The Birds and The Bees - Part 1

An allusion to parthenogenetic "virgin" birth

In this discourse, I will attempt to analyse the concept of “virgin birth” through the folklore, mythology, archeology and biology of whether parthenogenesis was actually possible in our distant past, for even today, its legends persist in the divine birth of Jesus Christ. The Virgin Mother Mary was also parthenogenetically conceived by her mother Anne, as the Catholic Church maintains that Mary was immaculately conceived to be a “pure vessel” for the purpose of incarnating the Son of God, here on earth.

In order to trace this mystery, I will resort to symbolism - the metaphoric clues hidden in ancient language, art, mythology and archeology. However, in this first part, I will examine the biological potentiality of parthenogenesis. Then, in the subsequent Part 2 move into the decode of the iconography which alludes to the occurence of parthenogenesis in antiquity.

But first, let’s talk biology…..

We are abound with creation myths, for as far back as we can recall, our ancestors invented stories to explain existence. In today’s world, the predominant religions have an androcentric perspective, whereby a male divinity created mankind in “his image”, with man, of course, preceding the woman, as epitomized in the most iconic tale set in the Garden of Eden. However, biology tells us that life on our planet began as single cell organisms who became multicellular through various processes such as mutation and cell division. Parthenogenesis from the Greek “parthenos” for “virgin”, is defined as a form of asexual reproduction, i.e. the self fertilisation of an egg into an embryo either through mitosis (identical clone of the mother) or meiosis (basically a half clone of the mother due to a halving of the DNA replication). In layman's term, resulting in a virgin birth, whereby there is absolutely no male contribution genetically or sexually. This reminds me of the part in Genesis where God creates man in “his image”, sounds a bit like a parthenogenetic clone, except man does not have a womb.

There are numerous instances in which parthenogenesis occurs in nature, in both plants and animals. Zoologically, parthenogenesis is quite common in invertebrates like ants, bees and scorpions, but more recently, scientists have began to discover its occurrence in vertebrates - reptiles, amphibians and fish; namely lizards, crocodiles, snakes, birds (doves, condors, vultures) and sharks. Remember, it’s only in the last few decades that we’ve had advances in genomics and bioinformatics, that scientists are now discovering that parthenogenesis isn’t as rare as first thought. Who knows what the next 50 years of molecular genetics could uncover, but it remains true, that if we aren’t looking for something, then we won’t find it, unless by chance, a happy accident in the lab or fieldwork, which is often the case with many scientific breakthroughs.

I often can’t help but wonder if our primordial ancestors knew about these animals’ parthenogenetic abilities. Immediately, my mind takes me to the Neolithic site of Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) with its T shaped megaliths featuring snakes, scorpions cranes, vultures and aurochs (the now extinct, wild bovine ancestor of the modern domestic cattle). Could these animal totems be alluding to parthenogenetic creation or is my imagination getting the better of me?

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Terracotta group of two seated women, perhaps Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Made at Myrina, north-west Asia-Minor, circa 180 BCE. Said to be from Asia-Minor. (The British Museum, London)

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Double X marks the spot….

Back to the biology! For millennia, the male biased medical and scientific communities perceived the woman’s body as abnormal because she menstruated and had a womb. In fact it was Aristotle who famously characterised a female as a “mutilated male”. How rude!! Yet it is the sex chromosomes X and Y that genetically differentiate between women and men. Women have 23 homologous chromosomal pairs consisting of 22 autosomes and the XX sex chromosome. In men though, they have 22 homologous chromosomal pairs (autosomes) and the XY sex chromosome. The Y chromosome is a third the length of the X chromosome, so while the X contains more than 1000 protein coding genes, the Y chromosome just has about 100 protein coding genes. Talk about short-changed! It is theorised that the Y chromosome developed from an X-like ancestor, i.e. arising from a pair of identical autosomes (XX). I’m no biologist but this sounds to me that somewhere along our evolution, woman was the first human being, who cloned herself a daughter parthenogenetically until one day a mutation occurred resulting in the formation of the Y chromosome and viola! we have the first male human created. The Y chromosome is essentially a degeneration of the X chromosome and some scientists hypothesise this may explain why women live longer than men. Other differentiating factors to consider in mortality, is that females having higher levels of estrogen and progesterone than males and as we’ve discovered in my previous post, that through the blood magic of menstruation, our body is naturally re-calibrating itself. Aboveall, women also have double copies of every gene and double the X’s, which contain gene segments that influence our immune system.

It appears to me that science is finally catching up to the primeval tradition of an “All Mother”, “Great Mother Goddess” and “Creatrix”, which by my reckoning was overturned to male creator gods about 4000-5000 years ago. Talk about Mommy issues!

Science still defends the notion that parthenogenesis in mammals cannot occur and has not occurred, at least not naturally. As recent as 2004, Japanese scientists at the Tokyo University of Agriculture parthenogenetically created a mouse in the lab, by chemically coaxing an immature egg cell, with no male genetic input, to effectively produce a female mouse, which they named Kaguya after folkloric tale of the miraculous birth of Kaguya-hime (the shining princess), who was discovered as a baby inside a glowing bamboo stalk.

Film still image of animated movie by Director Takahata Isao, in the retelling of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Japan 2013.

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As Donna Haraway has written, "Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are central actors in high-tech myth systems structuring our imaginations of personal and social possibility" (1990, p. 211). When scientists describe the paternal genome as necessary and mammalian parthenogenesis as impossible, the myth of Adam and Eve—an ideal nuclear family composed of one heterosexual male father and one heterosexual female mother with their biological children—is maintained and naturalized. When scientists describe eggs as sperm-like or mimicking a paternal contribution, this naturalizes the idea that two-mother families are in fact impossible because one woman must act as the man or father.

The Case of a Human Chimera….

Parthenogenesis rarely produces a male offspring as it is essentially the self cloning of the mother, which may account for the twin/ double goddess motif in classical times like mother-daughter Demeter and Persephone/Kora. However, I did uncover an article in the New Scientist journal dated back to 1995 about the discovery by Professor David Bonthron at the University of Edinburgh, in which he came across a case of a healthy 3 year old boy referred to as “FD”, who should have had a Y chromosome for “maleness” but his cells contained two X’s. Even more puzzling was when they uncovered that the boy’s skin was genetically different from his blood which led them to an even more startling revelation that both his X chromosomes were solely derived from his mother. His other 22 chromosome pairs in his blood were also identical to his mother.

How did the scientists explain this phenomena?

They believed FD’s development started when an unfertilised egg self-activated and began to divide. A sperm cell then fertilised one of the cells and the mixture of cells began to develop a normal embryo. The fusion with a sperm must have occurred very early on because self-activated eggs quickly lose the ability to be fertilised.

extracted from NEW SCIENTIST, 7 October 1995 by Philip Cohen

Could we class FD’s birth as parthenogenetic? And if so, how many other times could this have occurred in the past? And will this happen again in the future? We’ve already seen what’s possible in the lab in the case of Kaguya, that through the right conditions, in this case chemical and sometimes electrical stimulation, can trigger the self fertilisation of an egg.

Mitochondrial DNA abbreviated to MtDNA floods my imagination of a sacred mountain storing the DNA, but as I’ve covered in previous posts, MtDNA is very revealing, in how it is only the mother’s mitochondrial DNA that is passed onto offspring, thereby potentially allowing for scientists to trace back to a “Mitochondrial Eve” through the matrilineal line. This surprisingly parallels with many ancient cultures’ traditions of the royal lineage through the matrilineage - we see this in the mariages to the mother, sister or even daughters of the Mesopotamian kings and Egyptian Pharaohs as well as echoed in myths such as Rhea marrying her brother Cronus and later Zeus marrying his sister Hera.

Now that the biology is out of the way, next we begin to explore the cultic mysteries of the priestesshoods of the ancient world that allude to “divine births” and Virgin Mother Goddesses. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I will unpack the “birds and the bees’ in uncovering some of the key iconography of parthenogenetic birth practices and how I postulate this may have its roots in the oldest spiritual practice - shamanism.

Thanks again if you’ve made it through the boring science bits, I promise the next installment is the juiciest!

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Bibliographical References

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New Scientist - The Boy whose blood has no father

Professor David Bonthron - A Human Parthenogenetic Chimera

The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece by Marguerite Rigoglioso

Brave New World Just got Real

A Mouse with Two Mothers

Redefining "Virgin Birth"After Kaguya: Mammalian Parthenogenesis in Experimental Biology, 2004-2014