Our obsession with ethnicity or race is always exposed when our myths and cultural wise tales are exposed by science. DNA taken from a molar of a European hunter-gatherer, who lived around 7,000 years ago, showed the Mesolithic man to have blue eyes, black or brown hair and dark skin, according to the Guardian.
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Apart from supporting the theory that primates like us originated from Africa and migrated to Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, it reveals how much we are still bound by social constructs like ethnicity and the importance of skin color.
Arguing, like some racists do so often, that somehow ethnic groups have never mixed and that people who lived in Europe were “white” from the onset is, to put it diplomatically, pure rubbish.
Any sensible person understands that one of humankind’s secrets of survival has been migration and intermixing genetically and culturally.
Even so, you’ll find too many who argue that the later isn’t true. That somehow the Garden of Eden wasn’t in Babylonia but existed in some secret place in their own country. Those people that emerged from that fictitious Garden of Eden “just appeared” and never mixed with any outside group.
So-called interracial marriage and migration are the best examples and living proof of what primates like us have been doing since we became bipedal. We migrated because we were curious and hopeful that the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill.
Who are those that feel threatened today by migration and cultural diversity? Aren’t they the one’s who are trying to maintain myths about our “whiteness” and “superiority” over other people?
Risto Laakonen, who have done a lot to promote greater acceptance of Finnish migrants in Sweden and of migrants in general in Finland, said that whenever a group starts to speak of itself as a tribe, that’s when we start to flirt with racism.
This used to be the logo of the regional council of South Savo.
While it is perfectly fine for any group to be proud of its heritage, can anyone claim the Mesolithic man and those hunters and gatherers that lived in these parts thousands of year as their exclusive cultural property?
Not really because those that wandered so far are nobody else but us today.