The Lost Forest
Page 38
Chapter 38
GENOCIDE
For almost 40,000 years, two different species of man lived side by side on the Island of Borneo. And according to current scientific theory during that unimaginably long period of time, in human terms, there was no communication between the two species. Does this seem logical given our knowledge of our own species?
‘The first time I saw a “modern” erectus it was right here in this café, almost twelve months ago.’
Ennis looked at him as though he was about to describe an odd looking individual. He was waiting with Pierre in a non-descript café just across the street from the Jussieu metro station, a short walk from the Natural History Museum in Paris.
‘I was sitting there with my back to the window on that bench seat,’ he said pointing to a table. ‘The café was full of smoke like now. Over there a couple of students from the Uni were shaking a pinball machine that beeped non-stop. The place was packed with people, you know students, professors, office workers, Arabs, Africans. My coffee had just arrived. My neighbours were so tightly crammed against me that I could just drink it by making myself very small. The noise was just like that in any other small working man’s café in Paris, and I had to shout to be heard, and everybody elese shouted.
‘I had fixed a meeting with a fellow called Bruno, who had called me the same day saying that he needed to talk to me, I vaguely recalled Bruno from the CNRS department of anthropological research. It was he who recognised me, he made a small sign with his hand and pushed past the crowd at bar and sat down at my table, over there. He was an anthropologist named, Gil Bruno. He sat down and placed a small packet in bubble plastic sealed with tape on the table to one side.
‘We chatted for a few moments and then I asked him what he was doing in Paris and he replied that he had come especially to see me.
‘I couldn’t tell you over the phone but I thought you might be interested in this,’ he said, carefully unwrapping the small plastic wrapped bundle on the table. There, in the coffee stains and empty sugar wrappers, was the lower jawbone of a man, a very old jawbone. Most of the teeth were still there, yellowed and worn, it was clearly very old.’
‘What is it?’ I asked carefully picking it up.
‘It’s from an erectus, we found it at the Thomas Quarry, in Casablanca,’ he said. ‘We have only this mandible. But as you can see it’s in excellent condition. My estimate is that this fossil is only 15,000 years old.’
‘That was the first time I realised that some of our brilliant ideas were not quite right. He then explained to me that Etxeberri had out of hand dismissed his dating estimate, firstly a fifteen thousand year old erectus according to current thinking did not exist and secondly, if it did indeed exist it should not have been in Morocco!’
‘Why not?’
‘As you know the theory is that we can all be traced back to a common female ancestor about 200,000 years ago, that is to say one of the first Homo sapiens that evolved in the Awash region of Ethiopia. This is the “Out of Africa” theory, which claims that humanity is nothing but one big happy family, even though you can see just looking around this small café that there’s a considerable difference of race and culture, even though it can be said to be just skin deep.’
‘So you’re talking about Mitochondrial Eve.’
‘You’re becoming an expert John.’
They both laughed.
‘I suppose that’s why you’re involved in work in Morocco.’
‘Yes a nice place, you should come down and see what we’re doing there.’
‘I’d like that, but it’s a problem of time.’
‘Stop worry about time, it could be useful to compare it with our work down there in Borneo.’
‘Maybe…. What’s interesting though,’ said Ennis reflecting on the date of the Moroccan find, ‘is what happened to all these pre-sapiens?’
‘At some point between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, the new race of people, Homo sapiens, began to spread out across Europe and Asia, becoming the ancestors of all future human generations, that is according to the Out-of-Africa theory. However, as they entered new territories the newcomers found thousands, hundreds of thousands, of other human species already living there.’
‘So, what happened to them all?’
‘That’s the big question, although in the long run it’s not too complicated to answer – they simply disappeared.’
‘But how? Some kind of genocide?’
‘Yes, nothing is new in history. Homo erectus and the other early humans were just not smart enough to compete, their territories were seized, their game was hunted, and even they were hunted and perhaps eaten. They failed to compete with the invaders, more intelligent and more efficient. It was like when Cortes arrived in Mexico, or when the British set up colonies in Australia, in modern terms genocide, only much slower, much, much slower!’
‘What do you mean by much slower?’
‘There’s plenty of evidence in Israel, Spain, Australia and now Morocco that erectus and modern humans co-existed for 100,000 years, that doesn’t mean to say they mixed, they lived in close proximity, like two species of antelope on the African savannah. However, they could have had some kind of cultural exchange.’
‘Intermarrying?’
‘Maybe, personally I’m inclined to think so, if you look at archaic Homo sapiens and evolved erectus they were extremely similar…. Borneensis and Bruno’s jawbone from the Thomas Quarry in Casablanca certainly means that many ideas have to be very seriously reconsidered.’