Ngomakurira – Omo Kibish

tional Geographic (March 2006), some 150,000 years ago ‘Eve’ emerged from the long journey of evolution.
‘Scientists now calculate that all living humans are related to a single woman,’ who lived somewhere in East Africa. ‘Soon,’ she was joined by ‘Adam.’ (So the bible was right though it got the order wrong.) ‘Increasingly refined DNA studies have confirmed this opening chapter of our story over and over: all the variously shaped and shaded people of earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gatherers.’
The oldest site paleoanthropologists have found for human life is Omo Kibish in Ethiopia. The NG provides a fascinating map of variously coloured dots showing the diversity of genetic markers. The greatest variety is in Africa where the dots are orange, yellow, pink, purple, indigo, blue, light green, brown, gray, etc. Some 50 – 70,000 years ago the purple, pink, indigo and blue dots only spill over into Asia, Europe and Australia. Finally some 15 – 20, 000 years ago, ‘when sea levels were low and land connected Siberia to Alaska,’ the final exodus was made into the Americas. The article is called the Greatest Journey Ever Told, the Trail of our DNA. It is certainly gut wrenching to consider all that went before every new birth that we celebrate. Each child took an awful lot of making. Science has this wonderful ability to open our minds. For many decades we have known something of the extent of the universe in space and time, though our minds can hardly grasp it. But here is something closer to home: our own story.
Is the National Geographic story science or is it history? Is it mystery or is it prayer? It is all these. It depends on how each of us approaches it. If we look at ourselves in this mirror it makes nonsense of our wars, our hatreds and our prejudices. This DNA discovery shocks us firmly into grasping that we are one family and we are all brothers and sisters. And if we say ‘Our Father’ we do so with a new understanding.