Wherever we may live in the world, we are all Africans. Africa is the home of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and the gorillas, who are in turn more closely related to us that they are to orangutans or any other apes. And it was in Africa, some 6 million years ago, that the Split occured between the line that led to chimpanzees and the line that led to modern humans. Since then, many humanoid (human-like) species have evolved, lasted for a while, then died out. Which of them were our direct ancestors, and which just cousins, is still uncertain. But what is certain is that around 150,000 years ago, on the wide grassy plains of East Africa called the savannah, there were human beings who looked very much like us. 

Proof that Africa is the original home of the human race is provided by genetic analysis. There is greater genetic variety among the inhabitants of Africa than elsewhere in the world. This is exactly what one would expect if human beings had originated there, and lived there for a long time, before they lived anywhere else. If one ignores first and second- generation immigrants, the difference between the genetic makeup of the inhabitants of some African villages 20 miles apart is greater than that between some European nations.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when biologists and historians tended to be well-off westerners, confident in the superiority of their own tribes, there was a widespread belief in the separate origin of the so- called “white”, “black” and “yellow” races of mankind. We now know much more about genetics, and about human origins, and all talk of such “races” can be dismissed as the product of ignorance or delusion. 

(from The Story of Man, by Cyril Aydon, Constable, Lodon, 2007)

Based on what biologists and historians now know of genetics and about human origins, we can safely say that...