Charles Cobb Jr.
19 April 2002
(Page 2 of 2)
This charting of the routes seems pretty precise.
Yes it is pretty precise. If you're carrying a marker - up to a certain point if a population is carrying a marker up to a certain point - and then beyond that point that marker isn't there you know which direction the people are moving. So you can say, well at this point there must have been a split because the marker then goes over there and the new marker happens over here. It's a split in the branch; you have two more twigs.
This is what was so wonderful about the end of the film. You had two people from opposite ends of the world carrying the same marker. There was a Greek lady, Angela, who was a recent immigrant into America from Europe. And then there was a native American who was a full-blooded Cree. And we tested them and we found that they both carried quite a rare marker in their mitochondrial DNA which is called "X" for no other reason than that's the letter that the scientists gave it. Now "X" first came into being in Central Asia about 30,000 years ago. So what it means is, that one of the daughters of our out of Africa "Eve" had a mutation that we call "X". Her familiy then split. Part of her family went West towards Europe and part of her family went East toward Siberia and then on into America and became the Native Americans. So when Angela came to the United States from Europe and she met with Leonard in our laboratory it meant two members of the family were rejoined 30,000 years later.
Leonard was completely blown away. But it doesn't change the fact that he is Native America. He can still be part of the first people of North America. We're going back 30,000 years and we know that human beings didn't get into North America until about 20,000 years ago so his family could have been part of that first group. What it does do is prove that we all come from the same place, that we're all brothers and sisters. We really are, not just in a moral sense, but actually in a physical sense. People better get used to the idea.
It's important to understand that this is taking place over thousands of years....
Thousands of years. You're not talking about a couple of generations; you're talking about 5,000 generations.
And I assume that in addition to moving they are changing in the sense of physical characteristics in order to adapt to various climates that they find themselves in, and I suppose developing languages as well
Yes, they are changing. Absolutely correct although they might well have had language before. In fact we know that they did because they possessed the hyoid bone which is a bone in the throat which enables us to talk. We know that Neanderthals and homo Erectus and early hominids had the hyoid bone so we know that they talked as well. So we had speech.
But we're not talking about primitive people here.
This is modern man.
This is modern man! One hundred and fifty thousand years ago this woman who was our genetic "Eve", if you like, had all the capabilities that we have today. And all the potential. She was just like us! If we were to bring her to this time, educate her, dress her up and walk her down the street you would not know the difference. We are not talking about primitive early people who dragged their knuckles on the ground!
Is this "new" in the sense of science? Is this a breakthrough or has this been around?
That aspect of it isn't new. The early Mitochondrial Eve "mother" is not new. That has been around in scientific circles. But what is new is the out of Africa group that left once; the way they left which was the southern route across the mouth of the Red Sea, and also the movement from the Gulf into Europe 50,000 years ago. That is all brand new.
Is it controversial?
It is controversial. But only because some people don't like other people to get things right. But people are very very quickly coming to realize that this is something they can no longer argue with. Professor Stephen Oppenheimer, whose synthesis we filmed, was the first person to come up with these aspects because he looked at all the information, not just the genetic information. He looked at the oceanography, at the climate; he looked at all the things that were happening and came up with these explanations which have now been argued about for a little while but have held up.
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