There’s a tree down the street from our apartment building
that I always marvel at. It’s a honey locust, which is common enough around here
– they plant it as a shade tree frequently on the East Side of Providence.
But this one – this one! – has huge dangerous-looking thorns
sticking out of its trunk!
Partner pointed it out to me several years ago. “What the
hell is this thing?” he said.
Well, I looked it up. Honey locusts, which are sweet and
gentle as city trees, were originally very nastily thorny. They were bred out
of it, but now and then they remember.
This is called “atavism”: the reversion to an earlier or
more primitive form.
Partner and I did the 23andMe
thing, which told us that we had some Neanderthal DNA (but not very much).
I see, however, that some people on line have lots more than
us.
And, on a daily basis, I see a world full of short stocky
people with pronounced brow ridges.
Atavism.
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