An Origins Myth

Annamaria on Monday 

Rift Valley: Photo National Geographic

Eons ago, in what we now call East Africa, a very clever species emerged from the surrounding primates.  Their home was along a rift in the crust of the earth where seismic and volcanic activities were common then and are common still.  Energy from the core of the Earth bubbles up there.  Magmatism and plate tectonics have been part of the atmosphere there for billennia.  The climate is changeable, where long lush periods are sometimes interrupted by years of drought.  In such conditions only the cleverest beings survive, by adapting to the changing situations at hand.

Over time the species evolved—losing a great deal of its hairiness, learning to walk on hind legs, the better to use the tools it invented and the better to ward off predators.  In the intense sunshine so close to the equator, those born with darker skin colors had an advantage—safe as they were from the harmful rays of the sun.

 

Eventually, the clever species multiplied to the point where they spread out in search of new and greater sources of food.  Some went north.  In the course of time, when the species reached cooler climes, the advantage switched to those with slightly paler skin—light enough to absorb from the weaker sunlight enough of what we now call vitamin D to keep them healthy.  But dark enough to keep the ultraviolet rays of the sun from damaging their health.

 

Given survival of the fittest, their bodies adapted automatically to the new conditions.  And with their clever brains they invented survival tactics that allowed them inhabit regions even farther north, where temperatures were much colder, and in part of the year there was little or no sunlight.  Clever as they were, these creatures learned to wear skins of hairy animals and build huts sturdy enough to keep out storms and extreme cold that would have otherwise killed them.

 

In such conditions, the lack of sunshine meant that only people with the palest skin could absorb enough nutrients from the sunshine to grow strong.  And so, people with the palest skin came to dominate the peoples of those places.  And the whitest began to see themselves as superior in every way.  Away from the benign climates where food year round had been plentiful, life in the north was harsh and competition for food during the long cold months became intense. These conditions favored the biggest and the strongest.  Big, brawny genes began to dominate.  And white skin, of course.  Whiteness was what made a person special, powerful.

Vandals Sack of Rome 407

 

Many fair-skinned people of the north began to imagine themselves as inherently superior to all others on earth.  This notion became so deeply imbedded in their thinking that now, sometimes and in some people, it seems to operate in them as if it is genetic.  They don’t even realize on a conscious level the attitudes they are expressing.  For centuries now, among the fair, their white skin and the sense of entitlement it inspires has given many people license to subjugate smaller, darker-skinned people.  To move in and take over their homelands.  To steal or destroy the artifacts of their cultures.  To enslave them.  To obliterate their customs and their “gibberish” languages. Even to commit genocide. Basing this on their vision of nonwhite people as not quite human.

 

Eventually, some of the palest homo sapiens—through study and introspection—have learned to value the diversity of all members of our species, to understand the beauty of humankind’s richness, to embrace the dazzling array of humanity all descended from those first few in that fecund valley, in Africa, where our species was born.

 

Some have learned.  But not all.

 More’s the pity. 

The East African Rift Valley: Where We Became People

Annamaria on Monday

To geologists, the most interesting place is in East Africa: the largest seismically active rift system on earth.  What’s happening there is that new tectonic plates are being formed by their spreading apart from the landmass.  This the opposite of where tectonic plates have pushed into each other to form mountain ranges.  In this case, when hunks of a tectonic plate separate, it causes chasms.  In the distant past, other such divorces have taken place on our sacred planet, but they are all now underwater or silted in—no longer active.

The separations—and there are two of them—taking place in East Africa have been going on since the onset of the Miocene about 25 million years ago.   The Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate are still moving, now at the rate of six or seven millimeters per year.  In another 10 million years or so, the Somali Plate will be completely broken off, and the sea will surround it.

Earth scientists are fascinated to be able to study this process and to theorize about why and how it is happening in this geologic wonder of the world.   The rift area includes not only parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, but also extends into Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the African Great Lakes.  The rift is deepest north of Nairobi.  Theories vary as to why this process is underway just there and no where else on earth.  It seems that, like many thorny scientific questions, this one is a result of interactions of more than one force, making it difficult to sort out.

We know that the East African Rift Zone is the site of many dormant and active volcanoes, fifty of them in Ethiopia alone.  The Crater Highlands of Tanzania are part of this system, even though they now lie outside the rift area.  One of the active volcanoes is unique: The magma of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano contains no silica, so it has extremely low viscosity.  National Geographic described it this way: “Its lava fountains crystallize in midair then shatter like glass.”  Wow, wouldn’t I love to witness that!

Ol Doinyo Lengai

Most fascinating to me is that this is where our race Homo Sapiens evolved.  The bones of our hominid ancestors have emerged from the sediments of the Rift Valley highlands.  These include the famous “Lucy”, the partial australopithecine skeleton from 3 million years ago, discovered by anthropologist Donald Johanson.   The rift in Ethiopia more recently yielded two other 10-million-year-old hominid ancestors: Chororapithecus abyssinicus and Nakalipithecus nakayamai.

Since so many hominid fossils have been found in the Great Rift Valley, scientists have begun to think that the evolving conditions there played a pivotal role in the development of our species.  Current theorists believe that the local situation caused the climate to alternate between wet and arid, which forced our hominid ancestors to adapt by becoming bipedal, increasing their brain power, and developing culturally.  My favorite article on this theory is the 2008 paper by Beth Christensen and Mark Maslin, delightfully titled “Rocking the Cradle of Humanity.”

For me personally, the African wilderness plays in my blood and in my soul in such a way that my response runs far deeper than ordinary joy.   This is where our species evolved, and I believe that, when we human beings go there, regardless of where we were born, on a cellular level, we recognize the place as home.  Ever since I first went, when I am not there, in my soul, I am homesick for it.