Reasons To Celebrate African History
By Junious Ricardo Stanton

"Scientists have determined that human fossils found in Ethiopia in 1967 are 195,000 years old, 65,000 years older than first thought." The revised date, they said, makes the skulls and bones the earliest known remains of modern Homo Sapiens." John Noble Wilford New York Times News Service 02-17-05.

Amidst the cacophonous clamor of disinformation, Orwellian spin and outright lies, a piece caught my eye in the local newspaper. It was from the New York Times News Service and it told of a recent announcement of findings by a group of scientists geologists, paleoanthropologists, biomolecular researchers and anatomists who have concluded the bones found by Richard E. Leakey along the Omo River in southern Ethiopia in 1967 were about 130,000 years old.

However a settlement discovered in northern Ethiopia two years ago at the village of Herto pushed the fossil evidence of humanity back to 160,000 years ago. At this point researchers are convinced of a common maternal human ancestor from Africa dating back between 150,000 to 200,000 years ago.

So here we are the people with the longest most prolonged history on the planet, the descendants of the original humans celebrating African American or Black History during the shortest and coldest month of the year. Does that make any sense? Even Europeans the very antitheses of an African admit they are descendants of Africans that Africans were the first Homo Sapien Sapiens and the continent of Africa, was the birthplace of all humanity.

What does this information mean for us, what implications does it have for Africans in America at this time and place? It means we have the basis for refashioning our self-image, our personal and collective self-esteem from one of being culturally conditioned to being ashamed of who we are, where we came from and our ancestry to being proud, excited and enthusiastic about our history, possibilities and potential.

These finding are revolutionary! It means that contrary to Euro-centric white supremacist propaganda Africans not only were the source of all humanity but our ancestors created the social institutions and paradigms to facilitate the survival of the human race! In order to survive our ancestors had to develop ways to interact with each other to insure their mutual survival and well-being. They created divisions of labor, gender and age responsibilities, interpersonal relationships and governance techniques. To their credit they developed a kinship based communal paradigm where cooperation, collectivism and mutual aid were fundamental.

This paradigm proved successful whether they were in the nomadic food gathering, hunting or more sedentary agricultural stages of development. It appears also that because of their awe of the birth process, females were venerated in African society. These early humans did not have the dog eat dog predatory mentality that permeates the behavioral and cultural patterns of their later mutant offshoots that had dispersed (or were banished) to other parts of the planet namely the Caucasus regions of Eurasia. There is no indication these early Africans practiced the abhorrent behaviors like autocratic male patriarchy and female infanticide that developed in the Caucasus.

The implications for us are also that we rethink our ideas about honoring ourselves and the accomplishments of our ancestors. For without their ingenuity, resourcefulness, perseverance, resilience and grit we would not be here today! These same traits and qualities reside within each one of us.

Our challenge is to recognize these traits within ourselves and express them. We may never know what those ancient Africans called themselves; we can see by their tools they were a resourceful people. So are we. Let us acknowledge our innate and indwelling resourcefulness and demonstrate our genius beyond the spheres of sports and entertainment.

Let us demonstrate the same resiliency and genius that motivated our ancestors to evolve from gatherers and hunters to create the complex and opulent civilizations of the Nile, Indus and Mesopotamia Valleys which history records were created by black skinned people of African origin. This same capability resides in us.

We cannot allow the enemies of the world to program us to deny and denigrate our greatness. As they say "apples don't fall far from the tree". We are a great people; just our being here despite all we have been through at the hands of our enemies validates this fact. We cannot relegate our vast and storied history to one month a year, the shortest month of the year at that! Let's celebrate and honor ourselves every day! Let us carry on our ancestors' tradition and make history every day! Let's, make history, not excuses.

© 2005 by Afromerica

Junious's show airs each Sunday from 12 - 2pm. Join the Afromerica Radio Informer email list to receive new information as it is updated.

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