Quest for the Humanzee

The Anunnaki Connection
 

Zecharia Sitchin often says that modern science is simply catching up with ancient knowledge.  His research looks at the possibility that humanity is essentially a genetically-modified ape.  He derived this insight from a literal reading of ancient texts, pursuing the idea that we are physically half-god, half-ape.  According to Sitchin, this creation came about because technologically advanced beings visited our world millions of years ago and created a race of slave-workers from the animal stock available on the planet (1). 

To do this they fused together some of their own advanced DNA with that of Earthly apes, creating frightening chimeras.  Eventually, after many grotesque mistakes, they created a relatively useful being that was physically robust and adaptable, but also intelligent.  In other words, us!

Now, you can readily dismiss this as imaginative speculation.  You could even attempt to psycho-analyse Sitchin and see his unusual vision of human development as a personal attempt to get to grips with the warped thinking of the Nazis who conducted such evil experiments upon European Jews during the Second World War.  More likely, you might simply wonder whether such ideas are just profoundly misguided, even blasphemous. 

Zecharia Sitchin

However, I can see merit in some of the ideas of Zecharia Sitchin.  My personal quest to understand the nature of the tenth planet is testament to that.  Although I am no expert in the realm of genetic research it seems clear to me that modern science is indeed moving in the direction that Sitchin envisaged some 30 years ago.  It should give pause for thought for anyone who dismisses his theories entirely out of hand.

The reason I can say that is the remarkable direction taken by some of the scientists conducting stem cell research.  Now, I should quickly point out that I have no axe to grind here.  I am essentially neutral on the subject's political and moral repercussions.  I can see merit in arguments for this kind of research because of the potential benefits to the many people suffering debilitating diseases.  There's also great potential for organ tissue transplantation.  At the same time, I can also understand the moral viewpoints of objectors to this kind of research who dislike the use of human embryos.  It's a highly contested moral topic, reflecting the dilemmas Sitchin attested for the 'Anunnaki' of old.

When the UK Parliament debated these issues, as they moved towards creating the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990, many MPs expressed concern with work involving the mixing of human stem cells with specific animal cells from mice or hamsters (2).  The latter cells help the human stem cells to develop in a particular direction towards specific types of cell tissue.  These 2-cell stems would effectively be 'chimeras' of human/animal hybrids, albeit at a minimalist level.  These 'humsters' or 'mansters' would never be allowed to get beyond the 2-cell stage MPs were told. But research like this is not confined to the UK, and there is now talk about the creation of these kinds of hybrid embryos at a more advanced level (see 2021 update below).

There is serious discussion about the creation of embryos of mice that that have human brain cells, perhaps as much as 1%.  Now bear in mind that there is actually very little genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees.  The 3% of the DNA that is different in these species has a profound effect on their physical and mental characteristics.  Scientists wonder whether legitimate research may soon take place mixing stem cells of humans with other primates. This brings forward the notion of the creation of a chimera known as a "humanzee".

The idea of a human/chimpanzee hybrid may not be that fanciful.  Science has recently determined just how closely we are related:

"...we are so closely related that chimps should not only be part of the same taxonomic family, but also the same genus.  The new study [by a team led by Morris Goodman of Wayne State University in Detroit (3)] found that 99.4 percent of the most critical DNA sites are identical in the corresponding human and chimp genes. With that close a relationship, the two living chimp species belong in the genus Homo..." (4)

Professor Steve Jones, a well-regarded British geneticist, thinks that this is a very real possibility, but questions why anyone would actually want to create such an entity (5).  Other more noisy sceptics deplore the very idea, using it to justify withering attacks on genetic research in general. 

This particular argument will run and run.  But I am struck by how similar this issue is to that presented by Zecharia Sitchin back in 1976.  Are we simply re-creating the experiments that the Anunnaki set about fulfilling hundreds of thousands of years ago?  Might we one day also create a slave-race of 'humanzees' to tend our gardens or descend with pick-axes into our mines? 

Will we treat a new species any better than we were treated by our 'gods'?  After all, according to Sitchin, they grew concerned by our proliferation and our unbridled aggression.  They left us to our fate when the Flood came, surprised by the resourcefulness that allowed certain humans to escape extinction.  At that point, the Anunnaki abandoned Earth and left us to it.  The rest is quite literally history. 

2021 Update

During the last century or so, there have been many rumours of breakthroughs in this fringe area of scientific research.  Rumours of hybrid chimp/humans go back as far as the 1920s (6).  Based on hearsay, even within quite eminent circles, they seem to have little basis in fact but culminated in popular mythologies about human/chimpanzee hybrids. 

Ilya Ivanovich

However, a Soviet scientist named Ilya Ivanov did make serious a attempt to cross-breed humans and chimps in the 1920s and 30s, but these ethically highly questionable experiments were ultimately unsuccessful (7).  In the 1960s, Chinese attempts to impregnate chimpanzees with human sperm were frustrated by the Cultural Revolution (8).    That didn't entirely stop this research effort, with reports emerging from the Chinese Academy of Sciences of a further attempt to impregnate an ape with human sperm, this time in 1981 (9).

Although apes and humans share a lot of DNA -  "95 percent of their DNA sequence and 99 percent of coding DNA sequence" (8) - these kinds of crude attempts at genetic hybridisation seem destined to fail.  The divergence of human and chimp lineages over the last few million years seems to have rendered cross-fertilization problematic - although there is startling evidence that interbreeding did occur long after the split.

"Analysis of human and animal genes in 2006 provides strong evidence that after humans had clearly diverged from apes, interspecies mating nonetheless occurred regularly enough to change certain genes in the new gene pool: "A new comparison of the human and chimp genomes suggests that after the two lineages separated, they may have begun interbreeding... A principal finding is that the X chromosomes of humans and chimps appear to have diverged about 1.2 million years more recently than the other chromosomes."" (10)

More recently, an international team of scientists working in China confirmed the 'creation' of the first human-monkey hybrid in 2019, with a view towards developing the science of hybrid organs suitable for transplantation:

"The team, made up of members of the Salk Institute in the United States and the Murcia Catholic University (UCAM) in Spain, genetically modified monkey embryos to deactivate genes that are essential to the formation of organs. The scientists then injected human stem cells, which are capable of creating any type of tissue, into the embryo. The product of this work is a monkey with human cells that has not been born, because researchers stopped the process." (11)