The genetics of the Trojan War: on sex, free will and DNA

In the coming year I am giving a course of 22 lectures on genetics in the central region. Perhaps it would be better to say that the organizers requested a course on genetics. The product, I hope, contains much more than that. Here is the first lecture, in its written version, intended to be used as a 'teaser' and to open and present the course. I wish you complete enjoyment from reading!

Jealousy of writers - multiplies wisdom, so said the Sages. But what does misogyny bring? In the case of the Greeks, it resulted in the Trojan War and the death of countless people. And it all started with the jealousy of three women, professional Greek goddesses: Aphrodite, the goddess of love, Athena, the goddess of war and Hera, the queen of the gods.

Those three, who were not friends even on their usual days, quarreled over a golden apple dedicated to 'the best of them all'. This was a recipe for trouble. The three goddesses jumped at the apple as one and refused to give it up. Each of them was sure that she was the most beautiful of them all, but since they were equal to each other in their powers, none of them could dislodge him from the hands of the others. The solution was simple: they went to Zeus, the king of the gods, holding the apple firmly, each on a different side, and not daring to leave it for a moment. They placed the apple at the feet of the ruler of Mount Olympus, and asked him to decide which of them was the most beautiful.

Zeus was in trouble, to say the least. Hera, after all, was his wife. Athena was his daughter, and Aphrodite - his sister. And they all stand there and wait for an answer. Aphrodite makes eyes at him, Athena is nice and Hera examines him with the eyes of a hawk, and he knows that no matter what he says, she will interpret it either as "you're fat", or as "I'll give you the apple, but you're still fat." In short, he is in a deadly trap, and as gods of all cultures do, he chooses to roll this explosive apple into the mouth of a mortal, Prince Peris of Troy.
Ferris is none too wise, and agrees to judge between the three goddesses. They appear before him naked as on the day of their creation and let him glimpse as much as he wants. But he can't come to a decision, and here each of them starts trying to bribe him. Hera offers him to rule the whole world - or at least all of Asia, which was the world for the ancient Greeks. Athena offers him wisdom and supreme combat talent, a type of Ehud Barak... no. At this point, Paris rubs his hands together with pleasure, preparing himself for Aphrodite's proposal, which she was not shy about coming. If Paris chooses the goddess of love, then she will guarantee him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.

Take a moment for yourself. Take a few moments, and think. If you were standing in Paris's place, and the goddesses were vigilantly waiting for the exit of your mouth, or your mouth - what would be the answer? Would you choose to be the president of the United States? Or maybe in the ability to conquer any country and serve as its undisputed dictator? Or would you choose to marry the most beautiful among women, or the handsome among men who brings flowers every Friday and takes out the trash without being asked?

I assume that you have already come to a decision, and that it was not too difficult. Women are wonderful, and so (according to what my wife tells me) are men too. But if I am already the ruler of the world, I can choose for myself any woman I want. And with the sex appeal of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi you can't compete. In short, the first two propositions also contain Aphrodite's proposition. You have to be really serious to ignore them, and agree to take only the most beautiful of women.

And of course that's what Paris did.
I don't know what was going through his mind. Perhaps the only explanation is his young age - somewhere around fifteen or sixteen. At this age the hormones do the thinking for you, and most of the brain mass is anatomically located a little below the lower abdomen. Or maybe he realized that if he refused Aphrodite's offer, she would already see to it that he would never find love. If you look at the affair in this way, then the choice actually seems natural and even obvious to us. Yes, he gave up the world. No, he won't be the next great War Minister. But he will get his wife, and that's it. Natural, clear and obvious.

really?
Basically, Ferris was willing to give up the kingdom of the world for… the urge to mate. And he is not the only one. All history is lined with similar cases, in which great and great people sacrifice their careers for the sake of their loved ones. And for thousands of years, women were willing to give up any chance of an independent life out of the desire to preserve the family unit. Why? What makes us want the opposite sex so much?

Some of you will say, of course, that this is a feature that distinguishes the human race: the capacity for love. But this is not about love.

In fact, love is a relatively new concept that was only invented around the Middle Ages. Until then we got along great even without knowing what love was. We just wanted sex. So the question changes: Why the hell do we want to have sex so much?

If we look at the rest of the natural world, we will find that the desire to have sex and bring offspring into the world exists in almost all living beings. Is it because they enjoy sex like we do? No. In most animals, intercourse is a hormonal phenomenon. One morning the male wakes up and discovers that he has an erection, and the female suddenly realizes that he is handsome... and after a day or two of madness, they get over it. With cats it is even less pleasant. Their penis is prickly, and the whole sex thing causes females real suffering. And yet, the instinct drives them to rub cow's eyes on the male and ask him to make them prickly. Why?!

There are a large number of answers to the question, but the correct and deepest one lies in our DNA. Almost all animals have sex, because this is the best way to produce offspring that will be genetically diverse enough. The male and female mix their genes, and the offspring is a new creature that contains half the amount of genes from each of the parents. This mix of genes allows him to survive better and better withstand the pressures of evolution.

This is an explanation on the tip of the fork. He doesn't really explain anything, and in one of the next lectures we will talk about the subject more carefully, properly. Don't worry - we won't neglect the subject of sex. For now, just know: it's all because of the genes.

So Paris chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful of them all, and she was completely satisfied. But remember Hera and Athena? Well, they weren't happy at all. And Paris had no reason to be satisfied either, because Aphrodite cheated him a little. The woman she chose for him was truly the most beautiful of women: Helena, Queen of Sparta.
One problem: she is married to the King of Sparta. A real redhead who looks like Hulk Hogan's older brother. He has a big ax, a crazy look in his eyes, and more testosterone than brains. And he loves Helena very much. You have to be a real donkey to mess with a guy like that. But this is Paris we're talking about, remember? And Aphrodite sends Paris to Sparta, and he kidnaps the beautiful Helena and takes her to the city of Troy, where he is the prince. She sighs a bit, but doesn't cause too much trouble. And Menelaus wakes up one morning and realizes that his wife has been kidnapped from under his nose.

Let's leave Paris for a moment. The coward hides in Troy and prays that Menelaus will not remember that he is a man-man. It doesn't really work, because the nervous redhead starts organizing an army to get his wife back. He recruits all the heroes from the cities of Greece: he calls Odysseus naked as a fox, who will still succeed in knocking down the giant, one-eyed Cyclops. He summons the invincible Achilles, whose body is immune to any sword or arrow strike - except at one point only. And at the head of them all he put his older brother, Agamemnon, as the general who would command the army that set out to conquer Troy.

Everyone is getting organized and ready to set off, in the ships that will take them to Troy. But as the saying goes: humans make plans, and the gods laugh. The ships are anchored in the harbor, and all the heroes of the corps and the army are already on them, but the sails are falling on the masts. The wind does not blow, and the Greeks do not use oars. As long as there is no wind, the Greeks cannot go out to conquer Troy and return the beautiful Helena to her rightful owners. So they wait. A week passes, and the spirit does not return. Another week they wait, sharpening their swords and axes and installing arrowheads, and still the wind does not come. In the end, Agamemnon decides to consult the old prophet in the camp, who tells him that he must sacrifice his young daughter on the altar, in order to appease the gods and restore the spirit. Agamemnon hesitates. Still, his daughter. he loves her. But on the other hand, if he does not, Helena will not be returned to Sparta, and the honor of the family will be tarnished. When the dilemma is presented like this, it is clear to Agamemnon what he must do. On the morning of the fateful day, he takes the girl to the top of a high cliff overlooking the sea, ties her to the altar and cuts out her heart with the cold iron knife. After the deed is done, he buries the weapons in the ground and changes clothes to remove the blood stains. He tells his wife that he betrothed their daughter to Achilles. And the wind returns, and the Greeks go to war in their fancy ships. They do not know that the spirit carries with it the stench of blood and betrayal.

We will stop here again, and examine Agamemnon's act in the light of modern law. Here he is standing trial on the dock:
"Do you admit that you murdered your daughter?" The category slaps him with a stern face.
"I confess," says Agamemnon, "but it's not my fault." It's the fault of my genes. They made me do it.”

Sound ridiculous? Not necessarily. Each embryo is created with a set of genes that it received from its parents, some of which have mutations. The same genes control, among other things, the formation of the brain, and the way in which the cells in the brain react to various events. And the mind, in the end, is us. And in this case, if genes control everything we are, if they make us who we are, can a murderer really be guilty of his actions? After all, even if he tries to deal with his natural impulses to murder, his genes have not shaped his mind so that he can resist them. According to this way of seeing, he is the victim of circumstances no less than the murdered!

And the question can be expanded: is there free will at all? If genes are the be-all and end-all, can we really make real choices? Isn't the way we behave already determined to a large extent at birth, and from there it is only affected by the structure of our brain and the way it works - all of which are dictated by genes?

Free will - this is an issue that has troubled philosophers for several thousand years, and it is closely related to our genes. We will deal with it a lot more in the following lectures, and it seems that the gardens may be the beginning of everything, but they are far from being the end of everything. They may determine the starting point, but there are other factors that can influence. And yes, the choices we make in our lives also have an effect on the way our genes work. All this thanks to the epigenetic mechanism, which is responsible for the genes themselves, and can be regulated with conscious thought. But, of course, isn't the mechanism for controlling the genes responsible for thought itself subject to the limitations of thought, which itself is subject to genes?

Thousands of years of philosophy are not going to be resolved in this course in Mecca, and certainly not in the first lecture. But we will try to reach at least more informed answers that rely on the scientific knowledge that exists today about genes, epigenetics and the human brain.

Let's go back to Agamemnon and his army of Greek heroes, which is currently landing on the beach in front of Troy. The people of the city stand on the walls and point in amazement and fear at the army that came to occupy and loot the city. Agamemnon sends his representatives to the king of Troy and demands that he return Helen, the woman who launched a thousand ships to Troy. The king firmly refuses - he is not ready to give up even a shred of Troy's honor, and hand over to the Greeks the property that Paris won honestly. Well, more or less. Thus began the Trojan War that lasted for ten long years, and more will be told about it in the following lectures. The Greek legends, of which the Trojan War is the most famous, are mostly timeless stories, concerning the actions and thoughts of real people, like me and you. These are timeless stories, similar to Shakespeare's plays, and they can explain to us how we behave and why.

You may have been told that this is a course on genetics. on DNA. This is not true. DNA by itself is just a simple molecule. There is not much to tell about it. But inside our cells he is an almighty ruler. He determines whether we will have two hands or eight. He instructs the mind to be created as it is, thereby dictating the human soul as well. The DNA, in short, is the body's instruction book, based on which everything will be done. Without understanding DNA, we cannot understand life and existence.

So if you thought you were coming to learn only about genetics, you were wrong. This is a course about life itself, in all its complexity. About humans and animals, about philosophy and history and ancient folk tales. We will go through the earliest writings and see how humans have always tried to answer the most difficult questions: Why do we grow old and die? Were we created by an almighty god, or maybe by aliens from outer space? Is there even life in outer space? Do we have the ability to choose and free will? And are we, in the end, no more than trucks passing our selfish genes from generation to generation? And can we survive the ecological disaster we are creating on Earth?

Thanks to the work of the scientists, today we already have the mental tools to answer these questions. For the first time in history we can look at DNA, the hidden blueprint of our body and soul, and draw the answers from it. I invite you to join me in the reading experience, in the books of history and the book of life, in the following lectures.