The Mightiest Migration

In my earlier article, ‘The Mitochondrial Eve’, I had talked about the origin of modern man as being in Africa. I left the question about how our ancestors sprawled across the globe from the original cradle to be answered for another day. Today, I will attempt to outline this greatest movement as briefly as reasonably permissible on a ‘coffee (oops-tea) table’ blog.

I had deliberately put a gap between the two articles for the very real fear that you might think that I’ve turned into some sort of an amateur anthropologist. Those of you who feel that this topic of peeping into the distant past is irrelevant, boring and a waste of time may stop reading now, and I will fully understand. The others who have sufficient curiosity on the subject of our roots (and routes), and don’t mind spending a few precious minutes in filling their minds about what we know so far in the fascinating journey of mankind, please read on.

Frankly, while there is consensus amongst both archaeologists and geneticists about the start point of modern humans in Africa, there is less agreement about the paths they took to spread out around the planet. But then, I am going by the Keynesian dictum, “I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”

Out of Africa
What seems almost certain that probably 125,000 years ago a group of early humans traveled up the Nile and the Sahara desert (which wasn’t a desert at all at the time), across the Sinai and into the Levant*. Tragically, this was a bad time to leave Africa as it coincided with the onset of the glaciations. The advancing glaciers across northern Europe turned North Africa and the Levant into a dry desert, and the early bunch of humanity to leave Africa perished.

Then, at a remarkably recent date – about 85,000 years ago – one small wavelet from the region around Ethiopia lapped up onto the shores of the Arabian peninsula , into the south-western tip of what is now Yemen. This was by crossing the Red Sea, possibly using using primitive watercraft, between the Horn of Africa and Arabia, which would have been only a few miles wide. All non-Africans are the descendants of these travelers, who may have numbered just a thousand people.(Unbelievable, but true).

Second time unlucky
Over the next 10,000 years, the flow of this humanity rapidly spread along the coast of southern and southeast Asia all the way to China, passing through Yemen, Oman (from where I write this), Iran, India, Myanmar and Indonesia.

As this proliferation of mankind was taking shape, a catastrophic event – eruption of Mount Toba in the island of Sumatra – pretty much wiped out humanity about 74,000 years ago. The massive volcanic eruption produced a winter that may have lasted for 6 years, and completely wiped out the population west of Toba – through Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, all of India and Pakistan, upto southern Iran. It is estimated that India was covered 5 meters deep in ash from the eruption. Outside Africa, only a thin band of humans remained, across southern Arabia, and those who had already moved east of Toba – that is eastern Indonesian islands and the southern coast of China.

The jump to Australia
In the next 10,000 years – from about 75,000 to 65,000 years ago – the human population re-established itself and started radiating again, primarily from its centre in East Asia. Sea levels were unusually low because of the glacial conditions, and this enabled humans to reach Australia and New Guinea for the first time, probably through a land bridge. A few indigenous groups on the Andaman Islands, in Malaysia and in Papua New Guinea – as well as almost all Australian Aborigines – carry signs of an ancient mitochondrial lineage, a trail of genetic bread crumbs dropped by the early migrants.

India re-occupied
The survivors of the Toba eruption then spread northwards, populating the coast of China almost to the Yellow Sea, and also started to spread back westwards towards India. By about 65,000 years ago, humans had re-occupied much of the southeast Asia upto Thailand, Myanmar and the eastern part of India. Apart from this eastern branch, India also got repopulated from the west. All this happened in 13,000 years from 65,000 to 52,000 years ago.

India is the father of Europe !
Genetic data show that the DNA of today’s western Eurasians resembles that of people of India (this is a booster for those Indians who still suffer from an inferiority complex over the goras). As population from India and Persia moved westwards, across Iraq, it reached Turkey and the gates of Europe for the first time. Between 52,000 years and 45,000 years ago, humans crossed the Bosphorus# to populate Europe, through Bulgaria, along the Danube to Hungary, Austria and eventually France.

The human torrent
Over the next 5,000 years from 45,000 – 40,000 years ago, there were several waves of migrations.

• People from coastal China moved northward finding their way into Japan from southern Russia and Sakhalin island.
• From Eastern India and Burma, people moved northwards across the eastern edge of Himalayas, into the Tibetan plateau.
• From Western India, Pakistan and Iran, people moved north-eastwards, seeding Afghanistan, former Soviet republics such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the steppes of Central Asia.
• Also, from the Middle-East, people moved westwards across northern Arabia, the Levant and Sinai, back into Africa, where they populated the Mediterranean coastline of Africa.
• From France and Austria, people moved south-west into Spain and Portugal, reaching the Atlantic coast.

So far so good. Now, over the next 15,000 years (from about 40,000 – 25,000 years ago), Central Asia became the epicenter of migrations. People from this region spread in three directions – towards eastern Europe, the Arctic Circle and eastern Siberia.

Ah, America !
The first time that hominids of any sort had ever reached America was just about 25,000 to 22,000 years ago. This was when a group of humans crossed the land bridge between Berengia (eastern Siberia) and Alaska. Perhaps, some took the coastal route southwards, across the western coast of Alaska and Canada.

Between 19,000 and 15,000 years ago, humans spread from centers in the northeast US southwards along the coast to Mexico, Central America and into the South American continent, reaching coastal areas in the northern part of Brazil. Over the next 2,500 years, these people continued to spread along the eastern coast of South America, reaching its very southern tip. Another wave of people followed the western coastal route across Canada, the US, Central America and South America.

The march into Northern Europe
Between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, when the ice age finally ended, people spread to northern Europe, which had been covered with ice sheets. People from France spread northwards into Scandinavia, and also crossed the channel to populate the British Isles. People from the areas north of the Caspian and Aral seas moved further north, to populate northern European Russia. Finally, people from Egypt and the Levant spread across the Sahara (which was grassland at the time) to populate areas in the northern Sahara.

With the settling of the Americas and northern Europe, modern humans had conquered most of the planet.

This is, dear reader, in a nutshell, the greatest story of migration spread over 125,000 years. I hope that with this slice of knowledge and the telescopic view of our past, you will learn to admire and appreciate the spirit of mankind in all its diversity. And that whenever you meet a stranger from a strangeland, wearing a garb very different from yours, speaking in a language you don’t understand, you will know that you are actually having a reunion with a long-lost member of a close-knit family.

Endpiece : Man – a being in search of meaning - Plato

* Levant – general name for the coastal lands and islands of the far eastern part of the Mediterranean, from north-eastern part of Sinai peninsula northwards through Israel, Lebanon & Syria, and westwards along the Turkish coast
# Bosphorus – Turkish strait that forms the boundary between Europe & Asia

References :
1. ‘The Greatest Journey’ by James Shreeve, published in National Geographic, March 2006
2. ‘Human Prehistory’ from essayweb.net

Hello ? Govt. of India ? Is anybody in there ?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done the jugglery act once again, for the second time in this year . Some cards in the ministerial pack reshuffled, no big ticket changes, no bold moves, another opportunity lost. The only by-product of this circus-act is that one minister has quit and at least two are sulking, ostensibly unable to digest their new portfolios. To what end, pray, this sleight of hand purports to serve?

I can’t help but intensely feel that this gigantic ship called India has no captain to steer it in the high seas. I mean who’s in charge really ? The gentle Dr. Singh, or the quietly assertive Smt. Sonia Gandhi ? Or is it the coalition politics determining the course of the voyage, in a classic case of tail wagging the dog ?

That Dr. Singh lacks political authority has long been suspected by many, but some recent handling of situations by the Congress-led UPA Govt. has cast a long shadow on its abilities to govern a difficult nation. Struck by the tsunamis of mega-scams like 2G and CWG, the leadership seems to be deeply weakened, so as to respond rather feebly to unfolding snags. Take the case of its pussyfooting with Anna Hazare and his ‘Civil Society’ members. Or how they pulled a fast one on Baba Ramdev’s fast. The much-delayed resignation of Dayanidhi Maran, tainted by allegations of corruption, and the controversy surrounding the quitting of the Solicitor General are also cases in point.

As ministers run amuck, flouting all rules, crossing the limits of protocol and breaching established procedures without an iota of shame or guilt, the Prime Minister gives a sorry impression of being utterly helpless. This is akin to an anarchy at its worst and an impotent leadership at its best. How did a government, voted to power by the world’s largest electorate for a second term just a couple of years back come to such a sordid pass ?

Stung by scams, hounded by the opposition and media alike and derided by the public at large, the entire Govt. machinery, including the babus, seems to have come to a grinding halt. Deepak Parekh, Chairman of HDFC, had recently stated that big names of Indian industry are looking overseas rather than at home for their future investments, as at least ‘investing abroad is headache-free’. This is juxtaposed against the steep decline in foreign direct investment. Ominous signs, these.

As a scared and virtually paralyzed Govt. cringes at taking decisions, larger issues are allowed to rot at the desks of powers-that-be. Runaway inflation and rising interest rates have already taken a toll on the masses and threatens to stunt business growth. Infrastructure development is crawling at a woefully slow pace, which is ironical in the world’s second fastest economy, clipping at over 8% per annum. A whopping 400 million Indians still have no access to electricity, not to mention the power blackouts wherever there is electric supply. Health and education sectors are in dire need of an overhaul. While rapid urbanization is making the cities burst at their seams, rural development leaves much to be desired. Fiscal deficit continues to burgeon as the Govt. struggles to reign in its wasteful expenditures. Shall I go on ?

You get the picture, but bear with me a little more. What about the all-pervading corruption issue ? Granted no one can completely eradicate this problem, but can an honest tax-payer at least expect some steps to stem the rot ? And is anyone even bothered to look into the delays and accumulation of huge backlog of legal cases in the lower-courts, High courts and the Supreme Court of India ? Then, there have been feeble voices to get back black money stashed abroad, only to be summarily brushed aside by the Govt. or conveniently slithered away to a ‘committee’. Ok, forget about all this. Where an ordinary citizen is afraid of knocking at the doors of the police or the judiciary in times of peril, the primary function of the Govt. to secure the rights and freedom of individuals is itself defeated. No wonder cognizable crimes like murder, burglary, kidnapping, rape, illegal arms and drugs continue to rise unabated, as the law-breakers get emboldened by the premise that their acts of sin may not even get reported. Terrorism and insurgency are problems of an entirely different dimension (as I write this, serial bomb blasts have once again killed and maimed several innocents in Mumbai).

So, hello ? Will those in charge of administering the world’s largest democracy please come out of their hiding places ? We are in desperate need of some decisive action here. There’s still three years to go before we voters again set off to elect our next Govt. All that we ask for is a dose of astute leadership, a clear vision to steer India into a brighter future and ministers who go about quietly dispensing their public duties. The twelfth five-year plan is due for rolling out, key policy decisions and draft bills like the Lokpal are pending for debate and conclusion, and there’s a lot to do on social, economic and environmental development. So will you, the ruling elite, show some strength of will, a sign of firmness, a hint of determination ?

The aspirations of over a billion people are at stake. Just get on with the real act, and for heaven’s sake don’t pull down the shade on the window of opportunity.

Hello ? Govt. of India ? Is anyone listening ?

Endpiece : The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return - Gore Vidal

The Facebook Boy

This is a purely fictional account of a conversation between a mother and her 12-year old son. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Mother (as she put a glass of milk on the study table) : Rohan, you’ve been on the computer for hours now. Shut it off, will you ?

Son (without looking up, fingers punching on the keyboard): Aww mom, just a li’l more time…..puh leeeease….

Mom : Aankhen kharab ho jayengi beta. Anyways, what are you doing on that dumb screen for so long ?

Son : Chatting ….on FB…er, Facebook, Mom

Mom : Facebook again ? Its 6 o’clock in the evening, Rohan. Time for you to go and play downstairs with your friends. Finish your milk and scurry along

Son : Mom, you know I don’t like the guys in the building….they’re not my types…and they tease me no end, I don’t know why

Mom glances at the chat box from the corner of her eyes. Rohan has typed ‘brb…mos’. She struggles to make sense of this.

Mom : Look Rohan, you must go out of the house, get some fresh air, play some games. Get a taste of real things, this is not real…

Son (cutting short) : These are real people Ma, I swear, real flesh and blood….see ? (points to a text message just received, then types in a response, ending with ‘lol’)

Mom (sarcastically): Oh yeah ? How d’you know this is not some stupid machine at the other end of the line ? The words just seem gibberish to me…what is all this ‘ttul’ ? ‘ppl’ ? ‘omg’ ?

Son : Aww, c’mon mom. This is our lingo. Kind of short and sweet, na ?

Mom (visibly aghast) : Sonny, you are ruining your language. This is murder of English. Besides, your class teacher was telling me you haven’t been very attentive in class lately. And you’re kind of aloof. What’s happening ?

Son (sheepish) : Nothing ma. Sometimes a guy just wants to be left alone. I’m ok.

Mom (runs her hand through Rohan’s hair) : Look, you must open up more to people, socialize, make new friends. When I was your age….

Son (interrupting) : But I have lots of friends….in fact 246 of them. Right here, see ?

Mom (looking into Rohan’s eyes, trying not to appear disturbed) : Beta, you can’t have meaningful relationships with such a lot of people. I mean it’s nice to know you’re kind of popular, but true friendships take a lot of time to cultivate. Come to think of it, I had only one or two really good friends at any stage of my life

Son (looking away) : I do have my favorite friends…..

Mom : Then you should be with them more often in person, not through a computer screen. You know, like, face-to-face…not Facebook

Son : I don’t feel the need to be physically present for being friends. Besides, some of them stay so far away. So only way to be in touch with them is through the net

Mom : Beta, but you can only know them truly if you, well, play with them….talk to them. There is a lot of sharing and caring to be done for being friends

Son : That’s what I do Mom….just the way I do it is different from yours

Mom : But you can’t show your emotions in this way of communication, you can’t feel , you can’t express yourself fully, can you ?

Son : Oh yes, I can. See all those smileys here ?

Mom : Hmmm…I just hope you grow out of this fad, beta. Now, just finish your milk, change to some better clothes, and I’ll ask dad to take out the car. We’re going out for a nice li’l drive

Son (sighing) : Ok mom. Just gimme a sec.

Rohan’s fingers fire away on the keyboard, and Mom catches a glimpse of some of the text : ‘gtg…cul’. She shakes her head in resignation.

Post script : The next day, Rohan comes back from school, his hair disheveled, shirt torn and a nasty bruise on his left cheek. He fights back his tears as his startled mom opens her mouth to ask him what happened. Then, instinctively, she throws her arms around her son, and envelops him in her bosom. Rohan weeps silently and clutches his mom tightly into a bear hug. Not a word is uttered.

A minute passes before a reassuring thought crosses the mother’s mind : ‘There is still hope that my boy will grow up to be a fine, sensitive human being’.

Endpiece : Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts - Margaret Lee Runbeck

The Mitochondrial Eve

‘All of us living humans, over 6.9 billion of them, are related to a single woman who lived nearly 150,000 years ago in Africa’

I was incredulous when my friend mentioned this to me, on that fateful evening when we had discussed about the Aryans of Ladakh. I must have been numbed by a state of utter disbelief which struck to the core of my existence, for my whole being froze as the bolt of the proclamation ran through every living cell of mine.

Are you as startled and curious to know the veracity of this contention ? Have you ever wondered where do we all come from ? How did we get to where we are today ? If yes, then read on.

Firstly, if you were not already aware, it is now established that that the human genetic code, or genome, is 99.9% identical throughout the world. That’s the first irrefutable proof that all of us homo sapiens on this planet are actually one big family. But who started it all ?

For decades, paleontologists and archaeologists have tried to decipher the story of human origins and migrations through clues of sparsely scattered bones and artifacts left behind by our ancestors. In the last 20 years, however, scientists have found a record of ancient human migrations in the DNA of living people.

Let me spare you the gory technical details, and just state that geneticists can trace ancestral connections by studying mutations in the DNA of mitochondria (called mtDNA), which is passed on from mother to child. The mtDNA is kind of a ‘marker’ pointing to the antecedents of humans.

With this fantastic technique, scientists now calculate that all living humans descended from a single woman, who lived roughly 150,000 years ago in East Africa, a “mitochondrial Eve”. Was she the only woman alive at the time ? No, but the current crop of human beings is linked to this Eve through an unbroken chain of mothers.

And what about the grand-est daddy of us all ? Well, naturally mitochondrial Eve was soon joined by a “Y chromosome Adam”, an analogous father of us all, also from Africa (though he did not live at the same time as the mitochondrial Eve). So there – all the variously shaped and shaded people of Earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gatherers !

Ah, the skeptic in you is now asking – how the hell did these forefathers pan out across the globe, into such diverse and far-flung lands ?

That my friend, is the greatest epic still unfolding, a sprawling saga of survival, improvement, isolation and conquest, most of it in the silence of prehistory. When this story is finished, this will be the greatest one ever told.

I will live another day to tell you about that part of the story.

I just want to pause here for a moment in our ultra-busy lives, and ponder over this monumental hypothesis.

Ok, science is just about beginning to unravel the mysteries of this vast world, and as new techniques are discovered, new realities may emerge. Maybe we are children of a higher God, a master Creator, a Supreme Being. But, let us assume that this is true – that Africa is really the original cradle of us humans. What new perspectives does it bring in our understanding of the diversity and differences of people across the globe ? Does it shake the very foundations of our furiously-held beliefs, just like it did when it was revealed that the Earth was really a sphere, not a flat surface, and that it revolved around the sun, not the other way round ?

Does is make us wonder why do we harbor so much hatred amongst our own kith and kin ? Since time immemorial, we have shed blood, massacred innocents, annihilated entire cultures, killed mindlessly, slaughtered with vengeance – all for the parochial purpose of perpetuating one’s own supposed clan or clique. Why is there such animosity, abhorrence, jealousy, distrust and such detestation on the basis of color, caste, creed or religion? Why do such abominable feelings dominate over equally human emotions as love, compassion, kindness and empathy towards fellow human beings ?

Throughout this bleeding march of strife and discord, the wise men, the saints and sages of yore, have preached only one thing – look within yourself. By focusing inwardly, you will know who you truly are, and will free yourself from the shackles of narrow-thinking. .Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves. If we do not show even basic respect to others who have descended from the same one single mother, doesn’t is starkly betray our insular minds ?

Sadly, the lofty words of those with higher intellect are mostly dismissed and quickly forgotten, and we let the secretions of adrenal glands take possession of our mind. We cannot even imagine a world where everyone lives in peace and harmony – it’s an ideal for a hopeless dreamer, a mere fantasy of a societal misfit.

If the mitochondrial Eve – our one and original Mother - was looking down upon us, and seeing all the misery, inequalities and friction amongst our brethren, what would she think ? And what would she say to us ?

Endpiece : If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other – Mother Teresa

In search of the Aryan seed

As I sat on the plush sofa sipping fine scotch in my friend’s swanky villa, the evening blended into the dark arms of the night. The three of us, all forced bachelors by a quirk of fate, and perhaps tingled by the pining of our faraway homeland, were talking about some interesting places of India. Places less frequented by the masses and relatively unexplored, making them all the more alluring and esoteric.

The flow of the conversation meandered to Ladakh, one of the most astounding lands that I have set my foot on. From some cog of memory, I mentioned that a pure Aryan race is supposed to dwell in certain part of the region, and German women go there to conceive children from the males of the tribe. As one of my friend nodded to confirm my statement, the other looked at me in bewilderment, his eyebrows rising and his forehead breaking into crooked lines.

“Really ?” he asked in a hushed tone, possibly not wanting to make obvious his disbelief. “Oh, I didn’t know about this”, he quickly added.

Bereft of any further information on the topic, I let it die out, but silently resolved to find out more on the intriguing subject.

I have done some research since then, and here is what I stumbled upon :

Perched on the rugged cliffs of Batalik sector of Ladakh is a cluster of four villages that have captured the world’s imagination with claims of their “pure Aryan” descent. The people of this Buddhist tribe, called Drok-pa (or Brogpa), are said to be descendants of the Dards, of Indo-Aryan stock, who came down the Indus centuries ago. The Drok-pa community claim to be progeny of the Macedonian soldiers who came with Alexander the Great for his attempted invasion of India in 327 BC.

Whether these claims are accurate or not, one thing is distinctly striking – their physical features. Unlike the other tribes of the area who have Mongoloid features, they have western looks like exceptionally fair skin, tall height (going upto 6’6”), high cheek bones, sharp features and almond shaped eyes.

This cluster of “pure blooded Aryans” are fiercely protective about their lineage, and don’t marry outside their tribe to protect their claimed purity.

Drawn by this mystique, and a yearning for a pure Aryan offspring, German women have been visiting Ladakh to get impregnated by the male members of the hallowed tribe. Incredible as it may sound, this fable has been chronicled by the famous mountaineer, Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia, in his book ‘Hermit Kingdom – Ladakh’ way back in 1965. “These young, sophisticated ladies came all the way to Ladakh hoping to carry back with them the seed of what is believed to be the purest survivors of the Aryan race”’ he wrote.

More recently, a documentary called ‘Achtung Baby – In Search of Purity’ made by Sanjeev Sivan (brother of Santosh Sivan, the famous cinematographer), lays bare this arguably pernicious practice straight from the lips of a German lady and a Drok-pa male. (Watch a trailer of this on YouTube by punching in ‘The Aryan Saga’ in the search field).

So what does one make of this bizarre behavior ? Racist bigotry or preservation of pure identity ? Outdated clannish chauvinism or acceptable eugenics ?

We know from the Holocaust that the dangerous notion of perpetuating a racial hygiene has wreaked untold havoc on the human populace. But this is a matter between two consenting adults, and an issue of personal choice. After all, if one is free to choose a pair of jeans, what’s wrong with opting for one’s own preferred genes ? People go to great lengths to raise thoroughbred horses and spawn pedigreed dogs. But when the same principles are applied to humans, it raises shrieks of moral, ethical and social issues. Why ?

I see nothing macabre about the German ladies wanting to mate with the pure-bred Aryans to seed their child as long as they know what they are doing and can live with the consequences. It’s their life, its their problem.

As for me ?..... I manifestly prefer pure love to pure race. Crystal clear.

Endpiece : Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else. – George Bernard Shaw