At the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg
All of us, as members of the human species, have evolved from the same African ancestors. The African continent is the birthplace of humanity, a land that bonds us by our shared beginnings. Our common ancestral heritage serves as a perfect analogy for what the civil rights leaders in South Africa and throughout the world have been trying to communicate for decades: we may have different skin colors, different backgrounds, and different beliefs, but we are all human. We are connected by the threads of our origins, which essentially makes us all part of the same family. I found it ironic that South Africa is home to much of the existing archaeological proof of our similarity as humans, since the nation’s disputes in recent history have been focused almost exclusively on our differences as humans. These differences, which are the result of millions of years of evolution, have perpetuated hate and conflict. Our differences are slight details compared to our similarities. Perhaps if the advocates of Apartheid had thought more about our common roots, they would have seen the uselessness in persecuting their own brothers and sisters.
The Cradle of Humankind, located in the Gauteng province, is the most important of South Africa’s seven World Heritage sites. At the visitor center called Maropeng (which appropriately means “returning to the place of our origins”), we were able to learn about the important role South Africa has played in uncovering the earliest elements of human history. As we’ve observed at the Lesedi Cultural village, as well as in Mark Mathabane’s accounts in Kaffir Boy, many of South Africa’s tribal peoples emphasize ties to their ancestors. This reliance is fitting, since the ancestors of humans all over the globe once dwelled in these lands. The first known hominids, the zoological family to which humans belong, appeared 7 million years ago. Homo sapiens, the only living hominids of today, have only been around for about 200,000 years. However, our most direct ancestors, those who belong to the homo genus, emerged about 2.3 million years ago in Africa.
The Cradle of Humankind is best known for its Australopithecus afrikanus specimens, which are the fossils of hominids that lived between 2 and 3 million years ago. The Taung Child, discovered by Professor Raymond Dart in 1924, was the first Australopithecus afrikanus to be found in South Africa. The discovery revolutionized what the world knew about humankind’s place in nature, and was the basis for the hypothesis that humankind was born in Africa. Years later in the Cradle of Humankind, Dr. Robert Broom made the groundbreaking discovery of “Mrs. Ples,” which remains the best example of an adult Australopithecus cranium ever found. “Little Foot,” the only virtually complete Australopithecus skeleton in the world, was also found at the same site. The Cradle of Humankind is also renowned for containing some of the oldest stone tools and pieces of rock art in Africa, as well as the fossils of dinosaurs from at least 200 million years ago. Dart and Broom were considered the fathers of paleoanthropology in South Africa, and the Cradle of Humankind was their domain.
Since the first emergence of life on Earth over 3.8 billion years ago, the pattern of life on this planet has continued to increase in complexity. Although our roots are the same, the human species has evolved to live as individually unique organisms. The human sense of identity and the way we communicate with one another is different and more advanced than that of any other creature on Earth. According to Charles Darwin, the first and most prominent person to articulate the theory of evolution, we have developed this way as a result of natural selection. Much of our evolution can be attributed to the earliest surroundings of our species, which was right here in Africa. Darwin claimed that humans, among other creatures, adapted biologically to their environment in order to survive. While this has certainly led to unimaginable progress by the human race, it may also be the eventual cause of our demise. Since the most recent phase of evolution, the world has become decidedly overpopulated. This has led to serious environmental strain, poverty, and a shortage of resources.
Something that struck me during our exploration of the Maropeng exhibit was the lack of reference we have in terms of where our species stands in time. As humans, we may fall at the very beginning of time, with billions of years ahead of us and no chance of extinction. On the other hand, we could very well be at the end of our rope, generations away from becoming extinct. Many scientists claim that we are currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, with humans as the major agents of change. The previous five mass extinctions have rocked life on Earth, wiping out entire species by way of wide-scale environmental change. If we are not careful about our exploitation of the Earth’s resources, we could be on the verge of serious self-destruction by speeding up the process of a sixth mass extinction. According to the Gaia Principle, developed by James Lovelock in 1979, the Earth can be described as a single, living organism. Its biological, geological, and chemical processes rely heavily on the feedback of its inhabitants.
As citizens of this world, we are responsible for our own fate in a multitude of ways. We have been programmed to evolve according to our surroundings, and evolve we shall. Evolution not only occurs on a large scale, but it is ever-present in our daily lives. Our thinking evolves with education and experience, and each generation of humans knows more than the last. The people of South Africa, a land that has hosted millions of years of human evolution, are in a miniature phase of evolution themselves. They have evolved tremendously from the decades of Apartheid and racial oppression into a newly refreshed “rainbow nation” filled with hope and development. The lessons about the physical history of humankind in South Africa can be applied to its social and cultural present. Human populations seem to be different in terms of physical attributes, but beneath the surface we are all virtually identical. Race holds no genetic boundary. Humans have found ways to negatively label and exploit differences since the beginning of our reign on this planet. People have tried to argue the superiority of one race over another, but no one can argue with science. We are one species. What better nation is there to prove this fact than the Cradle of Humankind, the place in which we all share our common origins?