The Lost Forest Read online

  Chapter 8

  STRASBOURG

  The conference was held at the Palais des Expositions in Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament, in the east of France facing Germany on the opposite side of the Rhine. Ennis was conveniently lodged in the Strasbourg Hilton just a short walk across the park from the conference centre. He had checked in for the second day of the conference but before confronting the esoteric presentations he decided a stroll in the historic city centre would do him well.

  The cold December fog eerily draped the historic cathedral that rose out of the gaily decorated Marché de Noel, the spire disappearing into a strange phosphorescent shroud. He wandered through the crowd inspecting the rows of small wooden kiosks brightly illuminated with their coloured lights reflecting on the displays of Christmas decorations and goods.

  Amongst the crowd of well wrapped up Christmas shoppers he spied Paul Cathary joking with a vendor at one of the kiosks, he was holding a small glass lamp in the form of a Christmas tree that had attracted his attention. Ennis approached, standing a few paces behind him and out of his angle of view; for once it was he who would surprise him ducking out of a conference. Paul was a friend of Kate; she had introduced him at to Ennis at a conference in Paris on dating methods for antique ceramics. It was his wife’s speciality, as for Paul he was head of genetic research at Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology in Paris.

  Ennis had always enjoyed the company of the bad boys of the class and Paul, in spite of his academic achievements, was just that, always agitated, looking for something to amuse him, he was one of the most extrovert persons Ennis had ever met, unable to exist without being surrounded by noisy talkative friends and who loved the kind of jocular exchange that he was engaged in at that very moment with total strangers.

  Cathary was internationally renowned for his research in the field of human evolution. He had spent his life searching for a hidden message in the genes of man and his ancestors, a subject of little other than general interest to Ennis until his discovery in Sarawak.

  ‘So this is where French research finds the answers?’

  Paul turned around and presented the sparkling lamp as though Ennis had been at his side all of the time.

  ‘What do you think? Jolie non!’

  ‘How are you Paul? Dodging off the conference!’

  ‘Ca me fais chier! It’s more interesting here.’

  ‘Let’s go and get a glass of Gluh Wine, look there’s a bar over there.’

  They paid for two glasses of hot spiced wine from an open air bar and watched the Christmas crowd milling amongst the rows of small kiosks.

  ‘So John, how’s Indonesia,’ he said knowingly, ‘you’ve really put the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘Don’t forget it’s extremely confidential,’ said Ennis in a worried tone.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, don’t forget it was us who dug out the DNA from your specimen, remember I’m also a government employee - bound by secrecy!’ he said laughing at Ennis’s discomfort.

  ‘I’m just back from Indonesia with Lundy, we’re putting together a team to carry out the archaeological exploration work on the site.’

  ‘Great, you can always come to me directly if you want any help,’ he said slipping his arm around his friends shoulder as if to console him.

  ‘I will, if we could learn more from the DNA then it would be fantastic. Is that possible?’

  ‘Well if our analysis is exact and the bones are really only three thousand years old it could be possible.’

  ‘That’s what the Carbon 14 tests say.’

  They drank their wine and then took a taxi to the conference.

  ‘I’ve read in the programme that you’re giving a paper on human genetics in evolution.’

  ‘That’s right, are you familiar with the subject.’

  ‘No, you know my business is antiques, the only scientific things I know a little about are dating methods…for inorganics!’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for, to learn a little more. I’m on my way to Zurich and Lundy had told me about the conference, he sent me the programme, that’s when I saw your name. If you’ve got a little time you can tell me something about genetics and evolution.’

  ‘Sure, it’s a long winded affair but I’ll give you some general background stuff.’

  At the Palais des Expositions the conference delegates were returning to the auditorium. The atmosphere was serious, bearded men holding sheaves of papers, talking in low voices, moving slowly.

  ‘Let’s sit over there,’ said Paul pointing to the coffee shop.

  ‘So tell me something about genetics then.’

  ‘Well, as you probably know there’s a lot of scientific discussion on the forces driving mutation, what we know in simple terms is that nature provides survival opportunities to life in response to a specific need or even the absence of that need.’

  ‘The survival of the fittest!’

  ‘If you like, anyway Darwin and all evolutionists based their theories on the idea that haphazard mutations are the cause of the changes in species. That means random mutations are propitious at a given moment for the survival of a species, allowing it to procreate and perpetuate its genes and in doing so carrying the mutation onto the next generation. So in two million years, that’s about one hundred thousand generations, genes have been modified randomly to transform Lucy into men like us.’

  ‘So in simple terms does that mean that animals or their genes can take into account changes in their habitat?’

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking, when this occurs in populations that are totally isolated in space and time. There’s the classical case that Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands.’

  ‘Bird’s beaks and all that.’

  ‘Yes, another similar example can be seen in the need to adapt teeth from eating a diet of soft leaves to a diet of hard leaves as climate changes and new types of vegetation moves in. Then the modification of the genes in one individual could survive in small isolated populations of say twenty or thirty individuals, that is if the modification is favourable to survival in new conditions.’

  ‘So that means evolutionary changes are the result of changes in the habitat due to variations in the climate or for example competition in a niche. So what happens if the habitat remains unchanged?’

  ‘That’s a good question, over the almost two million years in the existence of Homo erectus there were few changes, what I mean are significant changes, on the other hand there were many swings in the climate. But even in stable conditions random mutations still occur, these are errors in the transmission of genes, which we know occur at a constant rate. A few of those mutations that were favourable would have been retained, as I said in small isolated population for example.’

  ‘And the bad ones?’

  ‘They’re rejected altogether as well as most of the favourable ones, it’s like a lottery, there’s only a few winners!’

  ‘If I get it right then changes particular to one individual could be transmitted to a family or a group providing them with a chance to survive changes in their habitat.’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘So you could say that we evolved in response to slow changes in our habitat.’

  ‘Yes, as I mentioned the last two million years represents about one hundred thousand generations, in this period of time perhaps a total of one billion individuals had lived, that gives considerable possibilities for the survival of random mutations.’

  ‘So what exactly is the mechanism of this process?’

  ‘That’s where DNA comes in, deoxyribonucleic acid, it’s the code that programmes every living organism on this earth. Every single cell in our body contains a string of DNA. Imagine this string about one metre long coiled into a ball of about five microns in diameter in the nucleus of our cells. A double strand that forms the famous double helix.’

  ‘And what’s DNA made of?’

  ‘Very simple,
carbon compounds that form proteins.’

  ‘Proteins, like in cornflakes’ said Ennis commented dryly.

  Paul ignored the pleasantry; genetics was the only thing he took seriously in life.

  ‘This code controls the growth and multiplication of every cell, from the conception to the adult form of every single living creature during its whole existence. It’s been transmitted from generation to generation ever since life appeared on our planet, mutating through evolution from single cells to complex animals, such as ourselves. Some of us have difficulty in believing we descended from some kind of prehistoric ape, well try this on for size, each and every one of us is the descendant of some primeval form of life, a blob that existed in the slime formed at the dawn of time. Stop for a moment! Try to imagine that!’

  Ennis looked blank for an instant. ‘Can DNA be extracted from very old fossils?’

  ‘Yes, we are working on that at the moment. The oldest DNA ever found comes from Siberia, fragments from plants, fungi, and animals in 350,000-year-old permafrost soil cores.

  ‘Personally I think that under very special circumstances it might be able to get small fragments of DNA in human and animal bones that are up to a million years old. This could be used to solve the family connections of our extinct relatives, something that paleoanthropologists are always fighting about. However, there is not much hope for the fossils found in Java, as DNA degrades rapidly in hot climates.

  ‘We’ve been working on fossilized human dejections, that’s shit to you John,” they both laughed, “seriously if you could find some erectus faeces on your site that might provide some answers about their language capacity. As a matter of fact some of us hope use fossil coprolites from Israel.’

  ‘Israel?’

  ‘Yes, in the caves of Mount Carmel near Haifa in Israel where Neanderthal fossils were found. Certain genes could be significant for speech development and we think this was present in men about 50,000 years ago.’

  ‘So DNA from Israel might prove whether Neanderthals could speak?’

  ‘Might prove!’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Anyway, DNA code is transmitted to our children and to all future generations and will continue to be as long as man continues and evolves into some future being.’

  ‘If we don’t destroy ourselves in the meantime.’

  The next afternoon they flew back to Paris together. Paulo insisted on Ennis joining him together with Kate for diner at his place, a fashionably converted loft near the Bastille. The evening took off in typical Paulo style, dancing to ‘Saturday Night’ played by a Swedish jazz band, a bottle of Mumm’s in one hand and a half filled champagne glass in the other in front of the log fire. Anne-Marie slide a plate of foie gras onto the table with freshly toasted slices of baguette as an appetiser.

  It was going to be a noisy evening with a lot to drink and eat. Ennis ran his index over the text of a book in Braille which Paulo had given him as a small gift, trying to figure out if there was a message behind his choice of present.

  His daughter Adeline arrived with her boyfriend Alexis, followed by a large dog, some kind of a Labrador.

  ‘Who does it belong to?’ shouted Paul from the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t know, it followed us in. Think it’s a stray.’

  ‘Probably wants something to eat, sling it the bone from the roast.’

  They continued to dance and drink emptying at an astonishing speed newly arrived bottles of Mumm’s, until Ennis noticed Paul sweeping back his hair with one hand, a sure sign he was tired. Ennis followed him to the bathroom where he threw a couple of tablets of some kind of Alka-Seltzer into a glass to water.

  ‘It’s good for triglycerides, too much alcohol. Want a couple? Help yourself.’

  Paul looked in the mirror, studying the damage.

  ‘I’ve drunk too much, I think I’ll take a walk on the terrace.’

  Ennis made his way out through the French windows on to the terrace garden, it was bitingly cold. He looked through the window into the kitchen. The stray had just wolfed down the cat’s food and was about to be ejected onto the terrace.

  Ennis returned to the bar and took a refill of Champagne, Paul had disappeared. Then looking out the window he saw him looking a little sheepish. He was wiping a moist chin. Probably thrown up. Behind him the stray appeared wagging his tail and looking pleased with itself after having licked up the Paul’s warm vomit, as Ennis pondered the question of competitive survival.