Now here’s a brilliant idea... let’s take a retrovirus that all of humanity existing today is here because of a mutation that keeps the virus from working....
and rework it to once again be active.
You took the words right out of my mouth:
“By studying these extremely old viruses, we can tap into what happened in our ancestors millions and millions of years ago.”
Or maybe we can tap into what happened TO our ancestors millions and millions of years ago.
And pestilence was unleashed upon the world, not through a pale rider on a horse, but with the sound of breaking glass in a laboratory somewhere in New Jersey, and a single word:
“Oops!”
We are immune to all these old viruses and have incorporated them into our DNA code so really they are part of us and cannot infect us again.