The following is something I prepared and shared with friends through a small email post that I write. (I collect these posts and publish them here, just in case you have an unquenchable desire wade through almost four years of such stuff.) It was meant for their amusement and edification. I had hoped it might encourage one or two of them to explore this interesting field further, even if only to point out where I am wrong.
Unlike, for example, trying to comprehend the obscure and often meaningless jargon used to explain modern communication technology, current attempts to explain human genesis and migration is rather easy to grasp and far more entertaining. Also, one avoids the anxiety that, at least for me, accompanies reading about modern communication technology, social media and the like. I worry that somehow I should be figuring out how to use it to become filthy rich. I suspect that very few of those on the trail of Mitochondria Eve will ever get to buy their own private island. That is one of the unappreciated advantages of being rich, you can watch you private island disappear under rising sea levels from the deck of your yacht.
At first I thought I should check my facts before republishing here in a more respectable and professional publication like Daily Kos: facts such as is Adelaide actually 15,000 kilometers from Ethiopia and did early human migration expand at a rate of one kilometer per year or was it .75 meter and whether of not most anthropologists agree that there were Australians tromping through the bush 60,000 years ago or most devastating of all, was Bruce Chatwin a self-absorbed twit? I decided, instead, to take the easy way out and rely on the the fecundity of the troll community to expose all my scholarly and interpretive faults.
It should be pointed out, however, that the potential existence of an affair of the heart between Eve Mitochondria and Adam Y 80,000 or so years ago is certainly incorrect. To explain it in a way acceptable to a family publication like Daily Kos -- ok, why bother -- Eve Mitochondria most likely was humping in the grass of the African Veldt at least 70,000 years before Adam Y was able to unzip his fly.
Creation myth update #I
Recently I have been reading several books about genetic research that traces the descent of humanity since that moment when our ancestors first dropped from the trees and began walking upright through the veldt until, through sheer persistence, we now are poised on the brink of becoming the only species to consciously choose to risk their own continued existence.
I have now read a number of books on the subject and several articles I located on the internet. This industry, I am convinced, qualifies me to now comment on our species origins and peccadilloes.
Because the unraveling of the human genome that enabled much of the research and speculation only occurred within the last 10 years or so, the books all have been published within the past three years. Although they are “popularizations”, they are for the most part written by the scientists that actually worked on many of the breakthroughs that enabled the current view of human genesis to develop. One book, however, was written by a journalist who has been covering the field for the past twenty years. It is the best written of the lot.
According to the generally agreed upon calculations based upon the analysis of the Y chromosome in males today and something called mitochondria DNA in females, both of which strangely enough remain mostly unchanged throughout the generations, they estimate that the male and female ancestors of just about everyone outside of Africa today lived in East Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia etc) sometime between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, give or take a few tens of thousands of years or so (Adam Y and Eve Mitochondria).
It is a fascinating story but one, it seems to me, still full of inconsistencies and holes. For example, although I do not for one moment doubt that modern humans first arose in Africa and then spread throughout the world, a mystery surrounding indigenous Australians persists. The generally accepted theory is that about two dozen individuals from a tribe left Africa sometime around 45,000 years ago, most likely by crossing the Red Sea into what is now the country of Aden on the Southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. All the rest of humanity outside of Africa (not including migrants, forced or otherwise, within the past 600 years) according to DNA analysis appears to be descended from this small but obviously determined and exceptionally fecund band.
At that time because of the various cold spells that sucked moisture from the air and the sea and deposited it in its crystalline form, ice, in great glaciers around the earths higher latitudes, the sea was often much lower, about 100 meters or so, and the climate considerably drier than it is now. The most accepted speculation is that the descendants of this band went walk-about along the sea bed thus exposed until, after what I am sure were many adventures, a group ended up in the Australian outback feasting on kangaroo meat and dingoes.
The problem is that some archeological and anthropological evidence puts the original native Australians in Australia at about 60,000 years ago. Now I figured out that early migration patterns move roughly about a kilometer a year. One kilometer would put the new settlement probably in sight of the old. I pictured one or two of the younger members of the band every year or so sitting around the campfire suddenly announcing they were tired of the same old songs and stories and were moving out down the road a bit. After they have a few children of their own, this little traditional domestic scene would play itself out again, until eventually one disgruntled adolescent stumbled over a platypus, decided he had gone far enough and began the first aboriginal song-line.
“…the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as ‘Dreaming-tracks‘ or ‘Songlines’; to the Aboriginals as the ‘Footprints of the Ancestors’ or the ‘Way of the Law’.Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic being who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path – birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes – and so singing the world into existence.””
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines.
This 1 kilometer or so rate has been confirmed by several scientists and is consistent with every other migration during these initial expansions of humanity (for example, Tierra del Fuego is about 30,000 kilometers from the Red Sea by way of Alaska and the first humans arrived there about 15,000 years ago). So, if it is about 15,000 Kilometers from Ethiopia to Adelaide, the original Australians should have arrived there about 30,000 years ago, not 15,000 years before they even left Africa. That’s a lot of dream time to go walk-about in. Even were one to assume that the notoriously difficult dating methodology was off; to be off by 30,000 years is a pretty broken song-line. On the other hand perhaps our ancestors hand in hand gingerly dipped their toes into the waters of the Red Sea or wherever as much as 75,000 years ago. I am confident (Well, perhaps not so confident) that some of those who read this post will have a more up to date opinion on the issue and will share it with us. (More to come)
Manukirni
Dijankirni
Wurulu layynngkirni
Blind Rainbow Serpent is old;
he does not want Law from the
Whirlwind Rainbow Serpent
Barbabarda karma
Bardangimanji
Whirlwind Rainbow Serpent moves on;
he leaves the Blind Rainbow Serpent
with nothing
Songline
*****
Today's Quotes:
"destiny doesn’t do home visits,"
Zafon, Carlos Ruiz . The Prisoner of Heaven (Cemetery of Forgotten Books) (p. 204).
"A willingness to kill members of ones own species is apparently correlated with with high intelligence. It may be that chimps and people are the only species able to figure out that the extra effort to exterminate and opponent will bring about a more permanent solution than letting him live to fight another day."
Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade