We are all African

The discovery of Homo Naledi has once again pitted evolutionists against creationists.

I have a personal theory around evolution and it bolsters my pride in South Africa and it’s people every time I get the opportunity to spout forth.

Africans are everywhere:

The cradle of Humankind is universally recognised as being situated about 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. The site currently occupies 47,000 hectares and contains a complex of limestone caves.

The Sterkfontein Caves contain the discovery of a 2.3-million-year-old fossil Australopithecus africanus (nicknamed “Mrs. Ples”) was found in 1947 by Robert Broom and John T. Robinson. The find helped corroborate the 1924 discovery of the juvenile Australopithecus africanus skull, “Taung Child”, by Raymond Dart, at Taung in the North West Province of South Africa, where excavations still continue.

Nearby the site, the Rising Star Cave system contains the Dinaledi Chamber (chamber of stars) in which were discovered fifteen fossil skeletons of an extinct species of hominin, provisionally named Homo naledi.

Sterkfontein alone has produced more than a third of early hominid fossils ever found prior to 2010. The Dinaledi Chamber contains over 1500 H. naledi fossils, the most extensive discovery of a single hominid species ever found in Africa.

The common chimpanzee and the bonobo of the genus Pan are the closest living evolutionary relatives to humans, sharing a common ancestor with humans about four to seven million years ago. Research by Mary-Claire King in 1973 found 99% identical DNA between human beings and chimpanzees but later research modified that finding to about 94% commonality, with some of the difference occurring in noncoding DNA.

The above facts contain very strong indications that the spark to create humans originated in the Cradle of Humankind here in Africa.

Accepting that theory leads to only one conclusion – our early African ancestors then travelled North, West and East occupying the areas now known as Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

So that common umbilical cord is one that binds us all the world over allowing everyone to claim African Ancestry – how cool is that?

One can take the theory just a bit further and say that the early Africans were the first colonisers and, when they returned to Africa overland and in their ships they literally became the first returning exiles to the land of their birth.

So the next time you meet a fellow Asian/European/American greet them in the full knowledge that we are the ones privileged to be living in their place of birth and have a little pity on them for forever feeling disconnected from their homeland.

As for our Chief Whip, Mathole Motshekga, saying that the discovery of Homo Naledi “…supports the West’s story that we are subhumans” and “That is why today no African is respected anywhere in the world because of this type of theory,” we may find that the knowledge that Africa gave birth to the world’s population is something to be proud of and we should be encouraging our fellow Africans to tour their Cradle and join us in victory.

The official government reaction to the Homo naledi find was, positive, with deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa saying “our common umbilical cord is buried” in Africa. Homo naledi underlines that “we are bound by a common ancestor”, he declared.

Right on Cyril – let us capitalise on this.