Alien Messages in DNA

In his 1970's book Lost Worlds¹ Robert Charroux suggests that "...the first man was certainly an extraterrestrial, that is, born somewhere other than on our earth...". I'm sure Richard Dawkins would not agree with this hypothesis!

More recently, Graham Hancock writes in his book Supernatural² that aliens may have left us messages in our DNA. Hancock thinks that patterns found in junk DNA "...may in fact be a language like any human language...". It is possible, he concludes, that "...the ancient teachers of mankind have been inside us all along...".

Roughly 10% of DNA is believed to carry genetic code. The other 90% is called non-coding or "junk DNA". In the mid-1990's scientists used mathematical statistics to analyse junk DNA sequences. When they applied Zipf's Law they found language-like characteristics. Could this be evidence of intelligent design or a secret alien code?

Hancock believes that life on Earth was seeded by DNA from an alien civilisation. Apparently he didn't know that the idea of a hidden language in junk DNA was debunked in 1999. This effect was attributed to "...mathematical artifacts being trivially caused by varying base-composition in natural DNA sequences...". Similar "information" was also found in randomly generated DNA sequences. You can find all the details in an article by Dan Larhammar and C. Aris Chatzidimitriou-Dreismanndetails in the Skeptical Inquirer³.

1. Robert Charroux, Lost Worlds, Fontana UK 1974
2. Graham Hancock, Supernatural, Arrow UK 2005
3. Larhammar & Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann Skeptical Inquirer, Mar-Apr 1999