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So, Where Do We Come From?
| Date: |
19 September 2004 12:00 |
| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Producer: Curious Pictures
It's probably the biggest question facing all humanity.
Nelson Mandela: It is natural for people to want to know their ancestry.
Marc Lottering: You can see that we are Germans, Germans from Retreat.
It's a question that shapes how we see ourselves. Now science is giving us some amazing answers.
Wendy Luhabe: It is a revelation for me, I had absolutely no idea.
Pieter Dirk Uys: Africa - From my mother?
So where do we come from?
The V& A Waterfront, Cape Town, at the southern tip of Africa. One of the continent's most popular tourist attractions, but also a favourite gathering place for South Africans...
At first glance, it's a melting pot of differences - different appearances, different origins, different ancestries. But looks deceive.
What the eye does not reveal is that every single one of these people shares a common bond: Somewhere in the distant past, they can all trace their ancestry back to Africa. And despite your physical appearance, you could be closely related to any of these people.
Science has recently given us the key to unlock the mysteries of our past ... to take us back thousands of years to our first ancestors, and to unveil the fascinating journey that led us here...
A journey that tells us that this man [Australian rugby team on screen], Lote Turquiri should be a closer relative to Stephen Larkham than he is to George Gregan.
Or take the Lemba, a tribe in the Limpopo province. Tracing their ancestors shouldn't be hard - despite some unconventional practices, they're black, and so you'd assume that their ancestors must be African - and so the Lemba must only be related to these guys [different tribes on screen] - or these guys - or these guys -Right?
Wrong! Science has in fact, proved that their cultural practices reflect their genetic ancestry, and that, on their paternal side, some Lemba are actually related to Jewish high priests descended from the Middle East!
Lemba Priest: 'Shalom hamenichem.'
Your DNA contains the map to your distant past and ancestry.
The human body is made up of cells, and every cell contains genes. You inherited those genes from your parents, they inherited them from their parents and so on.
It's our genes which give us our distinguishing characteristics and which make us unique.
The genes are made up of DNA, which works like a barcode for the human body. Just like a bar code, everyone's DNA is very similar, but differs slightly ... It's these differences that make each of us unique. But these tiny differences also contain the signatures of our ancestors. And by comparing them to other signatures around the world, we can piece together the story of where we come from, and to whom we are related.
Our number of ancestors doubles with every generation. This means we have thousands of ancestors.
Now genetic testing allows us to trace two lines of ancestors.
In males, DNA tracking uses the Y chromosome which every male inherits from his father, who inherited it from his father and so on, all the way back to the grandfather of all grandfathers, a so called genetic Adam.
Similarly, men and women can track the DNA called mitochondrial DNA -which we inherit only from our mothers - and which they inherit from their mothers- all the way along the direct female line back to the very first female ancestor - a genetic Eve.
But these tests cannot track all the other ancestors in between.
Prof Himla Soodyall - Human geneticist: The language we speak - within a generation we can change it. You can change all of these social and cultural attributes but you cannot change your genetic heritage.
In Johannesburg Professor Himla Soodyall conducted tests, on some young South African volunteers and various celebrities to determine their ancestral maps.
W.Kentridge: I just close it now?
Pieter Dirk Uys: I feel like Dr. Frankenstein.
Igsaan Martin: Well, I consider myself Cape Malay.
Moshami Chetty: Ethnically speaking I'm a South African Indian.
Irvin Khosa: I'm trying to trace my signature here.
Kwezi: I'm a black African.
Nelson Mandela: It's natural for people to want to know their ancestry.
Hannelie: I'm a South African, born in Pretoria. I'm Afrikaans.
Marc Lottering: It's looking very Khoisan, but I don't want to jump to any conclusions.
Conscelia: I'm mostly Tswana, that's my home language.
Dale September: Laughs. Cape coloured.
Tim Modise: This is my history in here (holding a test tube), but I can't see anything.
Delia: Well ethnically I'm coloured.
Nadine: I see myself as a South African coloured.
Struan: Well, pretty much African I'd say.
What we know about our past can take us back at most a few generations. But Professor Soodyall's tests, can takes us back as far as 150,000 years to our shared common ancestor living in Africa. Our common great, great, great, great, great grandmother!
150,000 years seems like a long time. But we humans are actually very recent arrivals on this planet - and in the history of the world, 150,000 years is no more than a blink of an eye....
Time started 15 billion years ago ... with the Big Bang.
To get a better sense of time, imagine time in terms of distance. On this map ten centimetres represents a hundred years. Every kilometre would represent a million years.
Now if the amphitheatre at the Waterfront represents the present day, then 15 billion years ago when the big bang took place would represent 15 000 kilometres. That is as far away, as Tokyo in Japan.
The first life from which all life on earth today is descended happened 3 billion years ago, or as far away as Dar Es Salaam on this scale. That's 3000 kilometres from Cape Town.
The first Apes appeared around 25 million years ago - as close to Cape Town as Belville just up the N1.
But it was only around 8 million years ago that our ancestors split from the apes.
On our scale where we compare time with distance this brings us to the fringes of the city of Cape Town, only eight kilometres away from the Waterfront.
It is only within the last 8 kilometres - 8 million years ago that our distant ape-man cousins, which scientists call 'hominids', gradually evolved in Africa...some becoming more and more like us - Some of them left Africa for greener pastures. But they all became extinct at some time or another. They were not our forefathers.
Modern humans like us only emerged 150,000 years ago - 150 metres from the amphitheatre at the waterfront -
150,000 years ago all humans shared a common ancestor. Every possible difference between us - can be accounted for in this last 150 metres on the map.
Think of this, in relation to the distance between Cape Town and Tokyo.
150 000 years ago, our common ancestor was living in Africa. At that time - there were other hominids living in other parts of the world. In Europe, there were rugged cold adapted cousins called Neanderthals similar to us but without our consciousness.
For more than a century, European scientists believed that Europeans had evolved from Neanderthals.
This idea reflected the colonial mentality of the time, suggesting that Europeans evolved from a completely different source than what they perceived to be their backward and barbaric African cousins.
Film African Screams - 1949: 'Now I know what it means to be in hot water.'
It was also a neat explanation for the different races in the world - it gave rise to racist theories - and the idea that Africans were less human than Europeans.
For many years this was the prevailing view.
So you can imagine the controversy when in the 20th century, scientists working in Africa suggested that we all - everyone in the world - evolved from the same African family.
Scientists fought bitterly over the origins of modern man. Until genetic science settled the debate.
By comparing the Mitochondrial DNA from living people from all over the world, scientists have been able to prove that Africans have been around longer than anyone else - and that everyone else, at some point or another, is descended from Africa.
Thabo Mbeki: Today, it feels good to be an African
Our DNA is organised into a pattern, which you can understand like the code that computer programmers write. That code gets passed down through the generations. But every ten thousand years or so - there is a slight change, or mutation, when code gets miscopied - and the new code then gets passed down.
If you compare the codes of different Africans you will find greater variation than in any other group. This means that human DNA has been evolving in Africa much longer than anywhere else - which means that Africans were here first.
By calculating the average number of mutations in a particular area of DNA, scientists worked out that our common human ancestor lived a hundred and fifty thousand years ago in Africa.
What did we look like, back then? Every culture has represented its idea of its original ancestors in its own image
But is it possible to come up with a scientific version of Adam or Eve?
This human skull found recently in Ethiopia is about 160,000 years old and although we doubt it is our actual original ancestor - it puts this guy in roughly the right place at the right time as our common ancestor.
Combining an intimate knowledge of anatomy with technology, it is possible to turn this incomplete skull into a fairly accurate representation of what its owner would have looked like.
Professor Phillip Tobias - Anatomist and Palaeoanthropologist: Oh, I'm mad about that mandible.
Because the skull was found in a warm place, it is likely that this Adam would be dark skinned and dark eyed.
Prof. Tobias: Very impressive - very impressive!
The final product looks a lot like we do.
Because humans have been around for such a short time, in the large scale of things we are a remarkably close-knit family.
Dogs on the other hand, have vast differences within the same species.
Or take our distant relatives, the chimpanzees.
Chimpanzees have been around for roughly 4 million years. That's long enough for significant genetic differences to have evolved within the species.
The result today, is that the genetic differences between 2 chimps from the same troupe are far greater than the genetic differences between any two people chosen at random from opposite ends of the world.
Different groups of humans [pictures of different people on screen] are all recently related. They haven't had time to evolve significant physical differences. You might even say that the differences between races are all merely cosmetic.
Simple make up can transform a person in half and hour and achieve what evolution took 80 000 years to complete.
Why, then, do we put so much emphasis on these superficial differences?
Even though all humans are so closely related to each other and are genetically so similar, we still see each other as different and make judgments on these slight differences with far-reaching consequences.
Though we take it for granted, we humans, unlike most other animals emphasise sight over all our other senses.
The reason dates way back.
Our ape ancestors developed acute stereoscopic vision to allow them to negotiate distances as they swung from branch to branch in the tree-tops.
And while modern humans might have left the treetops for the convenience of the city, we still rely on the acute sight we inherited.
We remain visually gifted apes and how we appear to each other is more important than how we feel, taste and smell.
And when it comes to the human face we are extraordinarily sensitive to slight differences, which we use to evaluate others.
We categorise our world through difference and similarity - the familiar and the other.
Film - The Gods Must Be Crazy narrator: That morning he saw the ugliest person he'd ever come across. She was as pale as something that had crawled out of a rotting log. Her hair was quite gruesome, long and stringy and white as if she was very old. She was very big. You'd have to dig the whole day to find enough food to feed her.
150,000 years ago, our common ancestor would have looked very similar to the 20,000 people around them in Africa.
This is less than the number of people in this soccer stadium [soccer stadium on screen].
They were all one race - and would have remained so, if they had stayed where they were.
But around 80 000 years ago or 80 metres from the amphitheatre on our scale, a bitter ice-age froze up much of the Earth's water at the poles forcing people living on the coast of today's Eritrea to move. Some crossed the Red Sea into Yemen.
Stephen Oppenheimer - DNA Tracker: I believe that only one group of that left Africa at this time, perhaps about 250 people. I suspect the push that sent that small group over, was that the local shell-fish that they were collecting were getting less as the result of the increased saltiness of the red-sea. And this was due to climate changes occurring at the time.
The descendents of these 250 or so Africans created all the other races in the world today.
We know this from the information we get from testing the DNA of living people. It is able to accurately tell us how and when people settled all over the world.
We can tell that the descendants of the first group that left Africa for Yemen, then moved further East towards the Indian sub-continent 70,000 years ago - in search of fresh resources.
Migrations continued along the coast, past Indonesia until Australasia was populated.
When the ice age began to thaw, it became possible for humans to move into the interior of Asia and Europe. The first colonisers of Europe only arrived about 50,000 years ago from India and the Middle East.
Here, our modern human ancestors encountered their cousins, the Neanderthals, and the two groups co-existed for over 20 000 years.
Scientists believe that the superior brainpower of humans meant they flourished in Europe, leading to the ultimate extinction of Neanderthals around 28 000 years ago.
When the last Neanderthal died, modern humans were the only hominids left on earth - we were all alone!
More than 90% of modern native Europeans can trace their maternal ancestors to just 7 women, which have become known as the 7 daughters of eve.
Finally, around 16,000 years ago as another ice age began to wane, our genetic clans became further dispersed as one clan of Arctic dwellers who followed the reindeer herd over the Bering Strait land-bridge into North America. Their descendants populated North and South America.
So the entire populations of Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas are descendants of the original little tribe that left Africa. And this is why a black Australian Aborigine is closer related to a pink Norwegian than to an equally black Zulu in South Africa. And why Lote Turquiri - who is a Melanesian from Fiji is more closely related to Stephen Larkham who is a white Australian than George Gregan who was born in Zambia.
Over time, the group of people who had settled around the world developed characteristics distinct from their African ancestors.
Some characteristics happened purely by coincidence - the common ancestor to Indians probably had straight hair leaving most descendents in India inheriting this characteristic.
But other characteristics are the result of the way people adapted to the climate and environmental conditions in their particular areas.
Take skin colour. In hot sunny areas people became darker as a protection against the harmful UV rays of the sun.
In colder cloudy areas like Europe, people became lighter to allow the UV rays into their skin to convert cholesterol into vitamin D - which is essential for bone development.
The global distribution of skin colour is directly related to sunlight. Darker people live near the equator and lighter people near the poles.
Even though skin colour is only a surface adaptation to climate conditions, it still makes a huge difference to how we see people... and how we see ourselves.
Film - Anatomy of Apartheid 1963: When you are sad and feeling bad look at the girl who is gay, she has that lighter lovelier skin that you can have today. 'Lighter and Lovelier' - for lighter and lovelier skin the modern way..
South Africa's recent history gives ample proof of the tragedy of judging people on their looks... it is marked by waves of successive settlement of the country over thousands of years, characterised by brutal and inhumane treatment of those already there.
In each case outward differences provided the justification.
Although history can be manipulated depending on who is writing it, our genes provide an unbiased record of the history of our country.
The history of the genes tell us that the Khoisan carry genetic signatures which are very close to the original modern human ancestor.
Prof. Soodyall: Ultimately all lines come back with their origins in Africa.
It would seem that the oldest mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome lineages found in living peoples today have been retained by people we call Khoisan.
Their ancestors moved into Southern Africa at least 100,000 years ago - making them the very first South Africans.
In fact, not only were the Khoisan's ancestors the first South Africans - but they were at the cutting edge of human development anywhere in the world. Nowhere else has anyone found any signs of culture, language and technology dating so far back.
The first signs of art, the first signs of language, the first sign of spirituality are all found in South Africa.
Peter Beaumont - Archaeologist: People sat here and had a good old braai in typical Northern Cape fashion. So you see the tradition of braaivleis is a very old one in Africa.
And about 5,000 generations later, some of the direct descendents of the first South Africans are still living in virtually the same place.
They have the Khoisan L1d mitochondrial DNA signature.
Many other South Africans - often those calling themselves coloured, carry the genetic signature of the Khoisan.
Dale September [Born in Cape Town]: So I have a few brothers running around in the desert.
Prof. Soodyall: You have a few maternal cousins.
Delia Meyer [Born in Lusaka Zambia]: That's great.
So the Khoisan genetic line was here first and its bearers lived in the region for about 100,000 years.
Two and a half thousand years ago, 500 years before Christ - the Khoi split from the San. Over time, the Khoi became more settled, domesticating sheep and later, cattle, whilst the San remained hunter- gatherers, leading a nomadic lifestyle.
Then, 1500 years ago, new kids on the block arrived ... the Bantu speaking people, originally from West Africa, had been making their way down Africa in search of fresh land for their flourishing population.
McEdward Murimbimbika - Archaeologist: The reasons for the initial movement is debatable, but basically they are linked to population expansion, the need for greener pastures.
One group travelled directly south as far as Namibia while the other migrated across central Africa and down the East African coast to South Africa.
Mc Edward: Their importance was basically the introduction of totally new culture, totally new economy and new technology.
Professor Tom Huffman - Archaeologist: 'they came with cattle, they came with domestic sheep and goats, they came with a knowledge of metal working, they knew how to smelt and forge iron and smelt and make things out of copper - they had all this in West Africa before they came.
Some of these early Bantu-speaking pioneers settled at Mapungubwe near the Limpopo.
Prof. Huffman: This was the first town, it had something like 5 000 people, it was the first capital. There are all sorts of firsts at this place
Baby Jake [born in Soweto]: I grew up in Soweto, I don't know where my ancestors come from.
Irvin Khoza [born in Alexandra]: I was never fortunate to stay on the farms where I would know of my great grandfathers.
The vast majority of South Africans today carry a genetic signature linking them to Bantu Migrations from West Africa - the same signature carried by 70% of all Africans
Prof. Soodyall: So the E lineage is evolving in Africa for at least 45 000 years.
Baby Jake: I want to know where this shortness comes from.
The Bantu speaking people flourished in South Africa, sweeping aside the Khoi-San, and forcing them into less and less hospitable areas.
But the genes suggest that there is more to this story ...
Conscelia [born in Alexandra]: My Dad is Tswana and my mom is half Pedi, half Tswana. I'm mostly Tswana - that's my home language.
Wendy Luhabe [born in Benoni]: I didn't know most of my grandparents.
A lot of Bantu-speaking South Africans carry Khoi-San DNA in their genes often on their maternal sides - evidence that Khoi-San women were assimilated into Bantu-speaking society.
And all these Bantu-speaking people have L1d or Khoisan mitochondrial DNA ancestry
Wendy: It is a revelation for me, I had absolutely no idea.
Irvin: Yes! I'm from the original people.
Conscelia Madumo: I thought that if there were going to be any surprises that they would probably be from North Africa or Europe but for some reason I never thought of the people from right here in the south.
South Africa had seen sporadic visits from Chinese, Arabic and Indian merchants for over 400 years dating back to 1200AD, but it was only in 1652 that a permanent group of Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape - paving the way for waves of successive European settlement and domination of South Africa.
Struan Malan [born in Johannesburg]: I know my father's side - French Huguenots, who came through about 250 odd years ago.
Ruda Landman [born in Kimberly]: My mother was a Viljoen - French.
William Kentridge [born in Johannesburg]: I can think of it back a few generations till it gets lost somewhere in Eastern Europe.
PJ Powers [born in Duraban]: I would have thought that most of it was boring old England and Scotland and Ireland - you know.
Pieter Dirk Uys [Born in Cape Town]: My mother's from Europe, first generation here. My father's about sixth-seventh generation also from Europe.
David Kramer [Born in Worcester]: For me it would be kind of a nice surprise to find that I had not only European DNA but something from Africa as well.
Ruda and PJ are mitochondrial group group J or Jasmine.
On their maternal side, Naas and Struan Malan are H or Helena, while David Kramer is V or Velda.
Naas: Is that where the blue eyes come from?
Naas, Struan and David Kramer are all group R on their paternal side, which is also from Europe.
Naas Botha: Maybe I might have become minister of sport - now I've got no chance.
David Kramer: I'm just another common white man - very common.
William Kentridge's mitochondrial DNA is group K or Katherine.
Prof. Soodyall: The most acclaimed descendant with K line is The Iceman.
William: Iceman - caught in the glacier at the top of that mountain.
His Y chromosome's DNA is J-P 121 which has its origins in the Middle East.
Soon after they arrived, the Dutch settlers began importing slaves from South East Asia, India and Madagascar. Slavery continued for 170 years until it was abolished in 1822.
Dale: There was a rumour once that my surname is September, because that's the month that slaves were transported to Africa.
Today, there are few records available for the descendents of slaves to track their ancestry ... but the genes help to fill in the gaps.
Prof. Soodyall: You can see it in South East Asia and then as you move eastwards into the Pacific, it becomes commoner.
Dale: Let's think about this - Asia, Khoisan.
Although modern Cape Malay people retain elements of the culture and religion of South East Asia, not all have genes tracing their heritage back to this area ... in fact, modern Cape Malay often carry a mix of ancestries - some are more bound by Muslim religion and culture than by genetic heritage.
Igsaan's mother: I don't know where Igsaan gets his looks - he looks more to me like an Arab.
Prof Himla Soodyall: And we found over 700 identical matches to people living in Austria, Sweden, Spain, Italy etc. [talking to Igsaan] Your mitochondrial line has an ancestry from Africa and it is found in more than 60% of people who are Khoisan.
Igsaan Martin [Born in Cape Town]: I'm happy with that. I'm an African and I'm happy knowing at least.
Just over a hundred years ago, another group of ex-pats arrived - this time from India - first as indentured labourers, followed a few years later by artisans and tradesmen.
Maushami Chetty [born in Pretoria]: They don't look typically Indian either, so I'd like to find out what my actual roots are.
Prof. Soodyall: [to Maushami] Your mitochondrial pattern belongs to haplogroup M2. More than 60% of Indians trace their maternal roots to haplogroup M. And the M is thought to be one of the older lineages that came out of Africa, probably around 60 000 years ago.
Essop Pahad [born in Schweizer Reneke]: The more I learn about myself, the happier I am.
On his maternal side Essop Pahad is group F, a South East Asian line which has its highest distribution in Vietnam.
On his paternal side he is group R-M17 which is a Eurasian line. He has an identical match to someone in the Punjab.
Although South Africa has always been a country pre-occupied by race, and the separation of races - the genes are proving that there has always been racial intermingling.
Many of today's coloured people are descended from unions between early European settlers - who arrived with few women - and local Khoi.
Patricia De Lille [born - Beaufort West]: I think the sad part is that if you look at the so called mixed races, how today people are trying to deny 50% of where they come from - their ancestry. And only want to recognize the other 50%.
Paul Adams [Born in Cape Town] has Khoisan ancestry on his maternal side and has Eurasian paternal ancestry.
Marc Lottering: I was very taken in by this whole Khiosan exhibition and one day we were standing there and this tour guide came past and she said to me 'My boy, you're always staring at the Khoisan people' and I said 'Yes' and she said 'You must take it all in because those there those are your ancestors'. My mother said 'Absolute rubbish, we're German.' You can see we're German - Germans from Retreat.
On his maternal side Marc Lottering's direct maternal line is group H. Helena was part of a hunting family in the Dordogne region of France 20 000 years ago.
Marc: My mother's going to be so happy! Well, I don't know what to think I don't have any hunting skills.
And on his direct male side he is group R-M 17 a Eurasian line. He also has exact matches in Germany, Poland and France.
Marc: Good Lord! You mean there's no Khoisan!
Whilst genetic mapping is filling in the gaps for many 'coloured' South Africans ... ancestry tracking is also revealing countless other rich histories, many surprising...
Pieter Dirk Uys: I would love to find some wonderful Matebele princess as an aunt - that would really be nice!
Pieter Dirk Uys's paternal ancestor is RM 207, a dominant group in estern Europe. It originated on the Iberian Peninsula 13 000 years ago after the last Ice Age.
On his maternal side, he is group L2a1, one of the commonest lines in Africa and associated with Bantu-speaking people.
Pieter Dirk Uys: An African - from my mother? Because as far as I know my mother's story is very Eastern European Jewish, orthodox. Do you think maybe they came from Ethiopia, west Africa originally, went up there? Went to Norway to have their teeth done! That's weird. That's quite nice. So I am an African. No people with black skin can point a finger at me!
My maternal line is also L2a, the commonest line in Africa. But my paternal line is surprising.
Prof. Soodyall: You had a Y chromosome that belongs to haplogroup R which has very high frequency in Europe and going into some regions in Asia.
Tim Modise [Born in Pretoria]: Well that's interesting (laughs) So any time I feel Xenophobic, I should be mindful of all my relatives all across the continent I don't know of any story in our family or any connection in that way. Nevertheless I find this very interesting and besides personally I've always believed that at the end of the day we're just one squabbling big family.
Hannelie: I know my mother's from Namibia and all the ancestry comes from that side, from the Engelbrecht side. My father I know is from real Afrikaans, boere here we go.
Prof. Soodyall: So your mitochondrial line is very old and its found predominantly in Africa, but in people who identify as Khoisan. 60% of Khoisan people have L1d.
Hannelie De Beer [born in Pretoria]: My mother actually mentioned it, she said we're probably going to be from Khoisan. When I got through to Khoisan I was like wow, really? What about Belguim and France and Holland and Germany? Ja it was a bit of a shock.
South Africa's turbulent history will forever be remembered by its violent emphasis on racial difference, and its conflicts characterised by racial prejudices...
An extraordinary fact if one thinks about how much racial mixing took place over the years - as science can now uncover.
And what about the father of South Africa? What will his DNA reveal?
On his paternal side he is E-M2, the lineage of Bantu speakers which is to be expected.
Prof. Soodyall: [talking to Madiba] Your ancestry, just studying what you got from your maternal side, would suggest an input from Khoisan ancestry.
Mandela is also descended from the first people of South Africa - the Khoisan.
Nelson Mandela [born in Transkei]: Actually people like Harry the Strandloper whose real name was Outarmiyo (sp) he was one of the first freedom fighters to go to Robben Island. I addressed a meeting of coloured intellectuals in Pretoria when I was President. A retired teacher said 'we know why you are so close to the coloured people, because you are a coloured yourself'.
[On screen: William Kentridge's - 'Monument' 1990]
South Africa's turbulent history will forever be remembered by its violent emphasis on racial differences, its conflicts characterised by racial prejudices. An extraordinary fact if one thinks about how much racial mixing took place over the years, as science can now uncover.
Like Mandela all these people have Khoisan mitochondrial DNA and share the same grandmother around 50 000 years ago.
The tests show that all these people [people on screen] share a European grandfather only about 15 000 years ago.
Prof. Soodyall: By introducing genetics into the scenario, we have a way of writing the history of the peoples of Africa. It is an unbiased story. It tells us how we are related as one family. Yes, differences do exist but these genetic differences are not equated with the cultural differences that we harbour.
Once not so long ago we were all the same. Our ancestors travelled to different parts of the world, changed their appearance slightly, and came home to Africa. Today, the differences we see in our features tell us very little about who we really are, and where we come from.
Maushami: I've always thought that if everyone dug deep enough into their history they'd find out a lot of things, how global and how mixed we all are.
Patricia De Lille: I mean I don't mind if some of my ancestry were black, as long as I know where the hell I come from.
Irvin Khosa: I can determine from this that somehow we are one race.
Conscelia: I see it as a justification of just getting along even more because we are all so different but not so different after all.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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