A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond...
"The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Spencer Wells's* TEDx Talk (and see A Family Tree for Humanity). Short message, convergently echoing Darwin and Mendel and the Lakota Sioux ("mitakuye oyasin") : we are all related.
It's true that no known entity in the universe is capable of (in Pete's phrase) "writing its own program" or, in other words, creating itself ex nihilo. We have no evidence for the existence of any such entity. Everything we know is the product of a design process, though not necessarily of directed and premeditated design. (see below**)
But biological self-replication, as Don so effectively demonstrated tonight, is a reality. And just look at how the banana has evolved. Bon apetit!
* [Don, Spencer Wells is on Twitter: @spwells ... also, can you update us all on your Banks Turner research breakthrough?]
When we began the
semester the identity questions were who are you and why are you here? In The Journey of Man, Dr. Wells examines
these questions from a global perspective. Who are you related to? Why did your
ancestors or you leave wherever they or you were to get here? How did they or
you do it?
Who are you related to?
Most of us might know our ancestors from a few generations back, but beyond
that unless you are royalty, there is little or no documentation except for
your genetic history. We might call ourselves German-American because we
remember our parents say their grandparents came from Germany. Of course
Germany as a country did not exist until 1871. So if your ancestors came from
an area in the general vicinity of today’s Germany, with whom can you identify?
The same is true to some degree with other hyphenated Americans. In the past
several hundred years people have moved around the globe. There was less
movement and a smaller population 20,000 years ago.
Why did your ancestors
or you leave wherever they or you were to get here? Was there political,
social, economic, or natural events created an atmosphere that made leaving
less risky to your survival than staying? Changes in the climate impacted the
ability to hunt animals or grow and harvest crops once humans adopted a more
sedentary life style. Wells reviews some of the reasons and explores the
genetic trail as a way of confirming why our ancestors moved as they did.
How did they do it?
Today you might travel by car, plane, or train. Those methods did not exist
30,000 years ago. The primary mode of transportation was by foot, but some of
our ancestors made it across large bodies of water so they needed a boat.
However, since boats were made of wood, nothing remains to confirm that. The
path they took may not have been the most direct route, because the conditions
that existed then may be so different from today that they precluded walking.
The title of Wells’ book
is gender specific because he is focuses on mutations that appear on the
Y-chromosome which only appears in men. He concludes that we are all related to
modern man who came out of Africa around 50,000 years ago and he bases that on
studies of markers on the Y-chromosome. He works backward to the earliest man
who carried the initial variant and he relies on the hundreds of thousands of
samples of blood taken from around the world. Before men became widely
dispersed it was easier to see the variants within a local community. Today
diversity would create some challenges.
In his DVD by the same
name as his book, there were several compelling arguments made with individuals
in remote areas whose ancestors had remained in the local area for a long time.
One was a man in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country, where Wells met with a
man and explained that his genetic history pointed to his ancestor as being the
man who was the source 40,000 years ago for populations today in Europe, Asia,
and the Americas. Later when Wells visited Navajo in North America, they had
their own creation story and did not believe Wells’ evidence because it
challenged that story. When he showed them the photos of members of the Uzbek
people, one Navajo could see several of his relatives in their face. That was a
powerful moment.
Wells used genes to
trace population movement and consulted paleoclimatologists to help explain
when and why our ancestors moved as they did. Is his theory correct? It is
reasonable and has confirmed some cross-disciplinary views about migrations out
of Africa. More genetic studies correlated with evidence from anthropology,
archaeology and paleoclimatology may enhance his findings and conclusions.
"You and I, in fact everyone all over the world, we're all literally African under the skin; Brothers and sisters separated by a mere 2.000 generations. Old-fashioned concepts of race are not only socially divisive, but scientifically wrong. It's only when we've fully taken this on board, that we can say with any conviction that the journey our ancestors launched all those years ago, is complete."
Quiz Questions:
1. The DNA in a banana is the same as what % of your DNA?
2. Why does the title of the book only refer to "Men?"
3. What are the four base pairs of DNA?
4. Who did Bush consider to be the first people that modern man was descended from?
5. Approximately how many base pairs are found in nuclear DNA?
Discussion Questions:
1. Whether you agree or disagree with Wells' conclusion, can you follow his logic on how markers on the Y-Chromosome can be used to trace a person's history?
2. If you are related to every human, does that make you more or less likely to be tolerant of those with whom you have political or religious differences?
