Comments on: You are African—whoever you are

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:59:00 +0000

We are all African, and we are all related by six degrees of separation based on a new study reported by the Washington Post.

With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.

Here’s the full article.

By: Carmen Giggey

Carmen Giggey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:47:15 +0000

Thank you for your excellent article. This great grandmother grew up in a large metropolitan city during racial segregation but my environment was always integrated (church, school, friends). My church taught that if you didn’t like the way God made a person, regardless of their color, etc. you were insulting God. (my school was religious and students came from around the world) When you grow up around friends representing most of the races in the world, you learn to look beyond the color of their skin. Even today, when I meet someone I don’t often remember the color of their skin - but I remember them. I LOVE THE FACT THAT WE ARE COUSINS.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:18:58 +0000

Ron: I never relied on “race” for my post. I find “race” to be an almost entirely useless and dangerous concept.

When I wrote that we’re African, I meant that each of us shared a small group of ancestors who migrated out of Africa to populate the world. That is the finding of the Genographic Project. Maybe we can compromise: each of us is a descendent of the same (smallish) group of people who originally evolved into biologically modern humans in Africa.

By: Ron Elliott

Ron Elliott — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:48:22 +0000

It’s curious that I have to post this at these sites occasionally. The exponential nature of human reproduction binds us ALL inextricably to the past. Specifically, since we each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 Greats, etc., etc., its mathmatically inescapable that were all those “ancestors” different people, as we looked backwards at our roots, by the time of the Dark Ages there would have to have been a trillion or quadrillion humans on earth. There weren’t.

Statisticians have long since demonstrated that every human who 1. lived at least 1,600 years ago, and 2. had at least two (2) offspring who had offspring, EVERY such person is the remote ancestor of every human now on Earth. We are all the descendants of African slaves and princes, Confucius, Julius Caeser, Queen Nefertiti and the Pharoah Akhnaton, various and sundry Emperors, whores, Generalissimos, saints, and all the rest. We’re not Africans, we’re PEOPLE. Not all GENTICALLY related by the way. By any valid criterion, “race” is a behavioral category, not a biological one. Its how we treat one another.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:45:02 +0000

Just Chris: You’ve got to be careful with your analysis. It’s not that we are all actually members of any particular ethnic group currently found in Africa. What the DNA research shows is that the Kamba (or any other modern day African group) and all other modern day humans both descended from an earlier group of people who did live in Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Though we are not all Kamba, we each have African roots. Here’s what you can say: All modern humans are cousins.

By: Just Chris

Just Chris — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 09:29:22 +0000

That means then, All the People are actually Kambas..! Praise God.