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World News See other World News Articles Title: Anthropology’s Obsession with African Origins There is renewed interest in the “Out of Africa” theory of human origins because of a study showing sub-Saharan Africans interbred with an extinct hominid species. This article, originally posted in January, 2014, provides other reasons for being skeptical of African origins and shows how the “Out of Africa” theory has been promoted partly for reasons of political correctness. When did humans first become human? The answer is far from simple, because the question assumes that sometime in the past, humans achieved modernity and were locked within an evolutionary loophole where natural selection no longer applies. Despite the absurdity of this scenario, and in stark contrast to empirical data, it is widely believed that humans have not changed physically or mentally for the past 50,000 years or so. After the discipline of anthropology was hijacked by Cultural Marxism and it became crimethink to observe average group differences, a preoccupation with tracing everything back to Africa developed. Africa does have an outstanding archaeological record revealing many firsts: the first bipedal hominids, the first stone tools, and the first anatomically modern humans that looked roughly like we do today (a vertical forehead, round skull, flat face, and prominent chin). But largely due to the anti-racist politicization of anthropology, the currently accepted evolutionary paradigm is that Africa was the source of an intellectual watershed event sometime between 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, and that it was only a matter of time before this new breed of clever Africans spread out and replaced all the dim-witted archaic human populations in the rest of the world, such as Neanderthals. (As used here, the term ‘racist’ refers to views that race and racial differences are a legitimate variable in research on humans, with none of the usual negative connotations found in the popular and scientific literature.) The concept of behavioral modernity as it has been applied to the Paleolithic seemingly arose out of the Cultural Marxist obsession with proving that Africans are just as good as, and even better than the evil racist nineteenth-century White scientists who dared to rank societies and point out that advanced civilization never developed in certain areas of the world, such as south of the Sahara. The problem with this paradigm is that, using the same set of criteria proposed by those scholars pushing for an African origin for modern behavior, it seems to have originally appeared in Europe instead, when modern humans first arrived there and replaced Neanderthals. Furthermore, the so-called modern behavior in the African Stone Age is not qualitatively different from that of Neanderthals, who were supposedly replaced by cognitively-advanced modern humans. Advertisement - Time to SUBSCRIBE now! Why all the confusion and intellectual gymnastics to argue for an African origin for modern human behavior? The reason can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when an anti-racist political agenda was injected into anthropological scholarship, which eventually was influenced and transformed by critical theory of the Frankfurt School, with its overtones of anti-establishment and anti-Western sentiment aimed at the Marxist goal of liberating oppressed groups. It has been debated elsewhere whether such anti-racist sentiments were sincere, or in contrast were used as a means to advance ethnic Jewish group interests while simultaneously de-ethnicizing non-Jewish elites [1]. Regardless, this Cultural Marxist ideology has served as a hindrance to scientific inquiry and has resulted in unfortunate situations where data are simply ignored when they do not follow the accepted paradigm, which evokes the exclusionary tactics used by the Boasian intellectual movement against dissenters. The Anti-Racist Crusade in Anthropology At the turn of the twentieth century, a spark was lit in the academic world of anthropology that would drastically change its course and politicize the discipline to serve as a mouthpiece for the far left. This spark, lit by Franz Boas, the “Father of American Anthropology,” introduced the concept of cultural relativism and involved the heavy use of an anti-racist political ideology. The Boasian tradition would later dovetail with critical theory, created by Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School, in that dominant (Western) societies and their supporting ideologies were seen as the primary obstacle to human liberation. Thus, critical theory is inherently anti- Western because the dominant ideologies at that time were Western in origin. This freedom fighter mentality against traditional Western ideals and society has been a mainstay in anthropology since it was introduced at the turn of the twentieth century, and has arguably metastasized into a political-philosophical juggernaut that crushes all dissent and has resulted in the railroading of the discipline into meaningless postmodern, unscientific pursuits of self-interest, such as the field of feminist archaeology (which is so 1980s and has since been eclipsed by black feminist archaeology). Many of today’s anthropologists are infused with Cultural Marxist cultural relativism and the desire to be a freedom fighter railing against mainstream thought. The irony of course is that Cultural Marxism is the mainstream, completely dominating all aspects of Western academia and media. Despite major scientific advances in various aspects of anthropology such as radiometric dating and genomic studies, Cultural Marxism remains at the helm, firmly keeping the discipline on the straight and narrow path of anti- racism and disingenuous cultural relativism that overemphasizes the virtues of non-Western societies while simultaneously de-emphasizing the positive aspects of Western civilization. The Legacy of Franz Boas The person most responsible for saturating anthropology with Cultural Marxism was Franz Boas, a German-Jewish émigré who found his academic home at Columbia University in 1896, where he stayed until his retirement in 1936. Boas had a profound impact on the field of anthropology, and was unashamedly political in his orientation, placing great emphasis on fighting scientific racism. Boas’s anti-racist enthusiasm was shared by other Jewish intellectuals of the Frankfurt School, which relocated from Germany to Columbia University in New York City in 1934. Shortly after establishing the department of anthropology at Columbia, Boas turned his attention to “the race problem,” and part of this effort involved nurturing Africa-centric studies in the social sciences. Contrary to the common view at that time that sub-Saharan Africa was a cultural backwater, Boas claimed that “the Negro race had contributed its liberal share” of cultural inventions and civilized accomplishments [2, p. 313]. Boas claimed that African cultural inventions in agriculture and iron smelting were crucial to “the advancement of the human race.” Subsequent research has shown that neither agriculture nor iron smelting was an African invention, despite decades of intensive investigation within Africa that was influenced by this idea originated by Boaz. Boaz was also the first to advocate for an African Institute and Museum, and the adoption of a Black studies curriculum at universities [3]. 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#1. To: Ada (#0)
The whole "Out of Africa" thing was bogus from the word go,and the people who pushed it were educated people who knew better. They did it for political reasons as well as personal fame and profits. Think about this for a minute,approximately 71 percent of the planet Earth is covered with standing water,and it's not even the same 71 percent it used to be. That's why you can find shark teeth and whale bones in the Rocky Mountains. Yet the educational system that HAS to know this is a lie,has been pushing the "Mankind surfaced for the first time in Africa" for almost 100 years. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
ONLY true if you add the modifier "AS FAR AS WE KNOW AT THIS TIME" to the end of the sentence. It is almost a certainty that the first humans showed up at a place that is underwater now,and probably for all time as far as we are concerned. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
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