Everyone Is African (18 page)

Other migration events apparent in the DNA evidence do not coincide with any known historical events but nonetheless happened, their only existing record consisting of recently discovered evidence in DNA. You can access the information from this research in an easy-to-use interactive map showing the worldwide dispersal patterns of DNA at
http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com
.
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Each major historic migration event reshuffled genetic variants, reshaping the genetic structure of populations across and between continents all over the world. Each ancestry informative variant typically remained most prevalent in its region of origin, but many of these variants were dispersed elsewhere, found today in people across wide geographic areas.

There is also ample evidence from history that major migrations resulted in racial subjugation. In most cases, those migrating into a region, often as
members of an invading military power or as colonists, considered themselves genetically superior to those who were already there, claiming an inherent right to rule over those they subjugated. Over time, as civilizations rose and fell and generations passed on, the DNA variants brought by invaders or immigrants intermingled with the variants that had been present in the people who were already there, the resulting admixture persisting for generations to their descendants alive today.

European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade, reaching their peak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were among the most overwhelming genetic dispersion events humanity has ever experienced. Many of you reading this book trace at least some of your ancestry to people who either chose or were forced to leave their native lands to live in distant parts of the world as a consequence of these events. I count myself in this group. All of my ancestral lines trace to people who left the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the northern coast of continental Europe at one time or another for the shores of North America.

To many, the idea that there are no distinct biological races seems counterintuitive. In the United States, for instance, it is not uncommon for people to self-classify as white, black, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, or any other number of racial categories and to have genetic testing with ancestry informative markers confirm those classifications, at least in part. Does this not imply that some sort of racial boundaries exist, perhaps major continental boundaries, such as European, Asian, African, and Native American? In fact, we're about to see why the perception of distinct racial categories is more an artifact of immigration history than a consequence of true biological boundaries. To see how this happened, let's visit three places where the history of modern racism is well known—South Africa, Australia, and the United States—and follow the histories of people now living in these places, from prehistoric times to the present. We'll start with South Africa.

The first modern humans to settle the southernmost regions of Africa were the ancestors of the San and the Khoikhoi people, sometimes referred to collectively as the Khoisan (“Khoi” and “San” combined). According to DNA analysis, the ancient ancestors of these people diverged from the ancestors of all other people as early as 140,000 years ago.
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The oldest archaeological remains discovered thus far in the southernmost parts of Africa date to about
44,000 years ago and probably belong to the ancient ancestors of the San people (the Khoikhoi arrived in the region more recently). The native languages of the Khoisan constitute a group of African click languages, which have a clicking consonant sound produced by sucking in air through closed lips. The click is sometimes written as !, as in the !Kung language spoken by the !Kung people of the Kalahari.

The first Europeans to land on the southern tip of Africa were on a Portuguese ship that reached what is now the Cape of Good Hope, near the southern tip of Africa, in 1488. This opened the door to what eventually became a major seafaring trade route from Europe to India around the cape. As the economic importance of this trade route grew over the next century and a half, the Dutch East India Company, headquartered in Amsterdam, came to dominate this trade. It established a resupply post for ships at the cape in 1652 with a small group of Dutch settlers. Some of the settlers moved into the surrounding lands to establish farms that could supply food and other goods for the passing ships. Over time, the settlement grew, eventually becoming the city of Cape Town, and Dutch farms were established around it. Eventually, German, Scandinavian, and French Huguenot immigrants joined the Dutch settlers, creating colonies of northern Europeans.

The first native people the European colonists encountered were the Khoikhoi, whom they named “Hottentots,” and the San, whom they named “Bushmen” (the terms in quotation marks are now considered pejorative and offensive). The European colonists and the native Khoisan people were from two geographic extremes, northern Europe and southern Africa. Although both groups were unaware of it, they shared common ancestors who, more than 140,000 years earlier, belonged to the same ancient population of people living in Africa.

Though separated for thousands of generations, and very different culturally, the European immigrants and Khoisan people were not so different genetically, sharing numerous variants dating back to their common ancestry. For instance, among the Europeans, some people had type A and others type O blood, and the same was true of the Khoisan, with type O the most common in both groups.
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Most of the variation in both groups was likewise ancient African and was shared. However, since the time of ancestral separation, newer genetic variants had accumulated independently in both groups,
among them variants conferring differences in skin, hair, and eye pigmentation; hair texture; facial features; and body structure. For instance, the Dutch were likely then among the tallest people in the world and the Khoisan among the shortest, as is still the case.

Although the Khoisan people and European immigrants differed genetically, they also differed for nongenetic characteristics, such as culture, clothing, language, religion, technology, weapons, and how they obtained food—differences that, like the genetic differences, had accumulated over countless generations of geographic separation. The two groups were discontinuous and distinct, for culture and for a minority of their genes. They perceived themselves as separate and distinct races.

However, going back to the time before European colonization, if we were to trace human genetic diversity along a land route from the Khoisan in southern Africa to the Dutch in northern Europe (passing northward through Africa, across the Sinai into the Middle East, then through what was then the Turkish Ottoman Empire and the Balkans into northern Europe), a complex pattern of changing human genetic diversity would have been evident. The transitions would have been gradual, with evidence of admixture and variation along the way, but without boundaries delineating distinct genetic races of people. The reason for the perception of distinct races when European colonists settled southern Africa was the sudden juxtaposition of people from the extremes of that long continuum.

European merchant ships returning from India to Holland stopped at the Cape Town outpost for resupply. Among the “cargo” these ships carried were people taken as slaves, mostly from India. As some of these slaves were traded or sold to the settlers, another distinct group of people—from south Asia—expanded in this part of Africa. They were physically, culturally, and genetically distinct from the European settlers and the native Khoisan people and were perceived as another separate and distinct race.

The consequences of these differences were devastating. Consistent with their worldview and religious convictions, the European settlers saw themselves as intellectually, culturally, and genetically superior, with a divinely appointed destiny. Though they were fewer in number than the Khoisan peoples, their weaponry was far more powerful, and they quickly overcame any resistance. More devastating than weapons, however, were the strains of infectious
diseases the Europeans brought, to which they were more resistant than the Khoisan were because ongoing exposure had stimulated their immune systems. One of the most tragic consequences of early European immigration into southern Africa was the number of people who died of infectious disease carried by the Europeans, especially smallpox. In 1713, smallpox-causing viruses from the contaminated laundry of a passing ship first infected the south Asian slaves working in the laundry and, shortly thereafter, infected the European settlers. Though some from both those groups died of smallpox, the most severe outbreak was among the Khoikhoi. They had never been exposed to smallpox, so their immune systems had never had a chance to produce protective antibodies against the disease-causing virus. This epidemic, followed by two subsequent smallpox epidemics, devastated Khoikhoi populations. In the end, the Khoikhoi people and their culture were essentially annihilated in southern Africa. Jared Diamond's title for his Pulitzer Prize–winning book,
Guns, Germs, and Steel
, aptly summarizes in three words why European colonists overwhelmed native people in Africa and other continents, with germs initially the most devastating of the three.

As the number of Europeans increased in southern Africa, those who were farmers and herders began migrating northward and eastward, establishing farms and ranches. Tensions arose when the British seized control of the cape and drove the non-British European farmers and ranchers, known as Voortrekkers (meaning “forward-trekkers” or “pioneers”), even farther north and east into parts of what are now South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The British eventually established their own settlements in these lands as well.

The expanding northeastward settlement and land use encroached into the lands of Bantu people. The Bantu had originated tens of thousands of years earlier, far to the northwest in what are now Cameroon and Nigeria. About 3,500 years ago, they transitioned from a hunter-gatherer society to an agriculturalist society, with food production focused on yams, a nutritious and high-energy food. This transition allowed Bantu population sizes to increase well beyond what hunter-gatherer populations could sustain.

This was the beginning of the Bantu expansion, one of the most overwhelming genetic upheavals in the history of Africa. Some Bantu populations
migrated eastward, over many generations, through the Sahel region, a grassland between the Sahara Desert and the rain forests of central Africa, well suited to expanding yam cultivation. Other Bantu groups migrated southward along and near the Atlantic coastline. As they migrated, the Bantu overtook the hunter-gatherer and herder-farmer societies they encountered. Whether the assimilation of other populations was peaceful or violent, or some combination of the two, is unknown. What is known is that DNA variants that originated in the Bantu became a major part of the genetic structure of native populations along the way. By about 1000 CE, the Bantu expansion along the southeast part of the African continent had reached the southern parts, driving the Khoisan people westward into more arid regions near the cape, where the Europeans first encountered them.

Among the Bantu people the Voortrekkers confronted were the Xhosa and the Zulu, both of whom were militarily powerful. A series of wars ensued, enflamed by broken treaties and massacres, resulting in deaths on both sides. One of the most famous events was the Battle of Blood River between the Voortrekkers and the Zulu. Following the execution of a Voortrekker negotiating group carried out by the Zulu leader, both sides prepared for battle. As the time approached, the Voortrekkers made a vow to God that they would build a chapel in commemoration if they were victorious. The Zulu warriors outnumbered the Voortrekkers by more than sixty to one. The Zulu spears and shields, however, were no match for the muskets and cannons of the Voortrekkers, who fought from a defensive position behind a fortified wall of wagons. The Zulu defeat was catastrophic. More than three thousand Zulu warriors died, whereas only three Voortrekkers were wounded. At the height of the battle, Zulu blood stained the river red, hence the battle's name. The Voortrekkers viewed the victory as a divine affirmation of their destiny in the land.
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This was one of countless events during European colonialism that fueled the conviction of divinely appointed destiny in nearly every place in the world where European colonies existed. In southern Africa, battles between Europeans and native Africans fanned the flames of intense racial hatred on both sides. Over time, a legal system of racial suppression arose, culminating during the latter half of the twentieth century in what is famously known as
apartheid
. The historic superimposition of distinct immigrant cultures—European,
south Asian, and Bantu—into a region occupied by the Khoisan led to the perception of distinct races that persisted for generations.

Apartheid officially began in 1948 and lasted until 1994. People were legally classified as belonging to one of four racial categories: White, Black, Indian, or Coloured. Descendants of European colonists were categorized as White; Bantu as Black; south Asian as Indian; and Khoisan, along with people of mixed ancestry, as Coloured. Segregation and antimiscegenation laws separated people into their respective racial categorizations, with political and economic power concentrated in the White class. Those categorized into one of the three nonwhite classes were forced to move into racially segregated communities when the areas where they lived were officially declared as White.

The period of apartheid was long and oppressive. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years for leading nonviolent opposition and was released in 1990 as political and economic pressure throughout the world was growing against apartheid. For the next several years, Mandela negotiated the end of apartheid with then-president Frederik Willem de Klerk. In 1993, Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize, and the following year, he was elected president in the first elections to allow nonwhite voting. News of his passing reached me as I was writing this chapter.