who believe nature is inanimate.

  I do not intend to attack anybody’s faith, but to demarcate the blind spot of the rational and fragmented gaze of contemporary biology and to explain why my hypothesis is condemned in advance to remain in that spot. To sum up: My hypothesis is based on the idea that DNA in particular and nature in general are minded. This contravenes the founding principle of the molecular biology that is the current orthodoxy.

  Chapter 11

  “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?”

  In Rio, the governments of the world signed treaties that recognize the ecological knowledge of indigenous people, as well as the importance of compensating it “equitably.” However, as I think I have shown in this book, the scientific community is not ready to engage in a true dialogue with indigenous people, as biology cannot receive their knowledge owing to several epistemological blocks.

  Paradoxically, this is an advantage for indigenous people, because it gives them time to prepare themselves. If the hypothesis presented in this book is correct, it means that they have not only a precious understanding of specific plants and remedies, but an unsuspected source of biomolecular knowledge, which is financially invaluable and mainly concerns tomorrow’s science.

  I will continue working with the indigenous organizations of the Amazon and will discuss with them the possible consequences of my hypothesis. I will tell them that biology has become an industry that is guided by a thirst for marketable knowledge, rather than by ethical and spiritual considerations.

  It will be up to them to decide which strategy to adopt. Perhaps they will simply try to cash in on their knowledge, by learning about molecular biology and then looking for marketable biological information in the shamanic sphere. After all, the fact that current biology cannot receive indigenous knowledge has not stopped pharmaceutical companies from commercializing parts of it.

  Over the last five hundred years, the Western world has demonstrated that it is in no hurry to compensate the knowledge of indigenous people, even though it has used this knowledge repeatedly. The years that have gone past since the Rio treaties have changed nothing in this regard. Under these circumstances, I can only think of advising indigenous organizations to negotiate a hard line.

  To start with, this would mean increasing controls on the scientists who wish to gain access to their shamanism. In a world governed by money and the race to success, where everything is patentable and marketable (including DNA sequences), it is important to play the game like everybody else and to protect one’s trade secrets.

  However, it does not seem probable that molecular biologists will be able to steal the secrets of ayahuasqueros in the near future. There is more to becoming a Western Amazonian shaman than just drinking ayahuasca. One must follow a long and terrifying apprenticeship based on the repeated ingestion of hallucinogens, prolonged diets, and isolation in the forest to master one’s hallucinations. This does not seem to be within the reach of most Westerners.1 I, for one, would be incapable of it.

  Furthermore, Western culture does not facilitate such an apprenticeship; it considers the main hallucinogenic plants illegal, and most “recreational” users, who disregard the law, fail to practice the required techniques (fasting, abstinence from alcohol and sex, darkness, chanting, etc.). To my mind, a truly hallucinatory session is more like a controlled nightmare than a form of recreation and demands know-how, discipline, and courage.

  THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, my approach has consisted of translating the shamanism of ayahuasqueros to make it understandable to a Western audience. I believe it is in the interest of Amazonia’s indigenous people that their knowledge be understood in Western terms, because the world is currently governed by Western values and institutions. For instance, it was not until Western countries realized that it was in their own interest to protect tropical forests that it became possible to find the funds to demarcate the territories of the indigenous people living there. Prior to that, most territorial claims, formulated in terms of the indigenous people’s own interests, led to nothing.

  My conclusion can be accused of reductionism, as I end up presenting in mainly biological terms practices that simultaneously combine music, cosmology, hallucinations, medicine, botany, and psychology, among others.2 My interpretation, focusing on molecular biology, certainly distorts shamanism’s multidimensionality, but it at least attempts to bring together a number of compartmentalized disciplines, from mythology to neurology through anthropology and botany. I do not mean that shamanism is equivalent to molecular biology, but that for us fragmented Westerners, molecular biology is the most fruitful approach to the holistic reality of shamanism, which has become so unfamiliar to us.

  ELEVEN YEARS AGO, I arrived for the first time as a young anthropologist in the Ashaninca village of Quirishari and quickly struck a deal with its inhabitants. They would allow me to live with them and to study their practices so that I could explain them to the people in my country and become a doctor of anthropology. In exchange I was to teach them an “accounting” course—that is, arithmetic. Their position was clear: An anthropologist should not only study people, but try to be useful to them as well.

  Carlos Perez Shuma, who took me under his wing, often explained my presence to his companions by saying, “He has come to live with us for two years because he wants to tell the people in his country how we work.” These people had always been told by missionaries, colonists, and governmental agronomists that they knew nothing—and that their so-called ignorance even justified the confiscation of their lands. So they were not displeased at the idea of demonstrating their knowledge. This is the license on the basis of which I wrote this book.

  All the Ashaninca I met wanted to participate in the world market, if only to acquire the commodities that make life easier in the rainforest, such as machetes, axes, knives, cooking pots, flashlights, batteries, and kerosene. They also needed money to meet the minimal requirements of “civilization,” namely clothes, school-books, pens and paper, and everyone dreamed of owning a radio or a tape recorder.

  Beyond money and commodities, the indigenous people of the Amazon aspire to survival in a world that has considered them, until recently, as little more than Stone Age savages. Now they all demand the demarcation and titling of their territories, as well as the means to educate their children in their own terms.

  Western institutions seem finally to have understood, at least in principle, the importance of recognizing indigenous territories—though much remains to be done in practice on this count. However, the indigenous claim to bilingual and intercultural education has yet to be heard, even though it would seem to be a prerequisite to the establishment of a truly rational dialogue with these people. After all, the word “rational” comes from the Latin ratio, “calculation.” How can one establish the “equitable” compensation of indigenous knowledge if the majority of indigenous people do not understand the basics of accounting and money management and require training in arithmetic?

  This is not a gratuitous question. Research has shown that Western-style education does not work with Amazonian Indians. Theirs is an oral tradition, where knowledge is mainly acquired through practice in nature. When one shuts young Indians into a schoolroom for six hours a day, nine months a year, for ten years, and teaches them foreign concepts in a European language, they end up reaching, on average, a level of second-grade primary school. This means that most of them barely know how to read and write and do not know how to calculate a percentage.

  The indigenous people themselves are the first to realize what a disadvantage this gives them in a world defined by written words and numbers. Practically speaking, they know that they are often shortchanged when they sell their products on the market. This is why they want bilingual and intercultural education. However, for each indigenous society, speaking
its own language, it is necessary to develop a specific curriculum and to train indigenous instructors capable of teaching it.3 This costs approximately U.S.$200,000 per culture. In the Peruvian Amazon alone, there are fifty-six different cultures, each speaking a different language. For the moment, only ten of these have access to bilingual, intercultural education. Why so few? Because the small number of nongovernmental organizations supporting this initiative have limited means, and the institutions that are large enough to fund education programs for indigenous people seem to be in no hurry to do so. It is true that the results of such an investment can only be measured in generations, rather than in five-year periods.

  AFTER WRITING the original French version of this book, I returned to the Peruvian Amazon and spent a week in Iquitos at a school for bilingual, intercultural education, where young men and women from ten indigenous societies are learning to teach both indigenous and Western knowledge both in their mother tongue and in Spanish. I spent several fascinating days observing from the back of a class, then the students asked whether I would tell them about my work. On my last evening I addressed a roomful of students and told them my hypothesis indicated there was a relationship between the entwined serpents Amazonian shamans see in their visions and the DNA double helix that science discovered in 1953. At the end of the talk, a voice called out from the back: “Are you saying that scientists are catching up with us?”

  I also returned to Quirishari and met with Carlos Perez Shuma for the first time in nine years. He hadn’t changed at all, and even seemed younger. We sat down in a quiet house and began to chat, making up for lost time. He told me about all the things that had occurred in the Pichis Valley during my absence. I listened to him for about an hour, but then could no longer contain myself: “Uncle,” I said, “there is something important I have to tell you. You remember all those things you explained into the tape recorder that I had difficulty understanding? Well, after thinking about it for years, and then studying it, I have just discovered that in scientific terms all the things you told me were true.” I thought he would be pleased and was about to continue when he interrupted. “What took you so long?” he said.