Why Middle East, the Cradle of Civilisation, must abandon terror

This message is for the ancestral family that we left behind in the Cradle of Civilisation - popularly called the Middle East. There is a need to jog your memory in the wake of the terror drive you have unleashed. The need of the hour is for you to understand your desire to interact with us, your immediate cousins.

We abandoned you for greener pastures more than 50,000 years ago and, yes, it was a betrayal. When our then tiny family left Africa sometime between two lakh to 60,000 years ago¹, we had promised Great grandmother Mitochondrial Eve² and Grandma Lara³ that we would always stick together. And we had.

In that no-man's-land just beyond Africa, we settled down and turned it into a paradise. Some of us remember it as the Garden of Eden or the Cradle of Civilisation. Today we call it the Middle East or the Near East depending on the part of the globe we live in.

The tiny family that moved out of Africa left behind siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. They were driven by the wanderlust gene. We can trace our origins to possibly a single tent pitched in the Cradle of Civilisation - our HOME CAMP.  

The "Curse of the Wandering Jew" was in reality a curse on us all. The wanderlust gene magnified with each generation that was born.

The earliest to leave the HOME CAMP were the those who walked or rowed across the ocean bed to India, the islands beyond and that distant island down-under - Australia. They left 45,000 years ago⁴.

Soon (40,000 years ago) another cousin, who shared our ebony skin tone, felt the tug of the wanderlust gene⁵. He took his children and crossed over to the cold, snowy regions of Europe. It wasn't long before his family split into two. A few of his sons struck off on their own and left for India.

In India, the meeting of the cousins (from Europe and the ones who came directly from the HOME CAMP in the Cradle of Civilisation) was a joyous one celebrated by weddings and an interchange of genetic material that began 4,200 years ago. Genetic exchange invigorates the species. Our ancestors knew it well. Today, those of us who live in the Indian mainland carry genes of both sets of ancestors.⁶

Those of you who remained in the HOME CAMP discovered the science of taming nature: agriculture and farming. The HOME CAMP became famous as the Fertile Crescent.

When some of you went to Europe, 7,000 years ago, you found the cousins, who had left earlier, still living the life of the hunter-gatherer. They looked strange for your skins were already paler than theirs. But the ones who had moved to Motala in southern Sweden had turned strangely light-skinned and blue-eyed. They kept to themselves and avoided contact. They, as a result, were the last to learn the magic of agriculture.

You settled along fertile river valleys of the European continent peacefully tending your fields and you taught the dark-skinned central and southern European cousins the art and science of farming.

You exchanged genetic material with them. It was your gene for pale skin that swept through them and first lightened the colour of their skins. It wasn't until 5,800 years ago that a second gene that codes for light-coloured skins swept up to a high frequency.⁷ 

It was only then that the European cousin attained the modern light-skinned look.

Those of you who remained in the HOME CAMP set up numerous empires. Empires that were built and passed from hand to hand: Assyrians to Medeans and finally to Persians (Iran). Egyptians flourished under their pharaohs.

The diaspora fared well too. The Minoan civilisation was amongst the earliest in Europe as was the Indus Valley Civilisation in India.

While we know of trade between the Indus Valley and the HOME CAMP, the civilisations of Europe tested their strength against you. Between 559-530 BC, Cyrus the Great set up the largest empire in the world.

With his base in the HOME CAMP his empire extended till the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the West and the Indus river in the east. He drafted, what historians have termed, the world's first declaration of human rights. Under his successors, the borders were extended up to the Balkans and included the Indus Valley within its limits.

The Greek civilisations thumbed their noses at the HOME CAMP but the world was at peace.

But change when it came took place first in the HOME CAMP. Darius the Great switched to a monotheistic religion, one preached by the prophet Zoroaster. The rest of the family, descended from Lara and the cousins in Africa, now became agents of chaos and darkness. Religious crusades, however, were never unleashed.

Cyrus' descendants waged many a war trying to rein in rogue Greek states that threatened peace and commerce with their perception of "freedom". Because the writing of history is a Greek invention, it is a one sided version that the world got to hear: your defeat in the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea. It triggered the Hellenisation of history - the one sided western view.

A hundred years later, Alexander the Great knocked down the edifice of power in the HOME CAMP and Hellenised it... only to have it breakaway later.

What was achieved, however, was more exchange of genetic material. The people of the Mediterranean region began to look similar and even ate similar food.

Second thoughts on monotheism took place within the HOME CAMP. One, of the two faiths that were born, overtook pagan Europe. The other was deemed unwelcome.

The fourth monotheistic idea born once again in the HOME CAMP unleashed religious crusades in the mid 8th Century AD that continue even today.

But it was never about religion and nor is it a clash of civilisations.

The cousins from the HOME CAMP must be reminded that the restlessness they feel is the primal call to ensure that the genetic changes that have evolved in the HOME CAMP survive. In order to achieve this, you have to pass your genes on to those who have evolved differently. You need your world family.

It has been achieved peacefully in the past.

Terrorising or exterminating the diaspora only defeats the purpose.

As for the rest of the world family, we need to welcome the migrating gene-pool emerging from the HOME CAMP in the Cradle of Civilisation.

References:

1 Callaway E., First ancient African genome reveals vast Eurasian migrationDNA from Ethiopian man pre-dates the movement of Eurasian farmers 'back to Africa', Nature news., 2015

2 The news burst in 1987:  We inherit mitochondrial DNA from our mothers and that it is practically the same in everyone, barring tiny differences that help identify maternal lineages. Scientists linked the lineages to trace the first mother. She, it turns out, lived in Africa around 1,50,000 years ago. The press was quick in giving her a name: Mitochondrial Eve.Unlike her sisters and the other women of her time, her daughters maintained successful lines of daughters and granddaughters who passed on her mitochondrial DNA. The girls in the other families just died out. In time one of Mitochondrial Eve's female descendants developed a teeny-tiny identifiable change in her mitochondrial DNA which she passed on to her children. Her female descendants passed it on successfully to theirs. This family became the first clan and the woman who first developed the change became the first clan-mother.Development of these change are highly rare occurrences and Africa, today, has only 13 clans.

3 Lara (a name given by Brian Sykes) became the clan-mother for the family that populated the rest of the world. Some descendants of Lara continue to live in Africa.

4 Yong E., Genomes link aboriginal Australians to Indians: Mingling of genes four millennia ago suggests continent was not isolated after all, Nature News, 14 January 2013

5 Morelle R., Hunter-gatherer European had blue eyes and dark skin, BBC.com, 27 January 2014

6 Reich D., Reconstructing Indian population history, Nature, 2009

7 Gibbons A., How Europeans Evolved White Skin, Science, 2015