Our Long Walk

Essay on my family's genetic journey.

    I want to tell you about my family’s very long walk.  I think this an important story for you to know about because it is very likely that your family walked side by side with my family for at least part of this long journey.   We may not live on the same continent and our skin color may be different but it is a near certainty that our families started this long walk from the very same place and that we are related through common ancestry.  After I tell you this story, I hope you will agree with me that what we have in common is so much more important than what it is that makes us different.  We are one family, and this truth, oft distorted by religion and politics, is etched on our chromosomes for all to see.  No longer need we rely on ancient books of magic and lore to tell us who we are and where we come from.  For the first time in history, we have the opportunity to read a document that neither pope nor president can distort, and that document is our very own DNA.
    The climate is changing from cold and arid to warm and humid; an Ice Age is on the retreat.  We are in the Rift Valley of Africa somewhere in the region of present day Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia.  It is some 50,000 years before the present and in front of us stands a short man with brown skin.   He speaks with clicks and other unusual sounds.   He could be mistaken for one of today’s San Bushmen.  He is my earliest ancestor and we are at the beginning of my family’s long walk.
    The man before you is a direct descendent of the genetic “Adam”, the man who, about 60,000 years ago, became the ancestor of all living humans on earth.  This is not to say that our Adam was the only human alive at that time but rather that his Y-chromosome was the very one to be passed on to every man alive today.   He is the earliest branch point of all genetic diversity found in the world’s human population.  All people today, therefore, probably spring from one small band of hunter-gatherers who eked out an existence on the savannahs of Eastern Africa.  We are all, in a very real sense, African.
    Changing climatic conditions and herd migration may have been two of the factors that helped launch my earliest ancestor on his long walk out of Africa.  However, coincident with the start of the journey was what anthropologists call “the great leap forward”.  This refers to the rapid changes in cerebral function seen in humans around 50,000 years ago.  These changes are manifest in the appearance of much more sophisticated tools, weapons and other artifacts in the archeological record of this period.  More importantly, it is felt that during the great leap forward, humans rapidly developed more efficient methods of communication eventually resulting in language.  The development of language was the single most important ingredient for success of the species.  Language became the catalyst that spurred-on the development of sophisticated ideas and concepts.  Language gave man the ability to act with foresight and planning and to expand his knowledge of the world around him. 
    By 30,000 – 40,000 years ago, the East African descendents of my earliest ancestor had started walking north along what is today the Sudanese and Egyptian coasts of the Red Sea.  Their travels would take them out of Africa via the strip of land north of the Red Sea.  Unbeknownst to this clan, their descendents would eventually make up 90 – 95 percent of the world’s non-African population (The other 5 -10 percent are the descendents of a smaller and earlier migration that left Africa south of the Red Sea and traveled a coastal route along the southern margin of Asia and reaching such faraway lands as Australia and the Americas.).  With the onset of yet another Ice Age, the savannahs reverted to arid desert.  Following the herds of woolly mammoths, my family gradually made their way into what is now the Middle East.
    Our story has now reached 20,000 years ago.  We are in an Ice Age still and the population of the Earth now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. My family is now making the slow transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.  It is probably in the Fertile Crescent, that area of the Middle East that stretches from the Nile Valley to the Persian Gulf, that around 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic Revolution really took hold.  With the recession of this last Ice Age, the climate became more suitable to farming.  Increasing control over food production meant that social groups could grow and prosper and with these changes came the early trappings of civilization.
    My family’s long walk did not however stop in the Middle East.  Instead, my ancestors continued along the Levant traversing what are now Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey following the Eastern Mediterranean coast gradually spreading the seeds of the Neolithic Revolution and early civilization.  Traveling mostly by foot and presumably also by sea, my ancestors gradually made their way to what is today the Italian Peninsula.
    So there you have it.  A 7,000 kilometer journey in approximately 50,000 years.  When you think about it, that’s only about 140 meters per year!  Two thousand generations migrating an average of 3.5 kilometers per generation.  But listen:  This was not a race! 
Now I know you’re wondering how I got to know the story of my family’s long walk out of Africa.  You may also be wondering how you can trace the migration story of your own family.  The best way to answer these questions is to direct you to the The Genographic Project and to encourage you to participate in this extraordinary venture.  Here, you will find out exactly how the Human Family tree is being reconstructed using tools never before available to us. 
    The world today is burdened with conflict and strife and I worry that we will pass it on to our children in a very sorry state indeed.  There is no panacea for our woes but I am hopeful that education and knowledge will make up an important part of the solution.  We must stop thinking of ourselves as different and we must eradicate the meaningless and outdated concept of race.  Despite superficial differences, all human beings are genetically similar.  How similar?  Pick any two individuals on the planet and 99.9% of their DNA will be identical!  We all come from Africa and many of our families traveled thousands of kilometers side by side.  The sooner we all realize that we are all related, the sooner we can start mending our Small Blue Planet.

Joseph Froncioni