i-Namibia

The lion would walk across the footprints of a Zebra without a second thought if there was no smell, noise or sight of the animal, whereas homo sapiens, the San and us, their cousins, was the first being on earth which survived until the present day to think about the past, presence, and future in such a way as to be able to deduce from the form of the footsteps and the possible state of mind of the other being the distance and direction of the possible prey. It is this kind of thinking that is still unique and common to all human beings on earth today.

Part of the the series Know thy Neighbours even better

That is the claim of Dr Spencer Wells, the leading scientist of the Human Genome Project, the landmark study now assembling the world’s largest collection of DNA samples and employing the latest in testing technology and computer analysis to examine hundreds of thousands of genetic profiles from all over the globe. Check out TV series about the project, as documented on YouTube about the Genographic Project.

Among it’s findings, for example the discovery that we are all indeed brothers and sisters, yeah, no small finding, indeed, yipeah, celebrate over all racists, come on, is the fact that of all the tribes in the world the San are the oldest still existing ones, being direct descendants of the imaginary “Adam & Eve” and being their own branch, the first one, in the family tree since Adam. Like in the photo below. They are the thick branch, we are the rest of the tree. But the same tree.

Adam and Eve are the roots, having lived in East Africa some 70 to 40.000 years ago.

And due to the fact that Dr Well’s genetic research has shown that they are genetically the closest to our all Grandfather, in fact so close to the roots, that one would expect them to have the most “universal”, the least differentiated, face of us all, at least if you bother to look at it from a logical point of view, although that finding might seem counterintuitive to some. However, Dr Wells (born April 6, 1969 in Georgia, USA), geneticist and anthropologist, and an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, the coordinator of The Genographic Project, formerly Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford University, phew, what a feat considering his young age, actually flew around the whole world to get a personal impression of his abstract, ivory-tower research findings. And he himself was amazed how his theories proved to be correct.

Look at the photos of these San-speaking Namibians below. Is it not amazing how one can find find virtually any typical facial feature of anybody around today — in the San so isolated and so desperate. Let’s help.

It is like a dream come true. Everything predicted in their blood seems to be written in their faces. It is like looking at a composite model of every face from around the world today, the eye shapes of East Asians, the cheek bones of Mongolians, the mid brown skin that can turn darker or lighter.

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Check out the documentary, Part 2 of 13 or so. It is really worthwhile. In the part of the series blended in below, Spencer arrives in Namibia and tries to explain to the San how grateful he is that they still exist.

Science in Namibia is fun. The dottore of the study, Spencer Wells and an English- or Afrikaans-speaking Namibian San expert, who actually knows, or at least is trying very hard, how to hunt like a San, or Adam’s most direct son of us all on this planet. With the aid of a bow and arrow, the cruise missiles of the Middle Stone Age. And human intelligence. Speaking the same language also helps …

He also explains quite vividly and interestingly how the San give us a glimpse of our ancestors and how come the combination of a powerful language and state of the art technology enabled the group of humans who quit speaking the ancient click sounds of the Khoisan languages to conquer the whole world. It is that set of skills and some basic rules of cohabitation that gave and give us the edge in the eternal selection process.

How clever they are, the San, how clever we are, mankind. Funny. Check out Part 2 of the series.

And here is a playlist of the first three and the final episode for your quick perousal.

To sum up what Spencer Wells had so say in the videos about the practical consequences of his research, you, and I, in fact everyone in the world, are literally African under the skin, brothers and sisters, which are separated by a mere 2000 generations. And this family has shown a lot of of courage and resilience and a cool combination of intelligence and human spirit in the journey that started so long ago. Let’s keep on rolling. Old concepts of race and colour are not scientific and impede human progress. We are all brothers and sisters, the San cousins, not only in spirit, but actually in blood and flesh, too. Is that not even more of an encouragement to get get along in peace through trade with goods and services, competition in sport, and sharing of art?