I haven’t been writing much on my blog for a few weeks. I think it is from the feeling of being snowed in and so cold. But! I just found an article on how scientists have extracted some Neanderthal DNA and have grown a Neanderthal “mini brain” in a petri dish. Jesus Christ. I wish I were making this up, but it is a fact. Here is the link to the story: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/world/brain-organoids-neanderthal-dna-scn-trnd/index.html.
The mini brains are called organoids, which are “3D blobs of brain tissue” nurtured in a petri dish. The word “blob” already has me concerned for obvious reasons reaching back into cinematic history. A scientist involved says that these are not “lab-grown Neanderthal brains,” which is what scientists always say when they have, in fact, grown full-size Neanderthal brains in petri dishes. “This is totally different from Jurassic Park,” the scientist continues, which tells me that this is precisely like Jurassic Park.
But here is what really concerns me. A little while ago some other scientists figured out how to recreate the speech from the mummified vocal cords of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian high priest. Here is the story; it is titled “Mummy returns,” as you would expect from an article like this, which sounds like another horror movie to me: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51223828.
The sound of this Egyptian mummy, as replicated by these scientists, is like the bleat of a sheep. It goes, “Eh. Eh.” In other words, it sounds exactly like something you would expect a mummy ghost to emit. “Eh. Eh. I am coming for you!”
The article states that “it is believed to be the first project of its kind to successfully recreate the voice of a dead person through artificial means,” to which I ask, “It is believed to be”? We don’t know for sure? How many other bleating mummy corpses are out there that we have not been informed about? You’re scientists! Tell us!
But follow these two lab results to their natural end, as I have done. All these scientists need to do is get together and wire up the Egyptian vocal cords to the Neanderthal brain and we would have a Neanderthal speaking to us in ancient Egyptian! The mind boggles. Mine does, at least. But maybe I have a mini brain.
What would this Neanderthal say in ancient Egyptian? We would need a translator to make sure we knew for certain, but I am thinking something like, “It is so frickin’ cold in this petri dish! Where are your manners? Get me some clothes! Turn up the heat!” But that is just me. You draw your own conclusions.
Mini Neanderthal brains. Talking mummies. I think we have all been inside too long this winter, what with Covid and other disasters, and this is the result, Neanderthal/mummy ghosts that bleat like sheep.
The mini brain boggles.