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T
here are several countries
claiming to be the “Cradle of
Civilization”: the Tigris-Euphrates
region in modern-day Syria and
Iraq; the Indus Valley in the Indian
subcontinent; the Huang He-Yangtze
river basins in China; and the Nile
valley, with Africa having the
remains, in Egypt, of the great
Pharaonic
civilization
. But the
origins of mankind are altogether
more difficult to pinpoint.
Genetic evidence seems to
support the single-origin theory, so it
was all the more exciting when, in
2007, researchers at Cambridge
University, England, announced
that, after analyzing thousands of
skulls from around the world, they
had reached the conclusion that
humankind originated in a single
area of sub-Saharan Africa some
50,000 years ago.
This would seem to echo a
dramatic “new” theory that caused
a furore in the late 1980s, that
modern man derived from a single
African female, although claims of
her being the “mother of mankind”
were then called into doubt. What is
not in doubt is the work, begun in
the early 1930s and continuing to
this day, of three generations of the
Leakey family, whose first
breakthrough was to discover the
remains of early hominid types at
the Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli in
the Great Rift Valley of East Africa.
Other major finds of this kind were
also made at Chad, Lake Turkana in
Kenya, Hadar (i.e. “Lucy”) and the
Awash Valley in Ethiopia, and at
Sterkfontein, Swartkrans,
Kromdraai and Taung in South
Africa. Among recent discoveries
are those in 2001 of Meave Leakey,
of a 3.5–3.2 million-year-old
hominid skull from the west side of
Lake Turkana, and in 2006 of Tim
White, of the University of
California, Berkeley (who once
worked with the Leakeys), who
found the remains of at least eight
individuals of the species
Australopithecus anamensis
, dating to
4.1 million years ago, in the Middle
Awash of Ethiopia.
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CRADLE OF MANKIND?
Words to Understand
Civilization:
The stage of human social development and
organization that is considered most advanced.
Islam:
The religion of the Muslims, a faith regarded as revealed
through Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah.
Precolonial:
Relating to a period of time before colonization of a
region or territory.