National Geographic: Mysteries of Mankind Page #6

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And my idea of an African origin

is based partly on the fossil evidence.

I feel that modern people

appeared earliest in Africa

and then later on in other parts

of the world.

But there is also genetic data,

and the genetic data also support

the idea

of an African origin of modern people.

At the University of Hawaii one of

the primary genetic researchers

in this field investigates

the migration patterns of modern races

Dr. Becky Cann believes her research

adds rather startling information

to the theory of an African origin.

All humans who are alive today

can trace their ancestry

in their genes back to a single female

who, we think, lived in Africa

sometime perhaps

two hundred thousand years ago

Dr. Cann bases her theory on studies

of DNA extracted from women.

She traces backward in time one part

of the DNA molecule that

only females can pass on.

The genetic work is supplemented

with interviews about

the women's maternal ancestry.

Could I ask you about your maternal

grandmother, your mother's mother?

My grandmother was born

on August 10, 1903 in Macau,

Macau is the coast of China.

Dr. Cann has studied Americans

of European,

African, and Asian descent,

as well as Australian Aborigines.

By comparing small segments of DNA

from these women,

Dr. Cann assesses the similarities

and the differences.

The more alike the DNA,

the more closely related

two individuals are.

With a computer,

Cann suggests different migration

patterns over the centuries.

If she is right, modern humans,

like earlier hominids,

evolved in Africa.

In Africa it seems that the evolution

of modern people first began

and from there

we all trace our ancestry.

So we're all very closely related.

And that goes for

all people American Indians,

Australian Aborigines, Eskimos,

Europeans we all trace our origin

to Africa,

and under the skin we are all Africans.

Old concepts of

human diversity die hard.

But certainly we must consider

the possibility that human equality

is a fact of our evolution

that it's in our very genes.

We are all time travelers together,

the most recent players

in a drama that began

at least four million years ago.

In the detective story

of human evolution

we know in a broad sense

how the plot turned out.

But we know very little about

the chapters along the way.

There are too many fossils

that are merely fragments

and too many gaps in time

for which we have no fossils at all.

The science of anthropology is

little more than a hundred years old.

But as it moves forward,

it opens new mysteries,

poses greater riddles.

To begin filling

in the numerous blanks,

the discovery

of new fossils is essential.

New technologies will add other pieces

to the expanding puzzle.

But that is all we can expect

random puzzle pieces.

Never can the entire picture be known.

For scientists the excitement

of the quest never diminishes.

And as the rains come again next year

and the next,

they know that somewhere

in thousands of square miles,

with a bit of luck,

they will find new and

even more provocative clues

to the ongoing drama of our human past.

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