M mario & Paul Burke,
If previous life forms like the powerhouse mitochondria are hitch hiking symbioticly in current lifeforms and genetic data is sometimes passed between different species one might be able to theorize a mutated throw back to be able to occur. I have seen two people in my life that looked exactly and dramaticly like Neanderthals.

That certain life forms only exist in one small area it is reasonable to belive that they arose there and are not merely leftovers from a more ubiquitous past.

The Human Geonome Project is down the road from me. It is a gigantic facilty. It has inspired some short stories of a genre I call scientific poetry:



Deep within the megalithic Human Genome building in Gaithersburg Maryland
Dr. Mendez took a nap
and within his dream,
not a voice
but a consciousness spoke to him,
in the language of soul.
The souls of all living things
all the way back to Pre Cambrian times.

When he awoke
the meaning of his dream
was still swimming before his eyes.
He stared at DNA language for the last 7 years.
Now it all made sense in a way he could not quantify
but he knew it was subjectively true.
Sometimes the simple beauty almost made him cry.

You see, between the clumps
of familiar groups of amino acids
there are sequences we call genes
Between the genes are immense stretches of DNA
that are likened to a desert.
Some even called those regions junk DNA
since they would not correspond to any physical trait
or protein building functions.

Dr. Mendez now knows what those vast genetic deserts contain
and can read them like a book.
Like the voice of God in his ear
he takes dictation from the grand genome.
Fired for missing too many meetings
Dr. Menendez now works from home.
Writing down the common threads of life
he stacks the papers on his shelf.
He learned we were never alone.
From a greater time we are but seedlings
of our former and future self.


Back in Maryland where he worked
whenever his name comes up
you can hear people say:
"he acted strange,
he really seemed wound up."

They may never know
how strange a story
that was ever told
by so strange a man
who does not grow old
because he has the plans.