Every mobile device has a camera, and every drone takes detailed pictures of the territory it surveils. We can all take on the role of explorers, photographing what we see around us. We take pristine pictures of the landscape, close up shots of flowers, videos of cats, and drone photos of enemy movements. Surely our knowledge has increased because of the easy accessibility of all this information?

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, reports of cryptids have increased exponentially. Throughout this year, people have reporting sightings, or submitted photos, purportedly showing the existence of one or more of these mysterious creatures.

What are cryptids? They are animals, or human-animal hybrids, whose existence is unproven. The lack of evidence has not stopped people believing in these mythical creatures – much like belief in gods and goddesses. We are all familiar with Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, Yeti, Chupacabra, multiple werewolves, the half- human half-chimpanzee Bili Ape – the list goes on.

We can see the grainy picture of some murky, mysterious creature – our high tech society still likes to engage in rampant speculation about hazy photographs. Certainly Australia has its fair share of cryptids – the bunyip, the Yowie man – and these stories stem from distortions and retellings of indigenous people’s culture. They also undoubtedly help promote tourism to Australia.

The interlinking of humans with other species challenges our taxonomic understanding. When an unidentified creature is discovered, scientists undertake a verification procedure. A type specimen is identified, its features and structure catalogued, models made and morphological analysis performed before any definitive pronouncement can be made.

While keeping an open mind, the best response to the repeated and unverified claims of mythic human-beast creatures is scientific skepticism. It is important to have an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out. We need to keep a bullshit filter on, to weed out beliefs that are harmful or fictional.

In our age of social media, belief in cryptids has gained in popularity. Television channels airing purported documentaries – finding Bigfoot – help to shape public perceptions. Indeed, the irony is that such publicity helps to humanise these half-beastly creatures, portraying them as just much misunderstood beings – an updated Harry and the Hendesons scenario. Surely these Shreks of the underworld require empathy and understanding, not unending malice?

In the realm of TikTok and hashtags, fascination with the unknown creates a community based on shared beliefs. Cryptid believers get together, share their stories, hold conventions and rail against a stubborn and recalcitrant scientific establishment. Type the terms ‘cryptid fan art’ into your favourite search engine, and you will see millions of results.

To be sure, folklore is the origin of many of these cryptid stories, cultural beliefs that have evolved over the ages. Pagan religions, as distinct from the monotheistic cousins (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) involve multiple interacting gods and mysterious creatures. The line between human and nonhuman was blurred, and thus there arose beings that occupied that borderline space between human and nonhuman animals.

Every nagging fear that we humans seem to have is projected into a cryptid creature to provide bodily form to those fears. The ancient Greeks, being a seafaring people, were aware of the dangers of navigating the open sea. While they were expert navigators, they gave expression to their anxieties about the risks of the open oceans.

The aspidochelone, the giant sea turtle or whale, was alleged to have been so huge it was mistaken for an island. A fabled sea creature, it was said to have drowned and devoured sailors who mistakenly, docked and set up settlements on its gigantic back. In the Greek mythological tradition, it is the functional equivalent of Satan, a fabled creature who deceives those unsuspecting souls it eventually devours.

There are humanoid cryptids that are of more recent origin. Our fascination with life in the depths of the oceans has not abated with marine discoveries. In 2002, Japanese whaling researchers, operating in the icy waters of Antarctica, reported seeing the Ningen, a mysterious half-human half-whale creature.

Antarctic waters are an open field for cryptozoological discoveries. What is interesting about the Ningen is that it was first reported on online message boards. From there, the Ningen took on a life of its own – no pun intended. Japanese whaling constitutes a heatedly debated topic in Australia and other Anglophone nations. The Japanese government, while admitting its whale hunting practices, couches its maritime whaling as scientific research.

Reporting on an as yet unidentified sea creature, especially one with curiously human features, may be a way to deflect the moral outrage at whale hunting, blunting the attacks on Japan from foreign governments. Indeed, as reports of the Ningen were amplified on social media, the creature took on more human forms; a head resting on two walking legs, a kind of Antarctic version of Bigfoot.

It is important to balance curiosity about the wonders of the natural world with a healthy dose of scientific skepticism. Folkloric monsters and cryptids are fascinating as cultural artefacts. They tell us more about how cultures evolve, rather than revealing any mysteries of nature.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan far right politician Maria Corina Machado has been met with scorn and derision as a travesty by multiple writers and commentators. Machado, a ultrarightist agitator for the Venezuelan oligarchy, is anything but a peace activist.

Aligning with the policy goals of the Trump administration, she has consistently supported the violent overthrow of the Bolivarian revolution in her home nation. Her record as an advocate for violence and a coup plotter is clear for all to see.

Strongly supporting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Machado has welcomed Israel’s attack on Gaza, and expressing her solidarity with the Israeli military as a joint civilisational struggle against Islam. It may initially appear unusual that an extreme right winger from Venezuela would openly link up with the Israeli government, but dig a little deeper and we can observe an ideological connection.

The European far right, with whom Netanyahu’s political bloc is aligned, conceives of Islam as a major threat – the ‘infidels’ – who must be expunged from Western nations. Obsessed with reliving and revisiting the Reconquista – the 15th century European Christian struggle to physically expel the Muslim population from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) – views Europe as under siege from Islamic infiltration today. Machado, a representative of the Venezuelan ultraright, sees herself as part of this inter-civilisational conflict.

That is enough about Machado – you may read the evaluation of her Nobel peace prize award from commentators more knowledgeable than myself. What we should focus on now is the deliberate cultivation of celebrity dissidents, advocates of US regime change wars who grace our television screens, have access to the major corporate media, and whose opinions we are supposed to take seriously.

Machado is only one example of a carefully cultivated regime change asset, provided credibility in our corporate media, and whose function is to soften up public opinion for a barbaric US regime change war. Spokespersons for imperial power, these celebrity dissidents become a familiar fixture, setting the terms of how we understand overseas wars.

When their perspective closely aligns the goals of the Pentagon and US State Department, they are welcomed as agents of change, no matter how remote their ideas are from reality. The Nobel peace prize is looking less like a reward for services to peace, and more as a reward for subservience to US foreign policy objectives.

What do I have mind when I talk about celebrity dissidents? I have written about ultranationalist Israeli politician and ex-Soviet dissenter Natan Sharansky before. Today, let’s explore a similar dissident turned regime change spokesperson – Garry Kasparov.

Famous the world over as a chess champion, which he undoubtedly is, he gained a new generation of fans as the grand chess master defeated by Deep Blue, an IBM supercomputer in 1997. Computer algorithms, through sheer processing power, finally out-calculated Kasparov over multiple chess games.

That was not the end of Kasparov, by no means. Born Garik Kimovich Weinstein in 1963 in then Soviet Azerbaijan, he is Armenian on his mother’s side. Taking up chess from an early age, chess was and still is a national sport in former Soviet republics.

From an early age, Kasparov adopted a stridently pro-US imperialist outlook, courtesy of his conservative parents. He admitted, many years later, that he was named after former US President Harry Truman, whom his parents admired. Truman was responsible for the saturation bombing of North Korea, which cost millions of lives and decimated the country’s infrastructure. Admiring the Korean War was only the first US imperial war of which Kasparov would approve.

As chairperson of the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), and vice president of the World Liberty Congress, he has vociferously advocated for US invasions of Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela – nations which, despite the nature of their politically differing governments, are all targets of US hostility, sanctions and cultural warfare.

These groups, while officially classified as nongovernmental organisations, receive copious amounts of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a think tank well known for its links to the CIA. The NED is a soft power instrument for US imperial objectives. The World Liberty Congress and RDI have US military generals and former intelligence operatives on their boards of directors. It is easy to be a dissident when you have the financial and media backing of powerful organisations.

Kasparov reminds me of another chess champion, the late Bobby Fischer. The latter, after a successful career in chess, sank into the cesspit of conspiracy theories. Fischer was rightly ostracised for his bizarre beliefs. Kasparov has certainly promoted his fair share of bizarre conspiracy theories, such as the New Chronology.

Believers of this particular flavour of eccentricity claim that the Middle Ages never happened, that Ancient Greece and Rome only ended a few hundred years ago, and that Jesus actually lived in the 12th century. Kasparov is free to believe whatever he likes, but far from being ostracised like Fischer, he continues to have access to international media platforms.

Kasparov is absolutely certain that Russia’s 2022 invasion of eastern Ukraine constitutes genocide. He has repeated this claim ad nauseam in his multiple media interviews. If that is the case, he has demonstrated a glaring hypocrisy – failing to similarly denounce the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza as amounting to genocide. Increasing numbers of international observers and groups, including Physicians for Human Rights, have explicitly stated that Israel is guilty of genocide.

The plight of the Palestinians is of no interest to a regime change operative such as Kasparov. Deploying the term genocide in a cynical, emotionally manipulative way to further US imperial interests is his only concern.

Exposing the agenda of celebrity dissidents helps us to avoid falling into their political cesspit. Kasparov has built a financially lucrative career as a paid propagandist for an imperial regime; so did Julius Streicher.

My late father, in a burst of enthusiasm, excitedly explained to me the story of the German pocket battleship, the Graf Spee. The Kriegsmarine, the German war navy, had been targeting British commercial shipping in the Atlantic in the 1930s. The much vaunted British navy, inheritors of the triumphant mantle of Lord Nelson and Trafalgar, had suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the German navy.

I remember my father explaining to me the battles this naval vessel had with English warships – I was about eight or nine years old. I listened intently, and got caught up in the shared excitement; my father was not a man of outwardly expressive emotions, so to see him so animated about a topic was something worth remembering.

In fact, hey dad, do I detect a certain underlying yet unmistakable admiration for the skill and determination of the commander of the German Panzerschiff (armoured ship)?

The German navy, according to the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, was restricted from building heavy warships by the Allied powers. The German government however, managed to circumvent these impositions by redesigning and reclassifying its ships as ‘pocket cruisers’. Make no mistake, there was nothing harmless or diminutive about them – the German navy took the naval battle to the Royal Navy with gusto.

The British, priding themselves on having the most powerful maritime force in the world, had taken a battering at the hands of the Kriegsmarine. Between September and December 1939, the Admiral Graf Spee had sunk a total of nine ships. She had a top speed of 28 knots, which meant at the time that only the elite of English naval forces could keep up with her.

The English Admiralty, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, had deployed numerous warships to target the Graf Spee – the Germans managed to sink all of them. The Royal Oak, the pride of the English navy, was safely anchored at Scapa Flow – the Germans sank her as well.

Serious questions were being asked about the competency of Churchill, and the wider Admiralty, in confronting the German threat. A public propaganda victory was needed – and the battle involving the Graf Spee provided that.

Confronted by three British warships in the South Atlantic in December 1939, the Graf Spee exchanged heavy fire with the British forces, before escaping to the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. The latter remained neutral during the war.

Lacking any reinforcements, and discouraged by reports that the British navy was sending extra warships (reports that turned out to be false), the commander of the Graf Spee ordered the scuttling of the ship. He committed suicide three days later.

The English side milked this victory for its propaganda value. Here was the Royal Navy, victorious again, reviving the best traditions of Lord Nelson and Trafalgar. While London was eager to capitalise on this success, the battle was not a straight-out David versus Goliath story. Indeed, the US Naval Institute states that this battle was badly fought by the English, the latter even allowing the Graf Spee a certain leeway to escape.

Be that as it may, the propaganda value of the sinking of the Graf Spee proved immeasurably incalculable to the British side. The value of morale, bolstered by propaganda victories, is even more important than the details of military engagements.

Propaganda value comes to mind when we consider the most fatal event of the short lived 1982 Falklands war. Britain, in fighting the Argentine forces, deliberately sank the ARA Belgrano, an Argentine warship. The attack, carried out by a nuclear-armed British submarine, resulted in the deaths of 323 Argentine sailors. The ship was outside the exclusion zone established by the British government around the islands.

What is important to note here is the response of the British tabloid media, particularly the Murdoch-owned press. The headlines in May 1982 were dominated by the gloating, screaming statement ‘GOTCHA’. Our lads sank that ship, and this was an occasion for jingoistic flag waving.

Ironically, the Belgrano started its life as the USS Phoenix, an American navy ship. Surviving the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, she was sold to Argentina in 1951. Updated with British missiles in the 1970s, she was sunk in May 1982.

The effects of imperial propaganda outlast the actual military conflict, influencing public debate and perceptions of overseas wars. World War 2 ended 80 years ago, yet we are still living in its shadow, in many ways. It took 80 years, but finally, the United States authorities publicly acknowledged what they always knew privately; they did not need to use nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those atomic bombings were militarily needless, but served a powerful propaganda purpose.

Japan was exhausted and drained, and the Anglo-American allies knew it. Truman’s closest advisers warned him against using nuclear weapons, but the Cold War was on. The bombings served as a warning shot to the USSR – look at this new powerful weapon we have.

In this era when Hollywood movies mediate our understanding of World War 2, it is more important than ever to clear the obfuscatory role of imperial propaganda so we can see the reality of the world in which we live.

Sorry Uncle, I never became a psychiatrist.

That may seem like a strange way to begin an article, but there is a reason behind it.

Decades ago, when I was a young university student, I studied psychology, among other subjects. My uncle, a friendly and outgoing fellow, would make jokes about my grandfather (his father) getting free therapy once I became a psychiatrist. Indicating towards me, he told my grandad, ‘he’s going to be a psychiatrist, so you can get all the free therapy you need!’

Beneath the joking around, I sensed that my uncle carried a certain pride that his nephew was going to be a psychiatrist. I did not have the heart to tell him that I was never going to be a psychiatrist. Psychology is a distinct field from psychiatry – I did not want to spoil the moment.

Psychiatry is based in medicine; psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialise in workings and disorders of the brain. They are trained in neuroscience, and approach patients from a clinical and neurological perspective. They can prescribe medications if required.

Psychologists are not medical doctors, but they study human behaviour, emotions, cognitive processes and development, and the neuroscience of the brain and nervous system. They approach mental health through talk therapy, solving mental health problems through nonmedical techniques, such as behavioural modification and cognitive changes.

This does not mean the two fields are in direct opposition – far from it. Psychologists and psychiatrists can and do work in tandem, both intending to achieve the same goals of managing and improving mental health. Psychiatrists are graduates in medicine, while psychologists possess a doctorate in social sciences. Psychiatrists approach mental disorders as malfunctions in the human brain, prioritising a medical approach. Psychologists examine the social, emotional, cultural and environmental conditions that impact mental health.

Every one of us is an amateur psychologist of sorts, examining and trying to make sense of people’s behaviour. Other people are such an important part of our daily lives, we must continue our interactions within a social and cultural matrix composed of networks of people. Understanding patterns of human behaviour partly explains the persistence (and ongoing popularity) of astrology.

The particular pseudoscience of astrology exploits our basic need to understand ourselves, our cultural environment and the behaviour of the people around us. We want to know what the future holds for us, and people are an important determinant factor. Horoscopes give us ready-made tools to approach human behaviour. Astrology is still generalised balderdash, but it is widespread.

We can laugh it off, but then consider the following. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, with its finger on the nuclear button, employed astrologers as consultants for its foreign and domestic policies. When the US administration, with its power to obliterate life on Earth, listens and takes seriously the ‘findings’ of astrology, then that is no laughing matter.

We are all aware that nuclear conflagration would mean the end of life as we know it. Surely no one is mad enough to advocate a strike that would predictably provoke a nuclear response from rival powers?

Well, in 1958, then US President Dwight Eisenhower rejected demands by his military chiefs to launch a nuclear attack on China. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leading body of uniformed officers in the Department of Defence, advocated attacking China with nuclear weapons, in particular to support Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist militants. The latter had been launching commando raids into mainland China from two northern Taiwanese islands.

Eisenhower overruled the Navy and Air Force top brass, but this incident is very revealing. Psychopaths are not always the creepy loners depicted in the movies, but also wear uniforms and business suits, ingratiate themselves into society’s institutions, and are high functioning individuals, making decisions impacting our lives.

In this day and age, we cannot talk about mental health without addressing the issue of artificial intelligence (AI). We can all see the widespread impact of AI over numerous fields of human activity, and mental health is no exception. AI chatbots are currently providing a growing avenue of mental health applications. Talking to a chatbot – is that beneficial for our mental health and wellbeing?

The answer to that question is – it depends on how you use it. Chatbots provide an easily accessible, 24/7 readily available service of mental health. The privacy of the chat is appealing, and its immediate accessibility is important. Appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists take time, and there is still the stigma surrounding seeing a therapist. For instance, the New York Times has been running a series of articles attacking the efficacy of psychiatry and psychotropic drugs.

Whether the NY Times is correct or not, I do not know. I do know that telling only one side of the story – the ‘psychiatry is bad and relies on pushing drugs’ claim – only adds to the stigma of seeking out help for mental illnesses.

While AI chatbots may be beneficial in the short term, they lack a crucial dimension – empathy. The emotional support and connections provided by human interactions cannot be replicated by AI. Chatbots are great for chatting, but they cannot diagnose and treat mental health disorders. Emotional intelligence is just as important as technical abilities when addressing mental health issues.

I feel compelled to ask how AI chatbots are going to assist the Palestinian children in Gaza, currently undergoing a catastrophic trauma facing the relentless attacks by the Israeli army. Their trauma is going to be generational, as they experience the destruction of the society in which they live. Palestinian children in Gaza are dealing with severe anxiety, depression, nightmares, and a worsening humanitarian crisis. Human solidarity and connection with the outside world is needed more than ever.

How about we construct a society that measures its success, not by the number of billionaires it has, but by the number of people lifted out of serious mental health issues?

The US Energy Department, every few months, recycles a particular proposal for approaching the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI). The proposal, last mentioned in July by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, is that the United States requires a new Manhattan Project for AI. The US, it is argued, faced with strong competition from international powers in the AI area, needs to achieve predominance in AI technology so rival nations will be forced to acquiesce to US demands.

This analogy, while seductive in its simplicity, is based on false premises, and will lead to a mutually destructive AI race. New technologies must be developed, not on the basis of national paranoia and a desire for military superiority, but in a collaborative and demilitarised setting – there is enough knowledge capital and glory to go around.

The Manhattan Project was the American government’s effort to construct an atomic weapon. That project, while seemingly successful with the detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as culminating points, contains dangerous illusions. Rather than a template for success, the Manhattan Project provides a cautionary tale about a runaway arms race, a case where a scientific project was unguided by ethical considerations.

The militarisation of nuclear technology rested on the false assumption that security and safety reside in superseding other nations. Eric Ross, writing in Common Dreams magazine, states that US President Harry Truman regarded the Manhattan Project as the biggest scientific gamble in history.

The premise for building a nuclear weapon was that Nazi Germany was rapidly constructing an atomic bomb – a premise the Allied powers knew to be false. American and British intelligence had penetrated the communications network of Nazi Germany’s military. While German scientists were working on a controlled nuclear chain reaction, they were decades away from creating anything resembling a nuclear weapon.

By 1945, with Germany’s armies in retreat, and Japan actively considering terms of surrender (months prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the original premise of nuclear weapons construction – that our enemies were building one – evaporated.

Indeed, the first human-induced controlled nuclear chain reaction was achieved in the United States in 1942. Dubbed the Chicago Pile 1, this successful nuclear chain reaction was done under the supervision of Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi. The scientists working in the Chicago laboratory were well aware of the potential military application of nuclear power, and fought tooth-and-nail to prevent the militarisation of atomic power.

Throughout the war years, the Chicago scientists, such as Leo Szilard, adamantly opposed the development of nuclear weapons. Their appeals and protests were ignored by the emergent military-scientific complex.

The Chicago physicists were acutely aware of the catastrophic consequences of building atomic weapons. They asked the US government that if these weapons were to be used against Japan, it would be advisable to first demonstrate the power of the atomic bomb by targeting a militarily neutral, uninhabited region. That would give the Tokyo authorities time to reconsider their position, should they witness the devastating effects of the atomic bomb. Such proposals were ignored by the US military authorities.

July this year marked the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test project, the first controlled nuclear explosion on Earth. Detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16 1945, the location was in desert country, but was totally uninhabited. New Mexico residents downwind of the explosion – the downwinders – suffered the effects of radiation poisoning, and died of numerous types of cancers.

The Trinity explosion was conducted under the supervision of the Los Alamos laboratory, the heart of the Manhattan Project. The scientists who protested the military application of nuclear research made their voices loud and clear at the very inception of nuclear technology. Their ethical concerns, and their warnings regarding the starkly nightmarish scenario of nuclear war, was suppressed.

Soon after the end of World War 2, the Soviet Union and other nations quickly embarked on their own nuclear weapon projects, thus ushering in the arms race predicted by the Chicago scientists. Drawing parallels between the onset of the nuclear age, and the dawning age of AI, is not completely wrong, but we must not replicate the problems and hazardous outcomes of the Manhattan Project.

Being at the forefront of a new wave of technology, numerous scientists and computer engineers have warned of the harmful consequences of untrammelled AI. In fact, more commentators are pointing out the deleterious consequences of AI data centres on the environment. Data centres, which are the powerhouses generating answers to our AI questions, consume vast quantities of water to cool down – and consume enough electricity to power small cities.

Each query that we make with AI requires natural resources to power the computer processing required for a successful answer. AI is being used as a digital substitute for human activity, answering everything from our medical questions, addressing our mental health, matching us with potential romantic partners, designing our graphics, writing our essays – and hallucinating its fair share of bullshit in the process.

It is not exaggeration to say that AI is being used to con all of us – replacing human judgements with a stochastic parrot. Are there no useful purposes for AI? Yes, we can answer our basic questions in record time. However, relying on AI will be our collective downfall. The AI arms race between nations has already begun in many ways. Note the hyper-anxiety of the Anglophone corporate media when China released its own cheaper, more easily accessible version of AI, DeepSeek.

China’s DeepSeek AI burst the US Silicon Valley AI bubble, and signalled to the world that the United States (nor any other single nation for that matter) would be able to achieve AI unipolarity, monopolising the technology as a way to coerce other countries. The United States has a long history of deploying nuclear weapons superiority as a form of geopolitical blackmail.

It is time to divest the big tech oligarchy of its power to control and deploy AI in a way that displaces human labour. AI can actually supplement labouring activities, and serve our needs, not the profit margins of the tech giants.

It is difficult to overstate the impact of ancient DNA on multiple scientific fields. Since the 1980s, the explosion of research into ancient DNA has positively impacted the fields of genetics, biology, archaeology, palaeontology – just to name a few areas of scientific enquiry.

Ancient DNA – any DNA that is over fifty years old – is brittle and can be difficult to preserve. Extracting ancient DNA from fossils is a painstaking and meticulous process, but one that yields significant results for scientific investigators. It has provided insights into the genetic heritage of modern day ethnic groups, as well as revealing information about human migration patterns.

Let’s start with a basic question that illustrates the diverse impact of ancient DNA. What image comes to mind with the mention of the word Vikings? The stereotype is that of tall, blonde, fair-skinned marauding warriors in horned helmets. While there is an element of truth to that image, the reality is far more complex. Vikings does not refer to an ethnicity or race, but a job description, similarly to the word pirate.

Indeed, the Vikings were not the pure white master race of all-conquering giants as the white supremacists of today would have us believe. Ancient DNA has revealed a surprisingly different reality from the one bequeathed to us in stereotypes. The Vikings were an ethnically mixed society of people, and they traded and intermingled with the peoples they interacted with much more than we have been led to believe.

In new research into the ancient DNA – from Viking skeletons – archaeologists and historians have hit upon a conclusion they have long suspected. The Vikings were a mishmash of genetic materials from across Europe and the lands they conquered. Southern and Eastern European genes were included in the Viking admixture, and their increasing scope of conquest meant further diversification of their genetic makeup. The Viking society did not always equate with purely Norse Scandinavian ancestry.

Viking occupants of what are today Denmark and coastal Sweden shared more DNA with Anatolian people, rather than with the residents of inland Scandinavia. Trading with Constantinople as the first stop, the Vikings found that city as a stepping stone for interactions with peoples from the Islamic and Asiatic East.

The Vikings actually traded with the Islamic empire, and sent emissaries and traders to venture along the Silk Routes, an interconnected network of trade roads connecting China to the Islamic work and the West. It was the mercantile superhighway of its times.

Close encounters of the medieval kind are not the only insights garnered from ancient DNA.

We have all been taught that Homo sapiens, migrating out of Africa, went on to conquer the world. This is an appealing story of triumphant progress, but it is also misleading. Over the last few decades, we are steadily discovering that ours is only one of several ancestral hominin species – and humans have interbreed with Neanderthals, Denisovans and others.

We like to think of human prehistory as one of raw and unbridled competition, where humans ultimately triumphed in a hominin gladiatorial Thunderdome. Outcompeting ostensibly weaker rival hominins appeals to our hypercompetitive capitalist ethos, where (supposedly) only the most efficient and competitive entrepreneurs survive and flourish, while all others fall into oblivion as a result of their own inadequacies.

Actually, intermixing and interbreeding were just as important, and ancient DNA is providing insights into this topic.

Humans shared the world, the resources and genes, with hominin cousins, the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other types of extinct hominin species.

The human story is not just that of migrations, wars, conquest and cultural assimilation. As people have travelled, so have words, languages and syntax. What has this got to do with ancient DNA?

Well, ancient DNA is helping to solve a longstanding linguistic mystery; the origins of Europe’s Uralic language speakers. The Uralic language group includes Estonian, Hungarian and Finnish. These languages are quite distinct from Slavic. How did they end up in Eastern Europe?

While Indo-European languages were brought by mass migration and invasions, the Uralic languages spread in a more cautious, step-by-step way. Investigators have tracked the movement of Uralic speakers across northern Asia and Europe, originating in a region of Siberian Russia called Yakutia.

Closer to Alaska, Yakutia is a vast expanse of boreal forest in northeastern Siberia. The genetic markers of Uralic speakers have been found in Yakut populations, and these speakers spread throughout the taiga forest, all the way to the Baltic and Hungarian Europe.

The importance of ancient DNA lies not just in the sophistication of the scientific techniques used to extract it from fossils and preserve it. It lies in the collaborative approach among biologists, geneticists and archaeologists towards resolving persistent problems in science.

I did not want to comment directly on the so-called ‘march for Australia’ held in multiple locations across Australia on August 31, because there has already been a tsunami of commentary regarding these anti-immigrant, racist marches. There were sustained and numerous anti-racist counter protests, which was wonderful to see.

What I wanted to do in this article is address a frequently heard complaint by the Aussie-first MAGA-copycat crowd – that once in Australia, migrants should speak English and assimilate. Throughout my life, I have heard (and my late father heard) the highly intelligent admonition to ‘speak fucken English’ from an intelligent Anglo observer.

First, let’s clarify – my father, born in Egypt to Armenian parents, learned multiple languages in school. The usual practice in Egyptian schools at that time (1940s and 50s) was to teach students more than one language. Indeed, learning different languages is highly recommended by educators and teachers, making students better thinkers and global citizens. Embracing multilingualism is a key part of a child’s education.

Secondly, my father learned English (as well as Armenian, Arabic and French) not for the express purpose of emigration. He learned from textbooks written and published in England, and he listened to the BBC. In the early 1960s, he arrived in Australia – and he encountered an obstacle. The English he had learned in school was not the language spoken in Australia. He had to learn Australian English.

Australian English is a uniquely parochial product of the intermingling of English, Irish, Scottish and a smattering of Welsh – a melding of words and accents. Throw in the contributions of First Nations words – kookaburra, kangaroo, Burramattagal (which the convicts corrupted into Parramatta) and this unique admixture poses a passing resemblance to what my father learned in school.

So if the highly intelligent participants in the March for Australia feel so strongly about migrants speaking English, I invite them to become English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, so they can pass on their developed English language skills to incoming migrants.

There is the standard Aussie ‘Strayan accent, consisting of elongated vowels and liberally sprinkled with swearing. The late Steve Irwin had that accent, or the comedian Julia Morris does today. Then there is the cultivated accent, closer to the Received Pronunciation (what used to be called the Queen’s English). Malcolm Turnbull speaks with that accent. Cate Blanchett, while not strictly speaking with the Received Pronunciation, maintains a difference from the common Australian strine.

The Armenians do not need lessons in assimilation. We have been doing that for centuries. Wherever Armenians in the diaspora have landed, they have contributed to the new host nation, while also remaining true to heritage.

William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) was an Armenian-American short story writer, playwright and poet. Living most of his life in California, he wrote extensively about the experiences of diaspora life. His birthday was August 31; the 117th anniversary of his birth just passed without fanfare or publicity.

Stephen Fry wrote that Saroyan is an under-appreciated writer, who should take his place alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner.

Before you think that Saroyan refused to assimilate or was unconcerned about the lives of his fellow Americans, think again. His novels and stories display a deep concern about the social malaise, the difficulties and tribulations of the Great Depression. He did not isolate himself in an exclusionary and insular Armenian community, but did his utmost to engage with the social and economic issues of his times.

In February last year, French President Emmanuel Macron honoured French Armenian World War Two resistance fighter Missak Manouchian (1909 – 1944). Inducted into the Pantheon, the often overlooked Manouchian was a poet who arrived in France after surviving the 1915 genocide.

Taking up arms against the Nazi occupation forces, Manouchian bravely led resistance fighters against the fascist tyranny. He was caught and executed in 1944. He witnessed the same underlying genocidal logic of the Pan-Turkish state’s exclusivist ideology, and that of the white supremacist Nazis. Fighting and dying for one’s adopted homeland qualifies, I think, as a successful example of assimilation.

Before you shout at us to speak English, or the equally puerile ‘fit in or fuck off’, take a look at how Armenians have assimilated into, and contributed to, their adopted homelands for centuries.