An Origins Myth

Annamaria on Monday

Rift Valley: Photo National Geographic

Eons ago, in what we now call East Africa, a very clever species emerged from the surrounding primates. Their home was along a rift in the crust of the earth where seismic and volcanic activities were common then and are common still. Energy from the core of the Earth bubbles up there. Magmatism and plate tectonics have been part of the atmosphere there for billennia. The climate is changeable, where long lush periods are sometimes interrupted by years of drought. In such conditions only the cleverest beings survive, by adapting to the changing situations at hand.

Over time the species evolved—losing a great deal of its hairiness, learning to walk on hind legs, the better to use the tools it invented and the better to ward off predators. In the intense sunshine so close to the equator, those born with darker skin colors had an advantage—safe as they were from the harmful rays of the sun.

Eventually, the clever species multiplied to the point where they spread out in search of new and greater sources of food. Some went north. In the course of time, when the species reached cooler climes, the advantage switched to those with slightly paler skin—light enough to absorb from the weaker sunlight enough of what we now call vitamin D to keep them healthy. But dark enough to keep the ultraviolet rays of the sun from damaging their health.

Given survival of the fittest, their bodies adapted automatically to the new conditions. And with their clever brains they invented survival tactics that allowed them inhabit regions even farther north, where temperatures were much colder, and in part of the year there was little or no sunlight. Clever as they were, these creatures learned to wear skins of hairy animals and build huts sturdy enough to keep out storms and extreme cold that would have otherwise killed them.

In such conditions, the lack of sunshine meant that only people with the palest skin could absorb enough nutrients from the sunshine to grow strong. And so, people with the palest skin came to dominate the peoples of those places. And the whitest began to see themselves as superior in every way. Away from the benign climates where food year round had been plentiful, life in the north was harsh and competition for food during the long cold months became intense. These conditions favored the biggest and the strongest. Big, brawny genes began to dominate. And white skin, of course. Whiteness was what made a person special, powerful.

Vandals Sack of Rome 407

Many fair-skinned people of the north began to imagine themselves as inherently superior to all others on earth. This notion became so deeply imbedded in their thinking that now, sometimes and in some people, it seems to operate in them as if it is genetic. They don’t even realize on a conscious level the attitudes they are expressing. For centuries now, among the fair, their white skin and the sense of entitlement it inspires has given many people license to subjugate smaller, darker-skinned people. To move in and take over their homelands. To steal or destroy the artifacts of their cultures. To enslave them. To obliterate their customs and their “gibberish” languages. Even to commit genocide. Basing this on their vision of nonwhite people as not quite human.

Eventually, some of the palest homo sapiens—through study and introspection—have learned to value the diversity of all members of our species, to understand the beauty of humankind’s richness, to embrace the dazzling array of humanity all descended from those first few in that fecund valley, in Africa, where our species was born.