The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7161 p240
18 August 2001

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Man the destroyer?
Archaeobureaucracy
Confusing clones

Man the destroyer?

There is a research article in Science for 8 June by a group of earth scientists from Australia and the United States examining the massive extinction of large Australian land mammals, reptiles and birds during the late Quaternary period. At that time all of these animals weighing more than 100kg, and six of the seven genera with body mass of 45–100kg disappeared completely.

Dating of buried remains from 28 sites for the megafauna indicates continent-wide extinction about 46,400 years ago. Altogether, 23 of the 24 genera of Australian giant land mammals went into oblivion, and the timing and cause of this catastrophe have occupied researchers for the past century or more.

In Nature for 14 June Jared Diamond of Los Angeles has discussed this strange affair, and points out that a similar phenomenon occurred about the same time in the Americas. The Australian fauna included giant marsupials, including giant kangaroos and others resembling rhinoceros and leopard, and large reptiles such as carnivorous lizards and land-going crocodiles. The only surviving megafauna genus was the Macropus kangaroos.

The question is, was the catastrophe triggered by the arrival of human invaders, or by changing climate? Reliable dates are lacking since the event took place just beyond the practical limit for radiocarbon dating, about 40,000 years. Two techniques reaching further back, optical luminescence dating of sediment grains round bones or human artefacts and thorium-uranium dating of sediments enclosing these, have yielded 56,000±4,000 years as the date of human arrival on the scene.

Because extinction occurred within a short time over the range of latitudes, longitudes, habitats, climate zones and megafaunal species in Australia, there must have been one ultimate cause for them. Since at the time there was a phase of benign moist climate, climatic deterioration is unlikely to have been responsible. But habitat destruction and human hunting may have combined to extinguish the animals when man arrived on the scene with his predatory habits. And similarly, humans reached the Americas long before the ice age ended or the fauna become extinct.

So the evidence points to Homo destructor as the villain of the piece.

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Archaeobureaucracy

A development that is causing considerable concern among those interested in pursuing field archaeology but not practising as a professional has been described in the June issue of Current Archaeology. It relates to the European Convention on the Protection of Archaeological Heritage, a topic first discussed in 1969 and updated in Valetta in 1992, without any response on the part of the United Kingdom government. However, in March 2001, without warning of any kind, the UK added its signature to those of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, the Vatican and Yugoslavia.

Of course, the protection of archaeological treasures is beyond doubt a laudable intention, especially when, as today, illegal profiteering in antiquities is widespread and parts of the world’s heritage are frequently wrecked by vandals. But the approach now taken is, typically, a concept of the grey-suited occupants of ministerial offices. Article 3 of the Convention calls for the authorisation and supervision of every excavation in order to prevent illicit digging and removal of parts of the national heritage, to ensure that prospecting is done scientifically with non-destructive investigational techniques, and by qualified and authorised persons.

On the face of it, such provisions appear to be logical and forward-looking, but carry the taint of control through deliberations behind closed doors by officials and quangos. This feature of our modern society is not to be encouraged. Hitherto, archaeological investigations in Britain have depended largely on the efforts of local societies of amateurs and vacational fieldwork done under the aegis of university extramural departments. Without such work our heritage would have been sadly neglected. Amateurs have almost invariably been responsible, enthusiastic, innovative and open to public gaze. They have rightly denounced irresponsible treasure hunters with metal detectors, and illegal methods of disposing of the loot.

Dedicated investigators have also worked hard to protect ancient sites from the onslaught of deep ploughing, gravel or clay extraction, erosion of wetlands and coasts, industrial development and new road construction. These menaces are neatly sidestepped in the Valetta Convention, which has no intention of restricting profitable exploitation by officially authorised corporations.

Instead of invoking the intervention of the little anonymous men in grey suits, people interested in archaeology believe that we should continue to look to those individuals who, without any ambition to undertake their study as a career, are dedicated to undertaking examinations and winning diplomas from their local university to witness to their competence.

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Confusing clones

In the 5 July issue of Nature, Dr Lee Silver of Princeton University has commented on the current misuse and misapplication of the word “clone”, a term which we now hear used on all sides by people who have little idea what they are talking about. According to my dictionary, clone is defined as: “A group of cells descended from a single cell by asexual reproduction, and therefore genetically identical with each other and with the parent cell.” And its origin is attributed to Herbert J. Webber, who wrote in Science in 1903 describing “groups of plants that are propagated by the use of any form of vegetative parts.” You will observe from this that the word was originally within the province of plant breeders.

The concept became popular not only among botanists, but with biologists dealing with cell cultures of all kinds, plant or animal. Silver remarks: “A clone of animal siblings can form naturally on occasion, as a result of asexual reproduction from a single progenitor embryo. However, in contrast to plants, whole animals cannot be grown directly from cells that have begun to differentiate into a specialised form.” Once loosed on the world, the word became transferred from a simple asexual product to a sophisticated feat of biological engineering by scientists who were bent on controlling nature. It even became extended to inanimate objects such as computers and to adult people. Nevertheless, no technology exists for making copies of people, although experiment might result in an unique and unpredictable child sharing someone else’s DNA sequence but nothing more.

And Silver concludes: “The scientific community has lost control over Webber’s pleasant-sounding little word. Cloning has a popular connotation that is impossible to dislodge.” Accordingly, public debate over cloning has no meaning, since the terms employed are undefined. And the commentator concludes that science and scientists would do better to choose other words than cloning to explain to the unenlightened any advances made in developmental biotechnology.

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