BREAKING CHAINS - AT LAW- MINISTRY

The second theory is that of Polygenetic Theory which contends that man was born in Africa, and also Europe, and also in Asia. In other words that there was several locations in the world where man finds his origin. The Polygenetic Theory It made a certain amount of sense, not that it made good sense, but it made a certain amount of sense would explain that there are different people in different parts of the world with different characteristics, but under close scrutiny there were two things that made this theory fall apart more or less. The first is that nature never strikes twice in its evolution, it doesn't ever hit the same place two times. Nature doesn't create twice the same being.

In the animal you can see that through out evolution of animals, a being was created and it either disappeared or changed some what or a new being completely was created, but never the same being twice. And to remain strictly scientific, it doesn't make common sense to say man was created twice. It is in the Kenya region that we find all of the most ancient evolutionary information, and its for this reason that scientist are now able to say with certainty that they know this is the case that man could only have been created one time. All fossils that have been found outside of Africa have been found under close analysis to be much more recent than those found in Africa. And no other continent in the world has the complete series of fossils indicating the six specimens of man.

The three specimens which represent the very beginning of mankind can not be found on no other continent in the world, not in Europe, not in Asia, and of course can not be found in America, ththen of the best they never left Africa, the complete set remains in Africa. The accumulation then of the best information now makes it very clear that man had its origin in Africa. The only specimen that appears in America is that of Homo Sapien Sapien. America was peopled through the Bering Straits at the end of the final glaciation, and its for that reason that we find only Homo Sapien Sapien in America. In Asia we have Homo Erectus and the Neanderthaler man, and the Homo Sapien.

History tends to have one perspective. With this holding true in the textbooks of high schools, elementary schools, and beyond, one cannot fully explore the possibilities of what could have been thousands and thousands of years ago. Africa is a prime example of this. In the eyes of many, Africa is only seen as a continent full of war, poverty, and devastation. What some people fail to realize is its history and connection to every single person on this earth. In fact, there is evidence showing that all people are linked back to the humanity born and developed in Africa.

In Europe we have the same Homo Erectus, Neanderthaler, and Homo Sapien. Some of them left by the Seuz Canal to go into Asia and Eastern Europe, and some went by the Straits of Gibraltor up into the north and into Europe. The Polycentric Theory makes the effort to establish a hierarchy of races, and to indicate that some races are inferior to others. If the three races had, had different origins then one could say that they different intellectual capacities, having had a different intellectual history. It is the Monogenetic Theory that supports the notion that because our origin is the same, we have the same intellectual capacities. No race is Superior to any other. All races have the same intellectual capacity.

In Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974, Donald Johanson caught glimpse of a white fossilized bone out of the corner of his eye and recognized it as hominid. Johanson and his team were able to recover a forty percent completed fossil, dubbed “Lucy.” She was described as the first known member of Australopithecus afarensis, an extinct hominid that lived around three million years ago (Fox News 20, 2007). Lucy contributed a great deal towards shifting the view of Africa in a whole new direction and opening up new perspectives about its history. This essay will focus on the African source of mankind, its influence and relation to the Egyptian civilization, and the elements that allowed for the survival and expansion of humanity. Specifically, I will discuss the undeniable fact that Africa is the cradle of humanity. It is said that modern man first appeared in Africa and then spread out to colonize the rest of the world (Diop, 1974).

In other words, Africa is seen as the origin of humankind. This belief, better known as the Out of Africa theory, is best related with the Monogenetic theory (Diop, 1986). This view states that there is one source of mankind. Cheikh Anta Diop (1986), who strongly argued for this theory, purposes that nature never strikes twice in its evolution and she does not create the same being twice (p. 284). His belief in the Monogenetic theory provided him with the basis to verify his most important theory: that human life began in Africa. In addition, complete fossils have been found on the African continent, with the most ancient evolutionary findings in Kenya and around the area that comprises Ethiopia and Tanzania, which certainly supports the theory that life began there (Diop, 1986, p. 284).

The fact that the oldest fossils of modern man have been found in Africa not only provides credibility to the Out of Africa theory, but it confirms that Homo sapiens sapiens was present in South Africa more than 100,000 years ago (Diop, 1986, p. 14). In 1912, a British geologist attempted to prove that life had begun in England by piecing together a fossil supposedly found on British soil. At the time, this fossil named the “Piltdown man,” was said to be the ancestor of modern man. However, the fabricated skull was later found to have been a fake by a British scientist, Professor Oakley, in the 1950s (WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998).

The image above is of the Piltdown man. His forehead and eyes noticeably belong to a modern man, but the mandible of his lower teeth is that of a monkey (Diop, 1986, p. 181). Although such fabrications take place in attempt to change the reality of history, it demonstrates the lengths certain geologists and other scientists have gone to establish their theory. To this day, Africa still remains the only continent on earth to hold true fossil remains, showing that it is in fact the origin of humanity. Martin Bernal (1987) wrote about re-establishing the place of Africa and its founding parentage, just as Diop (1974) had done with civilization in general. Through their work and the continuous revelations of false fossils, there is more certainty that the origin of human race was on the continent of Africa. Furthermore, genetic tracking provides evidence that every human being carries the mitochondrial DNA of one African woman, the “Real Eve,” from over 150,000 years ago (Discovery Channel, 2008). Diop reinforces his belief in the African source of mankind by saying, “If Africans never left Africa, the rest of the world would be an unpeopled desert,” (1986, p. 325).

It would be more appropriate to cite Africa and Egypt as “Africa, Egypt” due to the fact that they directly related to one another. Africa’s influence on the Egyptian civilization is immense. Diop (1974) argued that the first civilizations emerged from the interior of Africa to the Nile Basin. It is from this basin, Diop (1974) claims, that African people fanned out across the continent and onto other lands around the sixth century BC. As the people of Africa evolved, according to Diop, there were five failed attempts to migrate off of the continent. In other words, the first five human species could simply not survive and either died out or disappeared. The sixth, however, was successful and allowed for the expansion of mankind and the creation of the first civilization in Egypt (Diop, 1986, p. 284). Without a doubt, the population of ancient Egypt was African.

The clearest sign of its African origin is language, for the speech of ancient Egyptians belonged to the language group called Afroasiatic, a family of languages which originated probably in the southeastern Sahara (Van Sertima, 1989, p. 47). Diop (1986) argued that the Egyptian language was related to African dialects and can be connected to the Wolof language of today (p. 49). Bernal (1987) even argued that the Egypt civilization was the first to invent basic elements of human life, such as writing, mathematics, religion, medicine, and philosophy, which would have not been possible without the fundamental insight provided by the Africans. Ivan Van Sertima (1989) also wrote about the Egyptians connection to the Africans. He revealed that the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom never refrained from identifying themselves with the Anu, or the Africans (p. 122). The Egyptian artists of that time also represented Egyptian and African people as one in the same.

The photograph above reveals the dark skin color that Egyptians commonly associated with, which clearly resembled that of Africans. Not only did the Egyptians term themselves, “kmt,” or Blacks literally, they called their land “Kemet,” meaning land of the blacks (p. 336). Van Sertima stated further, “The ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans” (1989, p. 125). The migration of the Africans to Egypt and beyond eventually gave rise to all non-African populations and civilizations, and in time, provided the variety of different races the earth holds today. If man had stayed in Africa and chose not to go to other continents, the rest of the world would not have been populated. In fact, in the words of Diop, “Man would simply be Black and homogenous,” (1986, p. 325). Numerous factors contributed to the survival and expansion of humanity within Africa. During this time, the equatorial region of Africa strongly favored dark skin due to the intense sunlight and high temperatures (Diop, 1986).

The ultraviolet rays would have destroyed the humans if it had not been for melanin, a dark skin pigment, to protect their skin. It is said by Van Sertima (1989), that the color Black served as protection to the humans (p. 15). Due to the fact that without this pigmentation no humanity would have survived, provides enough evidence to state that the first man had to be black. However, as the first Negroids began to migrate to other continents, one major factor changed: climate (Diop, 1986). Just as climate had determined the melanin pigment in Africans, it also determined the change in pigmentation in other indigenous groups across the world. In his writing, Diop (1974) mentions Gloger’s Law.

This law states that warm-blooded animals evolving in a warm, humid climate will secrete a black pigment. However, differentiation in other climates causes the original “stock” to split into different races, Diop explains. The different climatic phenomena in other parts of the world caused man to change or have a different look (Diop, 1986, p. 284). For example, Europe’s climate was very different from what it is today. The time period before and during the final glaciations created an extremely cold environment.

Europe was actually so cold that it was impossible to live on the open ground, and instead, required people to live in caves. It is because of this climate that white man entered the human race that exists today (Diop, 1986, p. 325). With race being simply a matter of climate, it inadvertently shows that all people can be traced back to the humanity created in Africa. Although some people’s first impressions of Africa are formed by news stories, movies, or magazine photographs, Africa’s history is much more than meets the eye. As the original source of mankind, the influencing factor of the world’s first civilization, and the start of humanity as it is known today, Africa is without question, the reinforcing link that unites every person across the world. Thus, making it clear that everyone has something in common – the cradle from which they were born.

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