This Journey is Getting Curiouser and Curiouser - Part 2
In 2019, a chance conversation with a South African couple left a ‘thought-seed’ in my mind that has now just sprouted.
Nigel and his wife were British, but they had emigrated to South Africa in the early 1980s. They still live there and we had met on their visit to Melbourne. Nigel was bit of a ‘deep-thinker’ and so had thought a lot about race, colonialism and Apartheid [as one does in South Africa, my contacts tell me!]
Over a dinner, I had been telling them about that year’s most controversial book, Dark Emu and its author Bruce Pascoe, and his ‘fake’ claims of Aboriginality.
With a wry smile, Nigel decided to play Devil’s Advocate and suggested that Bruce actually could consider himself to be of the same ancestry as the Aborigines, it just depended where one drew the line.
As Nigel explained, if one drew the line, separating the Aboriginal race from the rest of us, through the Timor Sea between the ancient land masses of Sunda (SE Asia) and Sahul (Australia), then it did make sense that humans today who could trace their descent to the east of that imaginary line prior to 1788, were Australian Aborigines.
And Bruce Pascoe couldn’t - his alleged recent family tree showed that his ancestors were all from England [See also Herald Sun online here & pdf.file here].
So he wasn’t Aboriginal by that definition - his direct ancestors had not set out some 50,000 years ago on a raft from the last island in the Sunda archipelago, across the 90km Timor Strait, to a landfall in Sahul (Australia).
Figure 1 - Sunda and Sahul land masses some 50,000 years ago (see also Wikipedia)
But what if, mused Nigel, instead of drawing the race line through the Timor Sea, we instead drew it much further back in time, closer to Africa through the Red Sea? [See Figure 2 below between modern day Ethiopia and Yemen]
Drawing the line in the Red Sea would still account for all those ancestors of the people we now call Aboriginal Australians, but it would also reinforce the fact that these humans did not originate in Sunda. They were just passing through Sunda on their colonising trek towards Sahul (Australia).
They in fact originated in Africa - that was the real “home” of these anatomically modern humans (AMH) who were to become Australia’s Aborigines.
Was it not therefore more logical to draw the line, which they crossed when leaving their real “home” of Africa, as the definition of where they were from, or from where they descended?
For example, we don’t say Captain Cook or Governor Phillip colonized Australia from respectively, New Zealand or the Cape Colony, which is where they directly came from in their ships, if we draw the line outside the heads of Botany Bay.
Rather we draw the line in the English Channel to denote where Cook and Phillip crossed on leaving their natural “home” of Britain, as they set out on their colonising epics. We all accept that they were British by their departure point, not Australian by their arrival point.
So that is where I left Nigel’s thought experiment, until now.
This week we posted a piece on the SNP-y-DNA genetics of 18 Aboriginal Australian men, where the research showed that their human ancestors had left Africa about 60 to 65,000 years ago, crossing an imaginary Red Sea line into the Arabian Peninsula on their long, colonising trek to Sahul (Australia).
Nigel’s conversation came back to me with the idea that technically, it would be feasible to claim that these humans crossing the Red Sea line were the ancestors of Australia’s Aborigines. The SNP-y-DNA studies showed that these humans were genetically linked directly to modern Aboriginal people, as shown in Figure 3 below.
Taking this further, could we not say then, that these people who crossed our Red Sea Race Line provided the base descent of modern Aboriginal people? Were they not indeed, precursor-Aborigines?
Figure 2 - The ancestors of Aboriginal people are believed to have crossed from the Horn of Africa [Ethiopia] across the Red Sea Race Line to the Arabian Peninsula [Yemen].
And this is where the penny dropped for me.
Could not anyone who was able to trace their own genealogy directly back to these precursor-Aboriginal people, as they left Africa 60 to 65,000 years ago, also be able to claim that they too were one of their descendants?
If Bruce Pascoe’s genetics, for example, showed that his ancestors left Africa about the same time, and in the same human group as the ancestors of the original Australians - these precursor-Aborigines - then, was it not technically true that Bruce Pascoe himself was one of these precursor-Aborigines?
Was he not in fact, one of their “mob”?
The speculation therefore is that, when Bruce’s ancestors left the Arabian Peninsula, they turned left and headed north-westward to ancient Europe, whereas the other members of his “mob'“, his ancient “cousins”, turned right and headed east on their long trek to colonise Sahul (Australia), where they ultimately became the Australian Aborigines.
Bruce has even alluded to this in his unique style of spinning a yarn, when ANU history Professor Tom Griffiths told us,
“… he [Pascoe] accepts scrutiny of his identity, reflecting that “clinical analysis of genes says I’m more Cornish than Koori.” (Inside Story)
Now, we don’t have access to Bruce Pascoe’s SNP-y-DNA results, but we do in fact have mine. I’m male and of European heritage like Bruce, so let’s use my SNP-y-DNA results as a proxy for Bruce’s.
It will be a scary thought for Bruce when he reads this post [we know he follows our site]. Despite being his nemesis, Bruce and I have the same ancestral “father”, y-chromosomal Adam. Yikes!
So let’s draw our race line through the Red Sea and look at the SNP-y-DNA of some of the men who crossed this line as mankind began its great colonisation of the earth.
When I compared my SNP-y-DNA “time & place pathway” [which is also a proxy for Bruce Pascoe’s - but see Further Reading No. 1 below] with that of the 18 Aboriginal Australian men, I was staggered to see that they matched perfectly, up until the date of about 42,300 BCE, at which time both our ancient ancestors were located in modern-day northern Iran.
At this date and place we both shared the same SNP of K-YSC0000186.
Figure 3 - Extract from a World Map of SNP paths showing the estimated geographical pathway “Out of Africa” of the ancestors of the group of 18 Aboriginal Australian men who were studied in our previous post here.
Source Go here and type in the “Map” tab: "P308” - but details may vary slightly over time as new data is added. Use browser Google Chrome if Safari does not easily load.
Figure 4 - Extract from a World Map of SNP paths showing the estimated geographical pathway “Out of Africa” of my (Roger Karge’s) ancestors. Note the exact overlap for my ancestor’s path with the ancestor of the 18 Aboriginal men (in Figure 3 above) up until the SNP of K-YSC0000186 in northern Iran. [Nb: Data as of 28 October 2023, which may change sightly as future test results are added to the database which may change the appearance of the “pathway” overtime]
Additionally, when one compares this SNP-y-DNA data in tabulated form for the 18 Aboriginal men (left column below - Figure 5) with my SNP-y-DNA data (right column below - Figure 6), it can be seen that all the SNP’s up until this point are exactly the same for all of us, the 18 Aboriginal men and me.
Figure 5 - Aboriginal Men’s SNP-y-DNA (Source Go here and type in the “SNP” tab: "P308” - but details may vary slightly over time as new data is added. Use browser Google Chrome if Safari does not easily load)
The SNP-y-DNA results for two races of men - Aboriginal Australian (left) and European [German - Roger Karge] (right).
Note the staggering fact: that from 232,000BCE* (whilst in Africa - see maps above), until 42,300 BCE after our “mob” had crossed the Red Sea line, gone through the Arabian Peninsula* and arrived in the region of modern-day northern Iran, my SNP-y-DNA (& genetics?) was exactly the same as my precursor-Aboriginal “cousins” [i.e.: we share all the same SNPs up to the SNP-y-DNA of K-YSC0000186].
It is from this point on that our ancestors diverged.
* dates & locations are estimates [See important Note 1 below]
Figure 6 - Typical European Male SNP-y-DNA (Editor of DEE, Roger Karge with a father of German descent)
(Source Go here and type in the “SNP” tab: "R-FT100330”- but details may vary slightly over time as new data is added. Use browser Google Chrome if Safari does not easily load)
Up until this date of 42,300 BCE (44,300 years ago), my ancestral SNP-y-DNA is equivalent to that of the ancestors of those 18 Aboriginal Australian men. We could thus perhaps say that we are all genetically from the same “mob”.
But then something happens. A mere 300 years later, an SNP variation occurs in my ancestor’s genetics and I [and along with some of the mob?] head off along a new branch of the great Family Tree of mankind.
Geographically, these ancestors of mine then head off in a north-east direction into the steppes of Central Asia [see map in Figure 4 above]. Around 34,000 BCE my ancestors then double back and head west to finally arrive in eastern Europe in the centuries before the Birth of Christ.
Bruce Pascoe’s ancestors are possibly on a similar journey as mine, but at some stage they must have headed further west to end up in Britain [see also Further Reading No. 1 below]. This would be reflected in Bruce’s SNP-y-DNA as well - an SNP variation would have occurred at some time in the deep past in his male ancestral line, which would have then resulted in a new branch in the great Family Tree of mankind.
This new branch would have had its own geographical path that brought some of his ancestors ultimately to Bruce’s ‘Cornwall’, from where some of these “Cornish” ancestors then emigrated to Australia to ‘reconnect’ with their long-separated Aboriginal “cousins”, Bruce’s claimed “Koories”.
Meanwhile, another part of our original mob, the “precursor-Aboriginal cousins” of Bruce and I, decided [chose/forced?] not to come north-east to the steppes and then onto Europe with us.
Instead, they set off in a south-east direction through the Indian subcontinent, through to Sunda and finally they arrived on the shores of Sahul (Australia) around 50,000 years ago.
It is also important to realise they were not Australian Aborigines at this point. They were the people I am describing as precursor-Aborigines. They only became the race of Aboriginal people we know today by living in, and being shaped by, our home continent of Australia over the next 50,000 years.
Conclusion
What does all this mean? Was Nigel correct, or is this just an elegant thought experiment?
I am not sure yet, but I do know that the Radical Left have been experts at claiming scientific snippets and creating a popular Progressive narrative that suits their political cause, such as, “Aboriginal people have been here 65,000 years” (no they haven’t); “Aboriginal people are the oldest continuous culture on the planet” (no they aren’t - more on this topic soon); “Aboriginal people lived in peace and harmony with themselves and the Environment” (no they didn’t); etc.
So maybe it is now time for the Conservative Right to step up and use science to promote their values?
Could we not explore the science of SNP-y-DNA, as described here, with the goal of promoting the Western Christian concepts of, “we are all made in the image of God” and all that flows from that; “we are all individuals of equal status and worth, no matter what path we, or our ancestors, have taken” and perhaps more importantly, “we are all in this together, as part of the Australian Project”.
Food for thought.
Roger Karge, Editor, Dark Emu Exposed
[ps; by training I am a scientist - BSc(Hons), Grad Dip Chem Eng - and have put this post together based on sources of valid data and in conversation with informants who study this emerging SNP technology. I am not a trained geneticist. Thus, we would welcome input from any more qualified readers who may be able to contribute more on this exciting new SNP technology and its uses (and abuses) within the fields of genealogy.]
IMPORTANT Note 1
Astute readers might be noticing some apparent inconsistencies in the dates and geographies quoted here.
Firstly, the data is from the US Commercial company FamilyTreeDNA and ancient dates quoted are only ‘best estimates’ based on the dataset size to date. As more “testers” submit their samples to this project, the database will increase and theoretically become more accurate in reflecting our true ancestral DNA history.
Similarly for the maps, showing the “pathways” our ancestors took. These will vary overtime as data from new “testers” are added.
Secondly, one intriguing issue I have noticed with this data is that if we claim that Aboriginal people have been in Australia for 50,000 years, how is it that the SNP-y-DNA data of the 18 Aboriginal men seems to indicate that their ancestors were located in modern-day northern Iran in 42,300 BCE (44,300 years ago), along with my ancestors? [That is, we all have the same SNP-K-YSC0000186, see Figures 5&6].
My technical informants suggest that this could be due the dataset still is not being large enough - as more “testers” are added the dates & geographies may move to make more sense.
Or alternatively, and much more interestingly, it could suggest that Aboriginal people arrived in Sahul (Australia) at a date that is closer to the actual archaeological evidenced discovered so far - say 41,400 [43,300 years ago] as indicated by the Lake Mungo and other archaeology in Figure 7 below.
Figure 7 - Correlation of actual human skeletal archaeological finds in Australia with estimated SNP dates. (Source: previous post)
Could it be that the precursor-Aborigines travelled from modern-day northern Iran to Lake Mungo in only 1000 years? Maybe, but that seems unlikely. Or maybe not?
Let’s see what develops in this space over the coming years.
If any of our readers, especially archaeologists or geneticists, we would very much welcome your thoughts.
Further Reading No. 1 Bruce Pascoe’s “Cornish” Ancestors
We don’t have access to Bruce Pascoe’s SNP-y-DNA results so we have used mine (Roger Karge’s) as a proxy in this post. There is a good chance that Pascoe’s ancestral path is similar to mine - splitting off from our Aboriginal “cousins” in northern Iran and then heading north-east to the steppes before heading back west to Europe.
However, there are publicly available SNP-y-DNA results for a group of people with Anglo-saxon ancestors. These results show that there is another route that Pascoe’s ancestors may have taken to Europe. This route is directly north from the Horn of Africa, up along the Red Sea (and thus by-passing the Arabian Peninsula altogether) and entering Europe via the Levant and the Balkans (Figure 8).
Figure 8 - Extract from a World Map of SNP paths showing the estimated geographical pathway “Out of Africa” for an SNP group of “Anglo-Saxons”. Note that some travel by a path similar to my ancestors (as in Figure 4), but another group broke away whilst in Africa and headed north to Europe rather than via Arabia and the steppes.
Source: Select “anglo saxons” from pulldown menu here
Further Reading No. 2 - Images
The images of the two Aboriginal men and myself in this post are from a recent (2023) photographic trip by the Greek photographer Vagelis Poulis who I took to the Aboriginal community of Titjikala, about 120km south of Alice Springs in the NT (see here)
Further Reading No. 3 - ABC Fact-checking 60,000 years
When we have time we will critique this ABC fact-check
Further Reading No 4 - The Viking or Aboriginal in Us
We all have some type of Viking in us - Have we thought through the consequences of claiming it?
