Human origins

Johannesburg, South Africa

Much of the Life on Earth expedition is about biodiversity and the wildlife of Mozambique.   Another major theme is human populations and their interaction with the environment.  Prior to visiting Johannesburg we had learned of the Origins Centre, a museum of the San people and human evolution.  I mentioned the place and its theme to Ed who said “I just wrote a book on it.” It just so happens that Ed’s latest book (to be published Spring 2012) is an integrated approach to understanding the origins of humanity and hominids' interactions with the environment. 

It was decided the Origins Centre fit well with our mission and we headed of to its home at the University of Witswatersrand (Vits-vahters-rand) in downton Johannesburg. When we arrived at the Origins Centre we were offered an audio self guided tour.  Ed turned to us and said “If you don’t mind, I’ll take over.”  The only thing better would have been the appearance of a member of Homo erectus, versed in the English language, to lead us through the galleries.

One of the more impressive displays in this museum was the collection of lithics shown from the Oldowan Industry (2.6 million years ago) to the Middle Stone Age-2 (60, 000 years ago).   Somewhere in between I recognized stone cores that were found sitting below kopjes in the Serengeti during my first trip to East Africa.  Would we find some of the same artifacts in the southernmost reaches of the Rift Valley in Gorongosa?  The display made us think of the archaeologists working in Gorongosa National Park from the University of Calgary who we would soon be visiting.  The group is excavating a cave site and conducting an inventory of stone tools surrounding Mt. Gorongosa.

Much of this engaging, well-designed, and beautiful museum was filled with stories and artifacts of the San people of Southern Africa.  One of the more powerful tales was of a Jul’hoan San healer named Kxao-Oah of Botswana. He was blind and was known as one of the most powerful healers of the region.   He described some of his abilities by saying “God keeps my eyeballs in a little cloth bag. When he first collected them, he got a little cloth bag and plucked my eyeballs out and put them into the bag, and then he tied the eyeballs to his belt and went up to heaven. And now when I dance, on the nights when I dance and the singing rises up, god comes down from the heaven swinging the bag with the eyeballs above my head,  and he lowers the eyeballs to eye level, and as the singing gets strong, he puts the eyeballs into my sockets and they stay there and I heal…I see everybody… I see everything.”  The vision behind this museum pleased us and also reaffirmed our ideas of human origins.

The rock paintings of the San are legendary.  They made us think of the origins of art and the convergence of art involving humans depicting their environment.  We commented on the universality of the style and comparisons to the cave art of Northern Spain (Altamira) and Southern France (Lascaux).

It took some adjusting as we left the museum and reentered the concrete jungle of Johannesburg.  Cars raced by and the brown haze once again filled the sky.  We longed for the rich smell of the forest, the crunch of dirt and leaves under our boots, and the bird songs of Gorongosa.