BACK 2 BASICS: Travelling back to Olduvai

‘Connecting the dots of ZINJANTHROPUS story’

By Elly Mgumba

Scientific or rather historic discoveries prove the first Man Zinjanthropus to have lived in Africa, specifically Olduvai Gorge in the Northern part of Tanzania. This in other words apart from other things marks Africa and specifically Tanzania as the oldest place in the world and a pioneer to support human life. This on a separate note should mean something for African and Tanzanian people to be proud of and be a driver in their way of life.

Leaving that aside you may agree with me this subject of Evolution in both Science and History apart from proving the existence of Zinja as the first ever advanced human being left a lot of links and parts of the puzzle missing. If Zinja was from Africa how did the rest of the world come into existence? Did Zinja stay in Olduvai all his life? As his brain became more advanced what else did he eat or wish to see? With these thoughts in mind I was driven to think beyond what I was taught and try to trace the footprints of Zinja.

In this article we shall take a Journey back to Olduvai Gorge and see what happened when Zinja came to his senses (advanced brain) and the life style afterwards. Life was pretty basic the time before evolution to an advance brain of Zinja which resulted into a lot of changes in the way Zinja thought and used tools and resources among other things food. We all know that ‘thinking’ needs more energy hence Zinja’ s  demand for food doubled drastically as a result of an advanced brain i.e. he started thinking. Again as Zinja advanced into making more efficient tools like pebbles instead of using hands his ability to fetch food also increased.

Since History and Science tell us Zinjanthropus did undergo an evolution from Apes and the likes of Gorilla’s e.t.c. That is to say the Gorilla society became Zinjanthropus society after evolution. In this regard therefore we are to assume a societal picture of Zinja’ s i.e. not one lonely Zinja all-over Olduvai but rather a certain number of them, men and women. Hence as a result of life style change and a luxury of more food the reproduction process was also impacted hence the Zinja society was also drastically doubled if not tripled. Now, do you think Olduvai alone could handle this huge Zinja society? Was food enough at this particular juncture? What about water and many other things? Therefore life became hectic and only the fit got the food. Now this tells you a bit where Darwin[1] got the ‘survival for the fittest’ theoryJ

At the back of your mind always remember as we travel back to Olduvai that Zinja’ s brain was becoming even more advanced day after day. In this case one of them, perhaps with his wife and family had a thought that there must be a world outside Olduvai.Since demand was higher than supply they fail to bear with the hardship of the place and decide to relocate in search for greener pasture. One beautiful morning they start a journey to the unknown part of the world and made a promise to their society that by all means necessary they shall come back for them should they find a better place. Remember there were no cell phones, internet or even a mail box in those days so this promise meant one or two Zinja’s will have to travel back to inform the rest about the newly found habitat. Again remember more than one Zinja left Olduvai in this great adventurous trip to the unknown world, say two i.e. Husband and wife.

On the way as they roamed around they passed in a lot of countries, though they found food yet it wasn’t worth going back to tell the others. Hence let’s say they could only get food that was only enough for them i.e. The Two Zinjanthropus Explorers. As I said earlier; food in Olduvai catalyzed Reproduction process, again here on the way searching for more food for the whole society since the two Zinja Explorers had enough to eat then Reproduction was catalyzed as well. This now answers the fact as to how we have people in different parts of the world (India, Egypt, Greece, Persia, America e.t.c); well the answer is very clear that Zinja continued to reproduce along his way. It is clear that the Zinja in charge was not in a position to stay at one location for so long (due to the commitment he made back home) so he was leaving behind all the off springs in various parts of the world to continue with his Journey. Now don’t ask me about food to these families left behind? As I said earlier food was there (in these counties where Zinja passed but this food was only enough to sustain that particular family left behind).

Therefore Zinja passes to India, America, Greek e.t.c and many other old nations and kingdoms that we know of as covered in the subject of World History. All the way Reproduction was constant and the families left behind became what they are today.

When Zinja arrived in Europe he finds greener pasture there, lots of food, fruits and many other life supporting products. Due to cold whether it seems most Animals never stayed in this area but since Zinja’s brain was now even more advanced he figured out how to manage this weather challenge and recommended this part of the world as that promised land of Zinja’s, the New Olduvai.If it were in these days this Historic discovery could have been properly reported as ‘An African man discovers Europe’ or ‘The first African from Northern Tanzania travels the world’ and many other captions would have been written if we had newspapers those days.

Now you may be asking yourself how comes people from different parts of the world have different skin colors while they are descendants of one Zinja? At this Juncture we have to consider a little bit of Science knowledge to get the answer. First things first you may know that light skinned people either lack or have under secretion of a certain pigment in their skin called ‘Melanin’ which is responsible for skin colour.This is the same pigment missing in albino’s. Hence dark skinned people have more Melanin than light skinned people. With that fact straight now let’s get down to the real drill as to how these Zinja descendants have different skin colors while I am suggesting a Zinja couple travelling the world and reproducing on the way.

Evolution states that changes happen after around every a hundred years. I further understand the fact that Darwin’s theory clearly stated that ‘acquired characters may not be inherited’. However Darwin again clearly limited this principle to physical characters only e.g. permanent disability due to diseases or accidents e.t.c.So sticking to Evolutionary thinking I assume a fact that Zinjanthropus travelled for a reasonable number of years. In the same regard there were a lot of seasons and weather changes along the way and many other things including but not limited to chemicals acquired from either insect bites(some disappeared ancient species that no longer exist at present may be),water from some strange species of trees,rocks,rains e.t.c.

The above factors contributed to the Chromosome[2] change and altered the Genetic and eventually ‘genes’ (Hereditary materials) in Zinjanthropus. This fact is supported by the ‘Hiroshima & Nagasaki’[3] incident where a chemical war weapon permanently altered the Chromosomes and/or Genetic resulting into hereditary disabilities to all Hiroshima & Nagasaki generations. Before the chemical Bomb people of this area had a certain set of gene constitution which was altered after the bomb and evolution re-engineered the Gene/chromosomes. I hope this answers what happened on the Zinja adventurous trip and eventually what happened when he settled for a while in Europe. At the end of this ‘Back to Basics’ you will again understand why Europeans or rather white men traveled and ‘discovered’ Africa and most especially Tanzania.

Now let’s get back to our little trip to Olduvai, so Zinja after a long trip settles in Europe a little longer than he did in other parts where he passed. In that stay the family he started there got more time to interact with ‘daddy and mom’ more and learnt the original story of the world, the travel and where they came from. Though in a blurred picture they at least gained more understanding about the existence of a world beyond where they lived i.e. Europe. This as I said earlier tells you why people from this part of the world had more interest of travelling the World than the rest of us from other parts of the world. The likes of Dr.Leakey,Livingstone,Vasco Da Gama and many more had a clue of the existence of other parts of the world before the set off to their adventures and ‘discoveries’.

Science proves the fact that there is no difference on size and capacity of brain (thinking/ability) between white men and black men. In that regard therefore it is not scientifically right to conclude that White men are more intelligent that black men. Again considering the Multiple Intelligence theory by Howard Gardner (1983)[4] it is only fair to conclude the fact that ‘hearing the complete original story’ from Zinja himself is the reason for the early evolution of Whiteman brain as opposed to Blackman brain. A friend of mine who happened to read this as I was writing joked that perhaps since Evolution was still going on in Zinja’s brain the off springs he left in Africa were of older version than those he left on the way and eventually Europe (advanced version). As a computer programmer he concluded that in order to update the older ‘African’ version you need to install extra software called ‘Education’. It was just a joke but I am kind of in agreement with him.

Well, back again to the Zinja in Europe, after a long while he remembers the promise he made to his society back in Olduvai-gorge far away in Tanzania (Tanganyika or any other name by then).To cut the long story short at a very old age since he’s a man of honor travels back to Olduvai to deliver the good news of discovering a place that can host them all i.e. Europe. He gets to Olduvai very tired since he was now old(of course with his wife),gets little time to tell the whole Europe and world story and dies before the society understood any of what he said. They only knew he was mentioning the fact that there was a better place than Olduvai.This may be is the reason why most people in Africa and Tanzania think Europe and other places out of Africa are ‘better places’ than their home countries. It started back in Olduvai where Zinja delivered an incomplete story of ‘a better place’.

Therefore the Zinja society flees out of Olduvai and relocates to other parts of the land around East and Horn of Africa. Before they could settle down and establish strong social organization their Brothers from Europe ‘discovered’ them and colonized them. How did they ‘discover’ them? You already know, they knew where their Father was from. Again other brothers from other parts of the world like Asia (the Arabs) also with a little bit of a clue of where their fathers came from (he didn’t stay there long enough to give them the whole story) also discovered Africa and colonized them. In effect No one discovered Africa. All human-being shares a common ancestor and that human-like creature evolved in Africa. They cannot have 'discovered' Africa, as this was their homeland all along. This now tells you why I have been using the term ‘discovered’ in this style.

You can now take it up from there and connect with other pieces of History from Industrial revolution, slave Trade, colonization, scramble for and partition of Africa, struggle for independence, Neo-colonialism and many other of the that nature. Education or rather personal enlightenment is the key in all this to ‘Upgrade’ the older version to a newer, faster and more advanced one as my friend saidJ.

Thank you for accompanying me in this little trip to Olduvai-gorge.

The Author can be contacted on mobile phone number +255784670602 and ellymgumba@gmail.com FACEBOOK: Elly Mgumba TWITTER Handle: Zig Zagga

 1] Charles Darwin is an English Naturalist who established that all species of life descended over time from common ancestors.

[2] A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences

[3] The atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were conducted by the United States during the final stages of World War II in 1945

[4] In 1983 Howard Gardner put forth a model of intelligence that differentiates intelligence into various specific (primarily sensory) modalities, rather than seeing it as dominated by a single general ability.