That drug really tied the Theory-of-Everything together

"I remember Lamia," Another Kiwi vouchsafed, staring dreamily into the middle distance and groping blindly across the table in front of him. For safety I removed the full glass out of the way of his hands and replaced it with my own empty one.

"You're supposed to remember Lemuria," tigris corrected him.

"The lost continent submerged beneath the Indian Ocean," I added; "home to an advanced culture before its untimely destruction by volcanic eruption."

"That always happens," said tigris. "It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something. You would think that people would have learned not to develop advanced cultures on geologically-unstable landmasses."

"I was under the impression," I said, "that the problem in the case of Lemuria was not the geological instability, but rather the Deros Zolls, dwelling in their subterranean caverns, using their Volcano Maker to trigger eruptions and wipe out a rival to their technological lead." *

"Lemuria?" said AK, his eyes belatedly focusing. "The one with the fauna surviving from the Cenozoic Era, and ruled by the reptilian Dragon Kings?"

"I've had words with you loonies before," said Evangeline van Holsterin (head barmaid at the Old Entomologist), stopping by our table, "about conducting your Reactivating-Ancestral-Memories sessions during Happy Hour."

"Another round of Analeptic Alzabo," I said. "He's paying. Put a head on mine."

It turns out, however, that what wiped out Lemuria was in fact tsunamis, at the end of the last Ice Age, and not vulcanism at all! This on account of Archaeobacteria in the oceanic ecology (utilising a cholesterol-catabolism metabolic pathway), resulting in global warming and rising sea-levels.

Meanwhile, more Archaea -- this time endosymbiotic ones -- had produced a breakthrough in human evolution, because the cholesterol catabolism secretes digoxin in its human hosts, causing autistic quantal consciousness, so Lemuria was host to a Neanderthal civilisation. The survivors of the great inundation seeded the Akkadian and Etruscan and basque cultures. Also the Harappan / Dravidian culture in South India, most advanced of all, although their egalitarian matrilineal literacy was no match for the Homo sapiens invaders from the north -- prelinguistic barbarians reliant on non-quantal, prefrontal-lobe cognition -- who conquered them.

This may sound like the back-story of Peter Watts' next novel, but I am not making this up. Here at the Riddled Research Laboratory, via the wonders of Spam E-mail, we are apprised of the existence of a wunnerful new book, just released by a scuzzy rip-off publisher of academic vanity journals, Open Science:

THE AUTISTIC NEO-NEANDERTHAL TRIBE AND THE HARAPPAN ASURIC NEANDERTHAL DRAVIDIAN CIVILISATION- CLIMATE CHANGE, ENDOSYMBIOTIC ARCHAEAL DIGOXIN

The authors' summary is here, all 1112 words of it, though missing many of the paragraph breaks which must have been lost in transmission. I reluctantly confine myself to quoting the final three sentences:

In the present situation of global warming there is an increased growth of archaea in the human system and neanderthalisation of humans. The Neanderthals have returned and the human brain is becoming neanderthalic in behavior and function. This is responsible for the rising tide of autism, schizophrenia and metabolic syndrome x in the world.

That explains everything, I thought... but evidently not... because the same dynamic auctorial pair have published three previous books through the same publisher, revealing further aspects of our actinidic archaea symbiosis. Apparently abiogenic deposits of cholesterol were the substrate for the origins of life itself! "The archaea are magnetotactic and contain the dipolar porphyrins and magnetite!" The radioactive actinide beach sands of Kerala (rich in rutile) sound like a J.G. Ballard homage, but are in fact crucial details in the story along with "a shadow biosphere of organisms with alternate biochemistry" (clearly the inspiration for Watts' ßehemoth).
I have no idea if the authors are sincerely insane or merely delving to new depths of unscrupulosity in an underhanded attempt to win an Ignobel Prize.


THE NEANDERTHALS AND GLOBAL DRAVIDIAN CIVILISATION - LINK TO HARAPPA AND LEMURIA - CLIMATE CHANGE RELATED NEONEANDERTHALISATION AND HOMOSAPIEN EXTINCTION

ACTINIDIC ARCHAEA AND ENDOGENOUS DIGOXIN MEDIATED MIRROR QUANTAL NEURONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS/QUANTAL OBSERVER

THE ARDANAREESWARA AND CASSANDRA HYPOTHESIS - A BIOLOGICAL THEORY OF SOCIOPOLITICAL, SPIRITUAL, SEXUAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY - ACTINIDIC ARCHAEAL SYMBIOSIS, DIGOXIN SYNTHESIS AND HOMO SAPIENS/HOMO NEANDERTHALIS EVOLUTION AND EXTINCTION DUE TO DISEASE - RELATION TO ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THE BIOLOGICAL UNIVERSE

Via Jeffrey Beall's research we learn that Open Science only began their dubious operations last year, initially confining themselves to 44 prestigious prestidigital vanity journals before they branched out to taking money from authors sufficiently desperate to see their books in print. They operate out of a New York mail-forwarding address but the cheques for publication are processed through a bank in China.

Further investigations reveal that before Ravikumar Kurup A. and Parameswara Achutha Kurup were flushing their output through Open Science, they were resorting to another academic-jizzmop publisher, CSCanada, to inform the world of their actinidic-archaea-related discoveries, such as the fact that

Actinidic Archaea Mediates Biological Transmutation in Human Systems- Experimental Evidence

"Biological transmutation" as in the nuclear transformation of magnesium into calcium, which is a useful metabolic trick, e.g. in geese that need more calcium to reinforce the shells when laying golden eggs. There is more to be found through the Gazoogle, much much more, but at some point CSCanada must have refused to publish anything more from these authors, perhaps to protect their own reputation.

The CSCanada scam is nominally based in Quebec, as "the publishing arm of the Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture, and the Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures". Again Jeffrey Beall and his commentors are here to reveal that the domain name is registered in China. The network of academic pay-to-print grifters is very cosmopolitan. Perhaps New York, Quebec and China are all vestiges of that Lemurian-era Harappan-Dravidian Neanderthalic Civilisation.

--------------------------

"Not one more pint until you pay off some of the tab!" said Evangeline sternly.

* The whole plot-line of "Underground culture using Volcano Maker to trigger eruptions and wipe out the surface-dwelling civilisation before it becomes threatening" was later borrowed by Gordon Dickson.