Do black Africans belong to a different species from other ethnic groups in the world?

The genetic makeup of those from sub-Saharan Africa differs from everybody else in the world

It is generally agreed that the species to which we belong, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa and left that continent between fifty and seventy thousand years ago. In Europe and the Middle East, they encountered an older human species, the Neanderthals, and the two species interbred. The old view that the Neanderthals were brutish, almost sub-human, has long been discredited. In fact, they were a tough, resourceful breed of human, from whom the Homo sapiens emerging from Africa learned a great deal.

     The Neanderthals themselves had evolved from an even earlier species, Homo erectus. This species really was primitive. For the best part of two million years, they used the same type of stone tools and apparently invented nothing of note. The hand axe they used is simple a piece of stone which has had bits chipped off it until it may be comfortably gripped in one hand and a point or sharp edge used to cut open a carcass or break bones to get at the nutritious marrow within. That nothing further was developed over the course of two million years is cultural stagnation indeed and there can be little doubt that Homo erectus was an evolutionary dead-end.

     The Neanderthals, though, had the vision to improve upon the hand axe. When fashioning a hand axe from a lump of flint, the pieces which are removed are normally regarded as debris and discarded. The Neanderthals came up with the idea of treating the original piece of flint not as the basis for the finished tool, but rather as the source for many smaller tools. By carefully striking the stone in different ways with other rocks or pieces of deer antler, they were able to knock off substantial flakes which could then be turned into knives, scrapers or spearheads. (Papagianni & Morse, 2013). This activity requires abstract thought. One must have a mental image of the finished item towards which one is working. You must be able to imagine a flake which does not yet exist, other than in your mind and then act upon the external world to bring your idea into existence. After some more shaping, these items could then be glued to wooden handles or shafts. Amazing as it might seem to those who still think of them as brutish creatures, little better than apes, the Neanderthals in Europe discovered how to gather suitable wood and then distil sticky tar from it which was a perfect adhesive (Smith, 2019).

     Adhesive was not the only thing which the Neanderthals manufactured. In 2020, the discovery of a small piece of string made from the inner fibres of tree bark was reported from an archaeological site in France (Hardy et al, 2020). The implications of this were immense, because the fragment predated the arrival of modern humans in Europe. Most vegetable matter from 40,000 years ago simply rots away, but by a miracle, this little bit of three-ply string had somehow survived. String implies the existence of rope, bags, nets and many other artifacts which we usually associate with Homo sapiens. It suggests too mathematical understanding of concepts such pairs and sets. Making string from fibres is a tricky process which requires a good deal of practice. Little wonder then that some of those reporting the finding of the artifact were prompted to say that, ‘the idea that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans is becoming increasingly untenable (Hardy et al, 2020).

     The lifestyle of the Neanderthals was similar to that of modern humans in recent centuries. Like some of the indigenous peoples of North America, for instance, they had a particular interest in the feathers and claws of golden eagles. The Plains Indians trapped eagles and used their feathers for war bonnets. Other parts of the bird were also used to make decorations. Close examination of the remains of eagles dating to the time of the European Neanderthals shows that feathers had been carefully removed and also that attention had been paid to removing claws. Neither activity would have been part of preparation of the bird for food and so the obvious inference is that these parts of the creature were used for decoration (News Scientist, 2019).

     In other ways too, the Neanderthals appeared to behave in eerily similar ways to modern people. They cared for members of their group who were disabled and unable to lead useful and productive lives. One individual, who lived in what is now Iraq, had lost his right arm, was profoundly deaf, had only one eye and could only walk with a limp, and yet had lived to old age with these disabilities. This could only mean that he had been cared for by others for much of his life. They deliberately buried their dead too, together with grave goods. This strongly suggested some type of religious belief, perhaps faith in an afterlife. Then too, they had even begun creating what were almost certainly ritual sites, which also suggests the dawning of religious belief; as does the paintings in caves which are now reliably attributed to Neanderthals. In short, these were people at least as advanced as the Homo sapiens who were to emerge from Africa. Indeed, in some ways, they were ahead of Homo sapiens.

     We know that all Europeans and Asians have a few percent of Neanderthal genes in their DNA. We know too that crossbreeding or hybridisation can sometimes be healthy for two different species. To understand what the concept of hybrid vigour might have to do with modern humans, and how it ties in with what we have been looking at, we need to ask first what the term means. The correct name for the process by which offspring can have better traits than parents is heterosis. This has replaced the older word ‘heterozygosis’. When a population of animals or plants is either very small or becomes inbred, it can suffer from what is known as ‘inbreeding depression’. It has long been observed that hybrid plants are healthier and more vigorous than pure strains, although more than one explanation has been advanced for why this should be so (Carr & Dudash, 2003). Animals too benefit from various breeds being crossed. This is sometimes true also of the interbreeding of species.

     A well-known instance of the crossbreeding of different species which produces an animal which has better and more desirable qualities than the parents may be found in mules. The mule is the usually sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse or mare. They are the oldest know case of a humanly engineered hybrid and have been around for thousands of years, being mentioned in the Bible (Psalm 32;9, Kings 1:18:5). Mules are stronger and more hardy than horses, but need less food. They are also alleged to be more intelligent than either horses or donkeys (Proops et al, 2008). Charles Darwin was enthusiastic about mules and their hybrid vigour, writing,

      The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid

      should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of

       muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to

       indicate that art has here outdone nature (Darwin, 1879).

    Let us speculate a little, although keeping strictly within the bounds of plausibility and confining ourselves to what is known, and try to think what might have happened when those first groups of Homo sapiens left Africa over 50,000 years ago.  Groups of explorers in search of food, and perhaps also adventure, left Africa, followed the Mediterranean coast of what is now the Sinai Peninsula, and found themselves in a new territory, which was inhabited by strange people; barely recognisable to them as being human. All the same, they traded with these peculiar individuals and also fought with them at other times. Something else happened too. Although the women did not look anything much like their own mothers and daughters, some young men took lovers from these new and unfamiliar tribes; often by force and at other times because despite the barrier of mutual incomprehensibility, some spark of attraction was kindled. Women from the newcomers also had liaisons with those they met in the land in which they were now making their home, and in the course of time, babies were born who shared half their characteristics with each of their parents.

     It was obvious that the children born from this first generation of mixed couplings were special. They were sharper, brighter, more adventurous and more daring than either of the groups from whom they had sprung. They were natural leaders, having more and better ideas than any of their contemporaries. Perhaps there was some little prejudice against them to begin with, as is not uncommonly the case with children of mixed heritage, but by the time they had grown to maturity their capabilities were so glaringly plain that they acceded, almost as a matter of course, to the leadership of their various families and clans. Not that this was sufficient to satisfy their ambitions. These were men and women who wanted new and different things. They were not content to stay in one place, doing things in the same way that they had been done for generations; in fact for thousands, tens of thousands of generations. 

     After centuries of increasingly frequent interbreeding, groups of these hybrids, led by the most intelligent and resourceful, began spreading out north, east and west from what is now the Middle East. They carried with them a vital genetic inheritance, which they would pass down to their own children. Not all the characteristics which had been acquired through mating were of use to them. The shape of the skull, proportions of the body and so on were of no importance and as the hybrids started to rely more on their own tribes for sexual partners, so those outward Neanderthal traits slowly faded, until only a small part of the genome of the original inhabitants of that part of the world was retained. Most vital were two genes which gave an enhanced ability to the brain.

     One thing about which there is no doubt at all is that modern humans living outside Africa inherited genes from the Neanderthals which related in some way to the structure and possibly functioning of the brain. It is not clear precisely what role these genes play. One of the genes is microcephalin and the other, the ASPM gene. Because both these genes have survived and been handed down for tens of thousands of years, it is asserted by some researchers that they must confer a positive benefit on the those who inherit them (Evans, 2005).  A study was conducted to see if the genes correlated to either skull size or general mental ability in various populations throughout the world, but no such connection was found (Rushton et al, 2007).

     There must surely be some advantage though to possessing the two genes mentioned above. After all, 97% of the Neanderthal DNA which modern humans acquired in the distant past has been ditched long ago; why should just a few of these genes linger on? Despite the failure to identify any increase in intelligence using standard methods for testing, there may still be an effect on the brains of those with Microcephalin and the ASPM gene. In Europe and America, there is a pronounced distaste for experiments which involve mixing human DNA with that of animals; particularly primates. In China, such squeamishness is unknown. As a matter of fact, there have for years been persistent rumours that Chinese scientists created in 1967 a ‘humanzee’, that is to say a cross between a human and a chimpanzee (Lieber, 1985).

     It was reported in 2019 that almost a decade earlier scientists in China had managed to insert the human microcephalin gene into some monkey embryos, by means of a virus (Regalado, 2019). Although only five macaque monkeys were produced in the experiment, the results were apparently promising. Although the brains were no larger than usual, like human children they took longer to develop. According to the scientists, these transgenic monkeys did better than average of memory tests involving colours and pictures. Such reports are intriguing, but there is virtually no chance of their being repeated in the West for ethical reasons.

     Although firm evidence is lacking, it seems entirely possible, likely even, that human intelligence is affected by genetic factors which some people whose origins are in Europe and Asia have acquired and which those in Africa have missed out on entirely. Within a few thousand years, the blink of an eye, compared with the time scale to which past changes had been measured, the hybrids who emerged from the mingling of the Neanderthals with Homo sapiens had become transformed into what was, in effect, a new species. The difference between this emergent breed and those which had gone before was breath-taking. Before leaving Africa, Homo sapiens produced little more than doodles, consisting of scratches which signify little other than a vague awareness of the concept of symmetry. In what will one day become Europe, the Neanderthals who lived there before the coming of the hybrids were also producing much the same random scratches and the occasional pattern of straight lines on the wall of a cave.

     Within a few years of the arrival of what we might as well call Homo sapiens + in Europe, works of art though were being created such as a figure which was human, although with the head of a lion. It is obvious that whoever made this strange object was quite simply on a different intellectual plane from those who had gone before. For one thing, this figure, known as the lion man, is representative, rather than merely decorative. It is meant to portray something. Not only that, it is meant to show us something not in the real world, but a figure which existed only in the mind of the creator. Neither he, or she, had ever seen a man with the head of a lion; it had been imagined and then the pure thought had somehow been made manifest for all to see. This achievement, showing in solid form an image which had been conjured up in another person’s mind, showed the immeasurable gulf which separated Homo sapiens + from their ancestors.

      The new breed of humans took the world by storm and, as they spread out across Asia and Europe, innovation and invention became their hallmark. They began building permanent homes, growing crops, and before long the stage was set for the rise to civilisation. The aboriginal inhabitants of the continents which they invaded were wholly unable to compete with the incomers. Those older species, whom we know today as the Neanderthals and Homo erectus, found themselves outclassed on all levels and faded quietly away.

      The human population which had stayed behind in Africa simply stagnated. Over the next 50,000 years, in which Homo sapiens + moved from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution, with its steam engines, blast furnaces and telegraphs, the root stock of modern humanity, the original Homo sapiens, remained for the most part in the Stone Age, where they had been when those first explorers entered the Middle East and encountered for the first time their Neanderthal cousins.

         It does not take a very extensive grasp of history to see that no human invention since the stone hand axe and, possibly the bone harpoon for fishing, originated in sub-Saharan Africa. The harpoon, which might first have been devised in Africa, has been around for over 35,000 years. Since that time, nothing more has been invented by the original Homo sapiens in their homeland. Everything, from the wheeled cart and written word to jet planes and smartphones has been invented by those whose origins lie in Europe; the groups who we have called Homo sapiens +. The population of Homo sapiens which has lived in Africa for perhaps as long as two hundred thousand years has not come up with any new ideas since the Stone Age. There may be another reason for this, other than the fact that they did not receive the boost of Neanderthal DNA which everybody else on the planet now possesses.

     While those Homo sapiens who left Africa were mating with the Neanderthals and acquiring various useful genes which we have to this day. Those remaining in Africa were perhaps also interbreeding with another human species, the Homo erectus who still lived on in Africa, side by side with the more modern species. Skulls have been found in Africa dating from just 13,000 years ago, with very strange features. In 1965, for instance, the so-called Eleru skull was unearthed in Nigeria. It has featured of both Homo sapiens and also, intriguingly, Homo erectus. It has been suggested (Stringer, 1974) that it possible that while Homo sapiens in Europe was flourishing, those who remained in Africa may have been interbreeding with relict populations of Homo erectus. This would hardly improve the intelligence of those living in Africa and it is not inconceivable that it caused the modern humans living there to regress in some ways. Just as we have coined the expression Homo sapiens + for those in Europe and Asia, perhaps it would be reasonable to describe those who remined in Africa as Homo sapiens -. In this way, the distinct possibility emerges that black Africans belong to a different species from everybody else in the world. This might shed light, to give but one example, on the chronic academic underachievement which seems to bedevil those whose ancestry lies chiefly in this part of the world. Unfortunately, It is impossible to confirm or disprove such a hypothesis, because it has not yet been possible to extract Homo erectus DNA in the way that this has been done with that of Neanderthals. It is in any case to be doubted if there would, in the modern world, be much appetite for exploring this idea!

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