Pulled an all-nighter, second one in my college career--and it feels like I'm jazzing off the world, more or less. Did not actually finish my assignment on time, so I will take that 3% deduction, but in the mean time, let me talk to you about something I just discovered.
God this is cool.
It's really rare that two classes in two very dissimilar departments interact and create an amazing symposium of epic epicness (sleep deprivation is not, however, helping my vocabulary). So today in biology we were learning about human evolution. Yadda yadda yadda. Haha, of course the African replacement model is correct. Everyone knows that. Many different types of hominids evolved in, or near, Africa, and spread around the globe. Eventually Homo sapiens arose from the Ethiopian plains and were all like, let's switch things up. As a result of this, Africans have the greatest amount of genetic diversity among human races. I also knew this (The Natural History Museum in New York City has a kick-ass exhibit for human evolution), which is why I think of myself as having a slight edge on everyone else in case we get hit with some really catastrophic plague. To show us evidence in support of this African replacement theory, our professor threw up a slide of a phylogenetic tree based on the mitochondrial DNA of many different human groups.
Yadda yadda yadda. Europeans are all closely related. Surprise surprise. Asians, too. But then, what's this... Yorubans are part of a small group of five groups that have the greatest diversity and some of the most recent divergence from the human lineage.... Wha.... My interest peaks. Then I'm completely blown away when the Ibo and Hausa, two other cultural groups located on either side of the Yoruba in present day Nigeria, are located as far away from the Yoruba as should be possible. Seriously. What does this mean?
We're learning about the Yoruba in African Art. As of right now I know that the Yoruba consider themselves as the descendants of the Ife, who they consider to be the first inhabitants of the entire world, in central Nigeria. What does this mean? What can it mean?
Were the Yoruba really alien invaders that spliced with existing humanoid strains upon arrival on planet earth? Then they proceeded to settle in the East Guinea Coast and proliferate and colonize and dominate the region with their advanced alien ways? I like this explanation. It also fits with my, "I am probably better than you," theory that I'm still working on.
It's also likely that the Ife arrived in Central Nigeria from a population that existed in the horn of Africa, near the Sudan and Egypt, and then made sure that they didn't intermingle with the Ibo or Hausa at all.... Yea, that's technically "possible."
But I like my first theory best. This is what I'm telling my kids: Your mom is part of an awesome, human-like clade of aliens, and prior to your grandfather's decision to relocate to America to attend *cough* Colby College *cough*, and if the goddamn British hadn't been so insistent on colonizing them, your mother could have probably been a really cool, really epic Alien Queen.
I won't tell them that although their great-great grandfather was an important man in society, he was really only a Chief, and the likelihood that I would have married a King would have been slim at best, despite polygamist tendencies.
But still. A girl, being filled with a liberal arts education, and with a healthy sense of self importance, can dream...
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