It was. Marina’s story became news around the world a decade ago when National Geographic made a documentary about her claims, which up to then had been greeted with scepticism. Yet scientists discovered compelling evidence to support her argument. A sincerely doubting primate expert asked her to identify the type of monkey she had lived with, and when she picked out the capuchin monkey, revealed that it was almost the only species in Colombia that might have approached a human and allowed her to get close to them.
Marina was able to identify edible forest fruits, and her memory of the monkeys spending time on the ground and using stones to crack nuts added veracity to her claim, as this use of tools by capuchins had only recently been discovered by academics. A test of her body’s unconscious response to visual images showed that she responded to capuchin monkeys similarly to her own family. Her bones also clearly showed a period of very poor nutrition between the age of six and nine.
One sophisticated word memory test suggested she was susceptible to false memories, but Vanessa is still frustrated that it was used on her. “Mum doesn’t really understand a lot of what people explain with words. I have to kind of translate for her, but they locked me out of the room, and she just said yes to basically everything and failed the test. It seemed a really mean thing to do.” Since then, Vanessa says, doctors have discovered that Marina has a number of rare jungle diseases dormant in her body.
However hard it is to believe that a young child could survive in a jungle, Marina’s story (her memoir, The Girl with No Name, was released in 2013) is not without precedent. There have been cases of children who have been raised by wolves and by dogs, and in recent years by other primates. Like many of these “feral children”, Marina had lost the ability to communicate through language, but she was able to learn to speak again. Some things appear to be lacking, Vanessa explains, such as the nuances of facial expression that are developed in those important years. “There’s about 300 of them, displaying anguish, shock, and other emotions; they did a test on Mum – she recognised about five or 10. She’s like, ‘happy’, ‘sad’. Very basic.”
Moving to England, Marina met Vanessa’s father, a Yorkshireman and a scientist, and they married and had two children – Vanessa, who’s now 39, and her elder sister, Joanna. Vanessa learned to play piano almost before she could speak, touring internationally with her church band as a teenager, before going on to make music for ads for Audi and others.