We Are All African

A few days ago, I linked to the special issue of Nature on peopling the planet, which is based on the premise that human society began in Africa and migrated out from there over the span of tens of thousands of years. That idea draws from evolutionary theory which, unfortunately, not everyone buys into. Why unfortunate? Richard Leakey answered that question today, in a story from the Associated Press:

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."
"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."

Thus, the point is that without this understanding of how the real really works, it will be impossible to solve the problems that we have created for ourselves by unprecedented population growth and economic development.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed "much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution."
On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.
"If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you've got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena," Leakey says. "Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one."
Any hope for mankind's future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.
"If we're spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?" he asked.