Africa takes new pride in being cradle of human race

South Africa Letter: The president of the world's most scientifically advanced nation may be reluctant to endorse the theory of evolution. But Thabo Mbeki has no such qualms.

In fact, the South African president has become probably the world's first head of state to make belief in evolution government policy.

Not just evolution but a particular brand of the theory that puts Africa centre-stage in the development of the human race.

It is now widely accepted that homo sapiens first emerged on the "dark continent" around 200,000 years ago, and then populated the rest of the earth, making Neanderthals extinct in the process.

Ironically, however, few South Africans knew this until after the collapse of the apartheid regime in 1994.

"For years, people outside of South Africa knew more about the significance of local archaeology than people here," noted Dr Geoff Blundell, director of the newly-opened Origins Centre in Johannesburg.

"Even in the early 1990s, on the curriculum for the matric (the equivalent of the Leaving Certificate), people had to write an essay on rock art - but it was French rock art.

"That was a very deliberate thing."

Remedial action began five years ago after Mbeki took a chance visit to the Drakensburg rock art repository in Kwazulu-Natal.

Horrified at the local game guard's inability to educate him about the site, Mbeki introduced plans to develop it, and another significant heritage site in Northern Cape, for tourists and other visitors.

He also mooted the creation of Origins Centre, in the grounds of Wits University, to act as a hub of both academic research and public learning.

Visitors to the centre are greeted with the pointed message "Welcome Home" - for, according to archaeologists, anatomically-modern humans were not only born in Africa but civilised there too.

"It had been thought for some time that things that made us modern - art, symbolism, and so on - developed in Europe about 40,000 years ago," Dr Blundell said.

"The theory was based on evidence, and particularly some cultural material in caves in western France and Spain. But it also became a political thing. There was this depiction of Africa as the Dark Continent where nothing ever happened."

Dr Blundell said the thinking changed during the early 1990s when human markings aged around 75,000 years were discovered in the Blombos caves on the southern coast of South Africa.

Further discoveries on the continent, including the finding of 80,000-year-old fish-hooks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, "supported what most people had suspected - that the light did not suddenly get switched on in Europe but that these things must have happened earlier in Africa".

The Origins Centre features a replica of the oldest known human markings from Blombos, alongside other evidence of Africa's evolutionary endowment to the world.

This includes a display of the findings of geneticists, who have traced the world's oldest human gene to the San, the near-extinct bush people of Namibia and Botswana famous for their language of click consonants.

Since it was opened by Mbeki, the Origins Centre has been getting rave reviews locally, and it is easy to see why.

Although still a work in progress - the whiff of builders' dust and fresh paint abound - the centre creates a sense of awe for both the ingenuity and stupidity of humankind.

The latter is highlighted by an artistic exploration of the hundreds of mainly derogatory words used to label different people in South Africa.

Imagination, if not ingenuity, can meanwhile be found in an audio-visual reconstruction of the San people's "trance dance", which supposedly facilitates entry to the spirit world.

Prof David Lewis-Williams, a Wits University anthropologist, has studied such rituals, and their accompanying symbolism, to decode rock art at various world heritage sites, including Brú na Bóinne in Co Meath.

Dr Blundell claimed the San trance dance "is what we think is the origins of religion".

Drawing on such findings, the post-apartheid government has incorporated both rock art figures and San language in South Africa's new coat of arms.

It has also backed a more ambitious tourism initiative near the Sterkfontein Caves on the outskirts of Johannesburg.

Billed as "the Gateway to the Cradle of Humankind", the €40 million Maropeng hotel, conference centre and museum rises out of the earth like an overgrown Newgrange - in its case, however, with faux grass covering.

Pitched somewhat at the coach-tour market, the centre traces world history from the Big Bang to South Africa's explosive conversion into the "Rainbow Nation".

Visitors walk down the "Diversity Ramp", highlighting humankind's colourful tapestry, and then take an underground boat-ride literally through the evolutionary swamp - by virtue of some ice machines, flashing lights and other special effects.

Like the Origins Centre, Maropeng has been tailored to meet Mbeki's "Afro-optimistic" agenda.

"We think that's a good process," said Dr Blundell, noting that during the apartheid era the government "tried to squash" this information.

But is there a danger of science being skewed for political purposes? "That is always a concern," replied Dr Blundell.

"However, it's unlikely there will be a discovery that will change the direction of what we have done here."