African Americans

I often wonder why the name African Americans is applied to black people from the USA. Humans love to classify and define everyone and everything. Everyone who lives in the USA is an African American no matter what colour their skin is. The Human Species originated in Africa and every person in the world can trace their ancestry and their genes back to Africa. Our sub-species migrated out of Africa about 100, 000 years ago but of course many of our group remained there.

Recent discoveries (see my previous post) suggest that Modern Humans interbred with Neanderthal man. Even though Neanderthals originated in either Europe or the Near East, their predecessor the Heidelberg man originated in Africa. Heidelberg Man was also a predecessor of Modern Man. The recent evidence suggests that all three of us Modern Man, Neanderthal Man and Heidelberg Man are in fact sub-species of Homo Sapiens. Even though Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) took a separate path out of Africa, about 500,000 years ago, to Modern Man (Homo sapiens sapiens), we were able to interbreed when we met again in Europe or the near East 450,000 years later. The Neanderthals and Heidelbergs died out to leave genetic markers in the last remaining sub-species -Us.

What does this mean? It means that for hundreds of thousands of years Human Beings have been migrating to and from Africa, from where we all originated and they have been exchanging their genes to leave just one sub-species, Modern Man, who now populates the whole world.

There are practically no differences between members of our sub-species no matter where we come from.The colour of our eyes, skin or hair makes no difference. The shape of our bodies makes no difference either, whether we are from the Arctic, North Africa, Central Africa or Europe, we are all one sub-species. Even though Neanderthals looked different to us, our similarities far outweigh the differences and the evidence suggests that they were just as intelligent and capable as us. They were adapted as well to their environment as we are to ours and part of their genetic inheritance survives in us today. Their genome was 99.7% the same as ours.

Any belief that one group of Humans is superior or different to another is clearly irrational. It is time to stop classifying people into specific groups; we all have the same mental and physical capacities and instincts. It is time to change public policy to reflect the facts contained in our genes. We are all Africans by heritage.