WE ARE PEAS OF THE SAME POD

Human migration - routes and dates

According to palaeontology our species is an African one: Africa is where we first evolved, and this is because the earliest fossils of recognizably modern Homo sapiens appear in the fossil record at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, around 200,000 years ago. Although earlier fossils may be found over the coming years, this is our best understanding of when and approximately where we originated.

According to the genetic and paleontological record, we only started to leave Africa between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago. What set this in motion is uncertain, but we think it has something to do with major climatic shifts that were happening around that time—a sudden cooling in the Earth’s climate driven by the onset of one of the worst parts of the last Ice Age. This cold snap would have made life difficult for our African ancestors and the genetic evidence points to a sharp reduction in population size around this time. In fact, the human population likely dropped to fewer than 10,000. We were holding on by a thread.

Once the climate started to improve, after 70,000 years ago, we came back from this near-extinction event. The population expanded, and some intrepid explorers ventured beyond Africa. The earliest people to colonize the Eurasian landmass likely did so across the Bab-al-Mandab Strait separating present-day Yemen from Djibouti. These early beachcombers expanded rapidly along the coast to India, and reached Southeast Asia and Australia by 50,000 years ago. The first great foray of our species beyond Africa had led us all the way across the globe.

Slightly later, a little after 50,000 years ago, a second group appears to have set out on an inland trek, leaving behind the certainties of life in the tropics to head out into the Middle East and southern Central Asia. From these base camps, they were poised to colonize the northern latitudes of Asia, Europe, and beyond.

Around 20,000 years ago a small group of these Asian hunters headed into the face of the storm, entering the East Asian Arctic during the Last Glacial Maximum. At this time the great ice sheets covering the far north had literally sucked up much of the Earth’s moisture in their vast expanses of white wasteland, dropping sea levels by more than 300 feet. This exposed a land bridge that connected the Old World to the New, joining Asia to the Americas. In crossing it, the hunters had made the final great leap of the human journey. By 15,000 years ago they had penetrated the land south of the ice, and within 1,000 years they had made it all the way to the tip of South America. Some may have even made the journey by sea.

In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans, also called the "Out of Africa" theory (OOA), recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), replacement hypothesis, or recent African origin model (RAO). When humans first ventured out of Africa some 60,000 years ago, they left genetic footprints still visible today. By mapping the appearance and frequency of genetic markers in modern peoples, we create a picture of when and where ancient humans moved around the world. These great migrations eventually led the descendants of a small group of Africans to occupy even the farthest reaches of the Earth.

The Out of Africa theory is not unfounded and anecdotal. Evidence supporting the Out of Africa model are:

·         the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens are African

·         fossil evidence indicates that modern humans quickly replaced earlier humans in Europe and western Asia.

·         all living people show little genetic diversity. This is interpreted as being the result of a relatively recent replacement of earlier, more diverse populations.

·         a variety of different DNA studies on modern humans all suggest a recent common ancestry from a small gene pool. Most of these point to Africa as the origin of this population

·         DNA from contemporary humans can be used to produce maps of human movement throughout the world and show how long an indigenous population has lived in an area. These indicate modern human origins in Africa.

·         analysis of the Neanderthal genome and comparisons with modern humans does support the view that the vast majority of genes of non-Africans came with the spread of modern humans that originated in Africa and then spread throughout the world.

The India story

From what is Ethiopia today the initial migrants traveled north and crossed into the Arabian Peninsula. Early archeological evidence of H. sapiens fossils outside Africa was discovered in the prehistoric caves of Qafzeh and Skhul, in present-day Israel. New mass-spectrometric techniques have dated these fossils to ~80–106 kya (kya is 1000 years ago – a unit of time in Astronomy, Geology and Paleontology). Some traveled further north into central Asia, which became the staging ground for migrations into Serbia and Europe.

The Indian subcontinent-comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar–became one of the first geographical regions of the world to be populated by H. sapiens . One group from the Arabian Peninsula took the coastal route through India, Myanmar, and Malaysia to Australia. Studies conducted by the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project in 2007 and 2013 found that people living in a village near Madurai in South India carried the same rare genetic markers as some Australian aborigines and people living in Africa . The findings showed a link between the three continents and confirmed that the people in Australia and India with this genetic marker were likely descendants of the original coastal migrants from Africa.

The migration through India was interrupted about 75 kya by the eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, which is recorded as one of the largest volcanic eruptions in this planet's history, resulting in an extended nuclear winter and ice age. Michael Petraglia and his team of archeologists discovered stone tools at Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, South India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption. These tools match those used in Africa from the same period and suggested the presence of modern humans in India at the time of the Toba event. These were the ancestors of our Adivasis perhaps.  After warming of the climate, new migrations out of Africa from ~50 kya populated India with large numbers of humans who later became known as Dravidians.

The Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Some people believe India’s earliest inhabitants were the Dravidians of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. According to the Aryan Invasion Theory promoted by the erstwhile British rulers of India, these Dravidians were driven away South by the mighty Aryans who migrated from Central Asia during the 2nd millennium BCE. Several school students all over India still continue to learn about the Aryan Invasion Theory, but now we know that what they’re learning is not actually be true. Had the Aryans migrated into India, we would expect some evidence of different tools, weapons, objects of daily use, pottery style and art forms, but that’s not the case.

There is evidence that strongly suggests that the Aryan invasion never happened. However, there is no evidence to support this 19th century theory which was propagated by Indologists like Max Muller. The theory was deliberately misused by colonial powers to divide the North and South, and upper and lower castes. Swami Vivekananda also questioned the myth of the Aryan invasion. “There is not one word in our scriptures, not one to prove that the Aryans ever came from anywhere outside India … the whole of India is Aryan, nothing else,” Swamiji had said.

So today when we designate some people as immigrants we are simply showing our ignorance of the history of our human race. Our appearance, culture, traditions, language, food, drink, dress and behaviour might differ, we may belong to different nations, religions, caste and creed, our slant of the eyes, sharpness of the nose and colour of the skin may differ, our Gods whom we worship may differ but genetically it is absolutely beyond doubt that we are cut from the same cloth. This may be a very disturbing to those who believe in their self declared supremacy but only this is fact and all the rest is fiction.