Civil rights ‘godmother’ Dorothy Height dies

Sad news: Civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, who marched against lynching in the 1920s and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, died early this morning at age 98.

Height was “the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans,” President Obama said in a statement.

The four-decade president of the National Council of Negro Women and a winner of the Congressional Gold Medal, Height was the only woman on the stage when King delivered his I Have A Dream speech in 1963.

Height also dealt with presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama. This link includes a USA TODAY interview with Height on the eve of Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s first African-American president.

In his statement, Obama noted that a college once denied entry to Height because it has already met its quota of two African-American women. “Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality,” the president said, and witnessed “every march and milestone along the way.”

Throughout her long life, Height liked to quote the advice of abolitionist Frederick Douglass on how to best promote justice: “Agitate, agitate, agitate.”

Dorothy Height, rest in peace.

Here is the full text of Obama’s statement:

Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Dorothy Height — the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans. Ever since she was denied entrance to college because the incoming class had already met its quota of two African American women, Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality. She led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, and served as the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement — witnessing every march and milestone along the way. And even in the final weeks of her life — a time when anyone else would have enjoyed their well-earned rest — Dr. Height continued her fight to make our nation a more open and inclusive place for people of every race, gender, background and faith. Michelle and I offer our condolences to all those who knew and loved Dr. Height — and all those whose lives she touched.

Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

DEA to hire nine “Black English” linguists

AUGUST 23–The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

In contract documents, which are excerpted here, Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists. The 114 languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).”

Detractors reject the notion that Ebonics is a dialect, instead considering it a bastardization of the English language.

The Department of Justice RFP does not, of course, address questions of vernacular, dialect, or linguistic merit. It simply sought proposals covering the award of separate linguist contracts for seven DEA regions. The agency spends about $70 million annually on linguistic service programs, according to contract records.

In addition to the nine Ebonics experts, the DEA’s Atlanta office also requires linguists for eight other languages, including Spanish (144 linguists needed); Vietnamese (12); Korean (9); Farsi (9); and Jamaican patois (4). The Atlanta field division, one of the DEA’s busiest, is the only office seeking linguists well-versed in Ebonics. Overall, the “majority of DEA’s language requirements will be for Spanish originating in Central and South America and the Caribbean,” according to one contract document.

The Department of Justice RFP includes a detailed description of the crucial role a linguist can play in narcotics investigations. They are responsible for listening to “oral intercepts in English and foreign languages,” from which they provide verbal and typed summaries. “Subsequently, all pertinent calls identified by the supervising law enforcement officer will be transcribed verbatim in the required federal or state format,” the RFP notes.

Additionally, while “technology plays a major role in the DEA’s efforts, much of its success is increasingly dependent upon rapid and meticulous understanding of foreign languages used in conversations by speakers of languages other than English and in the translation, transcription and preparation of written documents.” (11 pages).

source

Duke Ellington Collection, National Museum of American History

Overview

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an African-American jazz composer, orchestrator, bandleader and pianist who led one of the greatest jazz bands, wrote more than 1,500 compositions and became one of the 20th century’s greatest musicians. He used the term “beyond category” as the highest possible praise for others, and the phrase richly applies to Ellington, for he led one of the most singular musical careers in American history and left a brilliant legacy likely to endure for the ages.

Washington, D.C.

Born in 1899, Ellington grew up in a middle-class African-American neighborhood of Washington, D.C., which during his youth boasted the largest black population of any city in the nation. His parents encouraged him and sought to shield him from the racism rampant in his day. Ellington took piano lessons and began playing the then-popular ragtime music. Early on, he took an aversion to categories and felt that all classes of society could and should mix. Dropping out of high school, he named his first band Duke’s Serenaders.

North to Harlem

The ambitious young musician moved to New York City in 1923, and after a rough start, began to make a name for himself, especially after landing a job at the Cotton Club, Harlem’s most famous nightspot. By the late 1920s, Ellington was developing a unique sound for his band. Above all, the sound depended on the distinctive instrumental voices of his musicians. He hired and featured some of the greatest, most individualistic players, including the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, the trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton and the trumpeter Cootie Williams.

Ellington’s compositions combined his musicians’ instrumental voices in innovative ways. Most arrangers for big bands voiced instruments in sections — pitting, for example, the trumpet section against the saxophone section. Ellington voiced his instruments across sections, combining, for instance, the clarinet, trombone and trumpet in an innovative fashion to create the ravishing opening of “Mood Indigo” (1930). As a composer, Ellington developed a personal approach to harmony and instrumental voicing. Unlike most other swing bandleaders, he composed most of his band’s music.

Irving Mills, his shrewd manager from 1926 to 1939, recognized Ellington’s genius and relentlessly promoted him, securing live radio broadcasts, recordings and motion picture appearances.

1931-1956

Leaving the Cotton Club in 1931, Ellington embarked on nearly incessant touring for the rest of his life. He appeared in a number of movie shorts and feature films, including “Cabin in the Sky” (1942) and “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959), for which he also wrote the music.

In 1939 he hired a gifted young arranger, Billy Strayhorn, who became his trusted musical collaborator. Together they composed many short and long instrumental works, and Strayhorn contributed dozens of pieces to the Ellington band’s repertory, including “Take the ‘A’ Train” (1941), which became Ellington’s theme song.

1956-1974

Though the early 1950s saw the Ellington band in an artistic and economic slump, in 1956 Ellington rebounded to national attention with a sensational performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. Henceforth, he would compose, alone or with Strayhorn, an increasing number of suites or extended works, such as a suite on Shakespearean themes, “Such Sweet Thunder” (1956), and “The New Orleans Suite” (1970).

Ellington had made his first tours to Europe in the 1930s, and from the 1950s on, he toured abroad extensively, performing in 65 countries. Sometimes his travels inspired his compositions, as in “The Far East Suite,” which he wrote with Strayhorn (1966).

Rising Esteem

After Ellington’s death in 1974, his star continued to rise. In 1985, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Ellington. In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History acquired his vast archives — roughly 100,000 pages of unpublished music that he and Strayhorn composed for the band, 100,000 pages of other documents and 500 artifacts as well as recordings, films and photographs. The availability of Ellington’s collection greatly stimulated interest in him, and by making his music much more available for performance and research, sparked a rising valuation of his legacy.

The Smithsonian created a series of stationary and traveling exhibitions about him. In 1995, Jazz at Lincoln Center established the Essentially Ellington High School Band Contest to stimulate interest in his music among young people. In the United States, PBS broadcast two documentaries about him, and public radio presented several commemorative series during his centennial year, 1999. In 2009, the United States Mint honored Ellington on a quarter — the first African-American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin.

Key Recordings

More than 10,000 sound recordings of Ellington were made. Some of his most important include:

• “Black and Tan Fantasy” (1927)

• “The Mooche” (1928)

• “Mood Indigo” (1930)

• “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (1932)

• “Daybreak Express” (1933)

• “Caravan” (1937)

• “Ko-Ko” (1940)

• “Concerto for Cootie” (1940)

• “Take the ‘A’ Train” (1941)

• “Cotton Tail” (1940)

• “Main Stem” (1942)

• “Black, Brown and Beige” (1943)

• “On a Turquoise Cloud” (1947)

• “The Tattooed Bride” (1950)

• “Harlem” (1952)

• “Such Sweet Thunder” (1957)

• “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959)

• “The Far East Suite” (1966)

• “And His Mother Called Him Bill” (1967)

• “Second Sacred Concert” (1968)

Highlights From The Times’s Archives

Editorial: “Duke Ellington’s Centennial,” April 29, 1999

“Ellington at 100: Reveling in Life’s Mastery,” by Wynton Marsalis, Jan. 17, 1999. The trumpeter-composer assesses Ellington.

“Ellington Emerges, Falters and Triumphs; Catching The Spirit of a Century,” by Peter Watrous, Jan. 17, 1999. A discussion of Ellington’s early career.

“The Duke on Disk, Live, Loosened and Otherwise,” by Ben Ratliff, Jan. 17, 1999. A Times critic provides an overview of Ellington’s available recordings.

“Critic’s Notebook: Ellington: Beyond Category,” by Margo Jefferson, Oct. 15, 1993. A cultural critic looks at Ellington and a traveling Smithsonian exhibition about him.

“Smithsonian Acquires Duke Ellington Trove Of Scores and Papers,” by Irvin Molotsky, April 27, 1988.

“Ellington: Unfailingly Modern,” by Robert Palmer, Nov. 17, 1985. A critic assesses Ellington’s work of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

“Duke Ellington, a Master of Music, Dies at 75,” by John S. Wilson, May 25, 1974. An appreciation by The Times’s jazz critic.

“Duke Ellington, 70, Honored at White House,” by Nan Robertson, April 30, 1969.

New York Times coverage of Duke Ellington, 1981-present

Click here for a searchable archive of New York Times coverage of Duke Ellington at nytexplorer.com, including articles and commentary.

Keyword Search of The New York Times Archives, 1851-present

THE AFRICAN ROOTS OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

TARIQ SAWANDI, M.H.

Before discussing the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I think it would be interesting to the readers and students of African holistic medicine to know of the African influence of ancient Chinese healing theory.

The African role in early Asian civilization has been submerged and distorted for centuries.  Asia’s African roots are well summarized in “African Presence in Early Asia” by Ivan Van Sertima/Runoko Rashidi, and “African Presence in Early China” by James Brunson.  The original oriental people were Black and many of them still are Black – in southern China and Asia.  The earliest occupants of Asia were “small black (pygmies)” who came to the region as early as 50,000 years ago.  In “The Children of the Sun”, George Parker writes “….it appears that the entire continent of Asia was originally the home of many black races and that theses races were the pioneers in establishing the wonderful civilizations that have flourished throughout this vast continent.”  Reports of major kingdoms ruled by Blacks are frequent in Chinese documents.  Chinese historians described the Fou Nanese people of China as “small and black”.  The Ainus, Japan’s oldest known inhabitants have traditions which tell of a race of dark dwarfs which inhabited Japan before they did.  Historians Cheikh Anta Diop and Albert Churchward saw the Ainus as originating in Egypt!  There is archaeological support for this.  In addition, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia records the “Anu” (Ainu).  The Anu are the same people who occupied Egypt for thousands of years.  These same people are recorded to have made large migrations to the Asian continent taking with them thousands of years of African-Egyptian knowledge and influence.

This explains the existence of man-made pyramids in China and Japan! China’s pyramids are located near Siang Fu city in the Shensi province. The Chinese do not know how they got there, but it is believed that Africans of the Nile Valley were the builders. (J. Perry: The Growth of Civilization, p. 106, 107).

African Development of Ancient Chinese Medicine

Ancient Chinese medicine dates back to the Shang Dynasty founded by the African-Mongolian King T’ang, or Ta. (1500-1000 B.C.).  The Shang (or Chiang) and Chou dynasties were credited with bringing together the elements of Chinese medical theory. The Shang were given the name of Nakhi (Na-Black, Khi-man).  Under this Black dynasty, the Chinese established the basic forms of a graceful calligraphy that has lasted to the present day.  The first Chinese emperor, the legendary Fu-Hsi (2953-2838 B.C.) was a woolly haired Black man. He is said to have originated the I Ching, or The Book of Change, which is the oldest most revered system of prophecy. It is known to have influenced the most distinguished philosophers of Chinese medicine and thought.

Many of the great concepts of Chinese medical science which was compiled during the Shang period were later developed during the Han Dynasty (168 B.C. to 8 A.D.).  During this period, medicine reflected the philosophical ideas associated in the earlier Chou and Shang period.  The Han began to fuse Shang medical concepts with outlooks from the philosophical ideas of Confucius (551-479 B.C.).  Toward that end, they generated a scheme which explained all phenomena in relation to the whole.  Under this system, all natural phenomena including the human body and the organs were organized within the system of “Yin” and Yang” and the “five elements”, or what is also called the “five phases” theory.

Han Dynasty physicians created great classic works, such as the Pen-ts’ao and the Nei Ching, or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (3rd Century B.C.), drawing its inspiration from more ancient sources rooted in Afro-centric thought. (See Diagram 1.)

DIAGRAM 1.

The Nei Ching, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, a medical book reportedly written in the second century, B.C. before the birth of Hippocrates, the co-called father of Western medicine.  According to Chinese legend, the Nei Ching was created through a dialogue between the legendary ruler Huang-Ti and his court physician, Chi Po.  From the Nei Ching, thousands of books have been written about Chinese medicine.

Given these considerations, Chinese medicine echoes the logic of the Ancient Egyptians, which viewed the universe as process-oriented in which there are no boundaries between rest and motion, time and space, mind and matter, sickness and health.  The Chinese looked at reality as a unified field, an interwoven pattern of inseparable links in a circular chain called the Tao.  From the Tao flowed all things and events in nature: seasons, color, sound, organs, tissue, emotion, climate, matter and energy. (See Diagram 2.)

DIAGRAM 2

According to the Tao Te Ching, out of the One came the duality of Yin and Yang, and the immaterial breath (Chi), from which all physical matter and energy was created.  This idea by Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu was borrowed from the earlier ancient Egyptian concept of “Nu” (formless water)”, the duality of Shu and Tefnut, and the Nahab Kau (Tree of Life).

Yin/Yang Theory and the Concept of Chi

Chinese medicine places primary emphasis on the balance of “Chi” (Qi, or Ki), or Life energy constantly flowing throughout the body.  There are 12 major meridians, or pathways for chi, and each is associated with a major vital organ or vital function.  These meridians form an invisible network that carries chi to every tissue in the body.  In health, it is properly balanced, but if it becomes unbalanced, the result is disease.  It is the job of the Chinese doctor to restore the balance using diet, acupuncture, and herbal formulas.

The Life energy comes in two, but complementary parts: Yin and Yang.  The Yin nature includes the earth, moon, night, fall and winter, cold, wetness, the feet, the female sex, tissue growth and a passive temperament. The Yang counterparts are the heavens, the sun, day, spring and summer, heat, dryness, light, the head, the male sex, tissue breakdown, and an aggressive temperament. All individuals have both male and female polarities which consist of the combinations of Yin and Yang, requiring the Chinese doctor to tailor treatments to the individual’s needs. (See Diagram 3.)

DIAGRAM 3.

The Chinese Five-element system was heavily influenced by the ancient Egyptian’s four-element conception.  Each element relates to one season, one color and two organ systems, and they interact in subtle, and complicated ways through the energy of chi.

An important part of the Chinese doctor’s evaluation is the overall relationship between the Yin and Yang balance in the patient’s body.  This is “Chi”.  Furthermore, we must bear in mind that Yin and Yang are complementary and not contradictory.  There is no such thing as “good” and the other “bad”.  Rather, one seeks to find a harmony between the two energies.  The ancient Egyptians first  put forward this idea, explained in terms of “Shu” and “Tefnut”, the dual complementary energy that flows in the universe.  It was later adopted by the founders of Chinese medicine to distinguish between the Yin and Yang qualities of a person’s character, or the constitution of one’s illness.

The application of Yin and Yang is an important step in the process of making a traditional diagnosis and treatment.

Treating Conditions Through Chinese Medicine

Based on the assessment of Yin and Yang energy imbalance, the Chinese herbalist looks for patterns of distress in the patient’s pulse, as well as tongue, face, and physical characteristics.  The pulse system is highly developed in Chinese medicine, and consist of six positions on each wrist, and various pulse beats can be determined by the trained practitioner.  According to Traditional Chinese medical text, the pulse corresponds to different organ networks, areas of the body, meridians or energy channels, and physiological processes like breathing, digestion and elimination.  These are thought to function in phase with Yin and Yang principles and also the energies represented by the five elements: Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, and Fire. Some general diagnostic correspondence are:

In general, the basic treatment principles are to tonify or stimulate in a case of deficient Yin or Yang energy, and to sedate or disperse when the energy pattern is one of excess.  Herbal formulas are then tailored to fit the individual’s need, or designed to fit the overall condition of the patient.

Special herbal formulas have been traditionally used for thousands of years by Chinese herbalists for such ailments as fever, colds and flu, headaches, infections, menstrual problems, ulcers, high blood pressure, cancer, infertility, and diabetes to name a few.

For example, “Gan Mao Ling”, a two thousand year old formula, has been traditionally used for symptoms such as runny nose and scratchy throat.  By taking six tablets of this formula every three hours, one can stop a cold in its tracts before it can take root.  Chinese remedies are very effective and versatile.  You can purchase Chinese herb formulas in many forms such as pills, tablets, extracts, or bulk to overcome numerous conditions and diseases.

Today more than ever, Western doctors are bearing witness to the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine and are just beginning to realize that the Chinese masters understood profound aspects of the human mind and body without the aid of technology or sophisticated medical devices.  China is heir to the secret healing arts which has been passed down by ancient Khemit.  I feel that it is time that the Afrocentric roots of Chinese medicine be made public which has been ignored for too long.  This and future articles seek to correct this oversight.

References

1.  The Destruction of Black Civilizations, Chancellor Williams.

2.  The Missing Pages of History, Indus Khamit Kush

3.  The Five Lost Books of Africa, Dr. Khallid Al-Mansour.

4.  The Children of the Sun, George Parker.

5.  African Presence in Early Asia, Ivan Van Sertima/Runoko Rashidi

6.  The Way of Herbs, Michael Tierra

7.  Chinese Herbal Medicine: Formulas and Strategies, Dan Bensky and Randall Barolet.

8.  African Medicine: A guide to Yoruba divination and Herbal Medicine:, Tariq M. Sawandi

(in press).

9.  Chinese-Planetary Herbal Diagnosis, Michael and Lesley Tierra.

The quality of one’s relationships is a direct result of the quality of human beings we choose to relate to or have relationships with. If you feel your partner or friends are a problem it is because you are choosing the wrong partner or friends. – Ras~



My brother, Gang Starr’s Guru

By Harry J. Elam Jr.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Boston-born Keith Elam, who rose to fame as Guru, founder of the rap group Gang Starr and a person who sought to merge rap and jazz,died earlier this week. His brother, Harry, a distinguished professor of drama at Stanford, has written this remembrance).

Harry Elam

“Positivity, that’s how I’m livin..’” So goes the lyric from my brother’s early hip-hop song, “Positivity.” My brother Keith Elam, the hip-hop artist known as GURU—Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal—died this week at the too-young age of 48 because of complications from cancer. ‘Positivity’ was what he sought to bring to the music and to his life, and for me that will be a large part of his legacy.

In February of this year, my brother went into a coma, and I traveled across the country from my home in California to see him. At his bedside, I stood and stared at his overly frail frame, his head that he had kept clean-shaven for the last 20 years uncommonly covered with hair, his body connected to a sea of tubes and wires. I listened to the whirl of machines around us and took his hand. As I did, my mind flashed back to now-distant times, so many memories. And I saw us as teenagers at the beach on Cape Cod playing in the water together. And I saw us as boys, driving to school. My brother was five years younger than me, so we attended the same school only for one year — my senior year, his seventh-grade year — at Noble and Greenough School, and I would often drive us both to school. Invariably, I made us late, yet my brother, never as stressed as me, was always impressively calm. At school he endured the jests and teasing from the other boys about being my “little brother.” I was president of the school and had charted a certain path at Nobles. But my brother found his own creative route at school, as he would throughout his life. His journey was never easy, never direct, but inventive. Through it all he remained fiercely determined with a clear and strong sense of self.

Over the years I had proudly watched my brother perform in a wide variety of contexts. While at Nobles, we had a black theatre troupe known as “the Family.” In 1973, we put on a play entitled ”A Medal for Willie,” by William Branch, and because he was only in the seventh grade, Keith played only a small role, but even then you could see his flair for performance, his comfort on the stage. At home, our older sister Patricia would teach him the latest dances, and he would execute them with verve as I watched from the sidelines, impressed with his moves, and not without a few twinges of jealousy since I’ve always had two left feet. As a teenager he raced as a speed skater. I do not remember how he became involved in the sport; I only remember traveling with my family to watch his meets in the suburbs of Boston. I do not remember if he won or lost, I do know that he always competed with great ferocity and commitment.

When he announced to me that he was dropping out of graduate school at the Fashion Institute of Technology to pursue a career in rap, I thought he was making a grave mistake and warned him against it. But as always he was determined, and in the end he would succeed beyond perhaps what even he had imagined. Early on in his rap journey, he visited me in Washington., D.C., over a Thanksgiving weekend. I was teaching at the University of Maryland then, and we went to what was perhaps the most dreadful party we had ever attended. As we hastened out the door, I apologized for bringing him to this party. My brother replied “let’s write a rap song about it,” and we did. The lyrics made us laugh as we collaborated on the rhyme scheme and rode off into the D.C. night. It is one of my fondest memories, this spontaneous brotherly moment of collaboration and play.

Keith’s big break came with Spike Lee’s film ”Mo’ Better Blues,” with his song “A Jazz Thing” underscoring the credits. I watched that film over and over again just to hear my brother at its end. Soon he was on to creating his first Jazzmatazz album with others to follow, and he became credited for creating a fusion between jazz and hip hop. To be sure, that fusion owes something to our grandfather Edward Clark and Keith’s godfather, George Johnson, who introduced Keith to jazz by playing their favorite albums for him. He credits them both on his first Jazzmatazz. That first Jazzmatazz album featured musical heroes of my youth, Roy Ayers, and Donald Byrd, and here was my brother featuring them on his album. And with this success, came tours. I have seen him perform all over the world, and each time he would give a shout out from the stage to his brother and my wife, Michele. And I was so proud. It sometimes struck me with awe that all these people were there to see my brother. I watched him deal out magic; he was in his element feeling the crowd, and them responding to his groove. This was my baby brother, the kid with whom I once shared a room. The kid whose asthma would cause him to hack and cough and wheeze at night keeping me up. But when I would complain, my parents would send me out of the room. The message was clear: Love your siblings, whatever their frailties. Shorter than me and slighter of build, my brother suffered from asthma and allergies his whole life, but he was always a survivor.

Back in 1993, when he played at Stanford University, I was in perhaps my third year as a professor there. As I walked into the auditorium that night, the assembled audience of students looked at me with a new awareness, “that’s the Guru’s brother,” not that’s Professor Elam, but the Guru’s brother.

And I was, and am, the Guru’s brother. I admired and loved him deeply, my little brother. And I was and am so proud of him, and how he made his dreams reality . And with the outpouring of love that has crowded my e-mail with his passing, I know that he touched so many with his music. My brother cared deeply about family. He raps of my parents in more than one song. They are featured on his video “Ex girl to next girl.” It was one thing seeing my brother on MTV; it was another seeing my parents. His son K.C. was the joy of his was the joy of his life.

The doctors told me back in February that there was not much chance of my brother recovering from the coma. But my brother has always been a fighter, always been one to overcome surprising adversities, so this seemed just one more. We prayed that he would again prevail. But it was not to be. Still his drive, his spirit, his energy, his positivity will live on, and so will his music. “that’s how I’m livin…”

Harry J. Elam Jr. is the chairman of the drama department at Stanford University and the author of several books, including “The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson.”

DJ Premier Opens Up About Guru’s Death, Solar, Gang Starr Reunion & More

The Peopling of the World

For the entire documentary of the Genetic Journey of Man click on image. Migration Of Modern Humans

Source: Stanford University

Scientists Use DNA Fragments To Trace The Migration Of Modern Humans

Human beings may have made their first journey out of Africa as recently as 70,000 years ago, according to a new study by geneticists from Stanford University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Writing in the American Journal of Human Genetics, the researchers estimate that the entire population of ancestral humans at the time of the African expansion consisted of only about 2,000 individuals.

“This estimate does not preclude the presence of other populations of Homo sapiens sapiens [modern humans] in Africa, although it suggests that they were probably isolated from one another genetically, and that contemporary worldwide populations descend from one or very few of those populations,” said Marcus W. Feldman, the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor at Stanford and co-author of the study.

The small size of our ancestral population may explain why there is so little genetic variability in human DNA compared with that of chimpanzees and other closely related species, Feldman added.

The study, published in the May edition of the journal, is based on research conducted in Feldman`s Stanford laboratory in collaboration with co-authors Lev A. Zhivotovsky of the Russian Academy and former Stanford graduate student Noah A. Rosenberg, now at the University of Southern California.

“Our results are consistent with the `out-of-Africa` theory, according to which a sub-Saharan African ancestral population gave rise to all populations of anatomically modern humans through a chain of migrations to the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Oceania and America,” Feldman noted.

Ancient roots

Since all human beings have virtually identical DNA, geneticists have to look for slight chemical variations that distinguish one population from another. One technique involves the use of “microsatellites” – short repetitive fragments of DNA whose patterns of variation differ among populations. Because microsatellites are passed from generation to generation and have a high mutation rate, they are a useful tool for estimating when two populations diverged.

In their study, the research team compared 377 microsatellite markers in DNA collected from 1,056 individuals representing 52 geographic sites in Africa, Eurasia (the Middle East, Europe, Central and South Asia), East Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

Statistical analysis of the microsatellite data revealed a close genetic relationship between two hunter-gatherer populations in sub-Saharan Africa – the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo Basin and the Khoisan (or “bushmen”) of Botswana and Namibia. These two populations “may represent the oldest branch of modern humans studied here,” the authors concluded.

The data revealed a genetic split between the ancestors of these hunter-gatherer populations and the ancestors of contemporary African farming people – Bantu speakers who inhabit many countries in southern Africa. “This division occurred between 70,000 and 140,000 years ago and was followed by the expansion out of Africa into Eurasia, Oceania, East Asia and the Americas – in that order,” Feldman said.

This result is consistent with an earlier study in which Feldman and others analyzed the Y chromosomes of more than 1,000 men from 21 different populations. In that study, the researchers concluded that the first human migration from Africa may have occurred roughly 66,000 years ago.

Population bottlenecks

The research team also found that indigenous hunter-gatherer populations in Africa, the Americas and Oceania have experienced very little growth over time. “Hunting and gathering could not support a significant increase in population size,” Feldman explained. “These populations probably underwent severe bottlenecks during which their numbers crashed – possibly because of limited resources, diseases and, in some cases, the effects of long-distance migrations.”

Unlike hunter-gatherers, the ancestors of sub-Saharan African farming populations appear to have experienced a population expansion that started around 35,000 years ago: “This increase in population sizes might have been preceded by technological innovations that led to an increase in survival and then an increase in the overall birth rate,” the authors wrote. The peoples of Eurasia and East Asia also show evidence of population expansion starting about 25,000 years ago, they added.

“The exciting thing about these data is that they are amenable to a combination of mathematical models and statistical analyses that can help solve problems that are important in paleontology, archaeology and anthropology,” Feldman concluded.

###

The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

Relevant Web URLs:

www-evo.stanford.edu

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/january8/genetics-18.html

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/november8/chromosome-1108.html

http://www.neanderthal-modern.com/genetic1.htm

160,000-year-old fossilized skulls uncovered in Ethiopia are oldest anatomically modern humans

The oldest known fossil of modern humans, dating back 160,000 years. Photo © 2000 David L. Brill, Brill Atlanta)

Robert Sanders | 11 June 2003

BERKELEY – The fossilized skulls of two adults and one child discovered in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia have been dated at 160,000 years, making them the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or Homo sapiens.

Image © J. Matternes Flash slideshow: The first Homo sapiens

The skulls, dug up near a village called Herto, fill a major gap in the human fossil record, an era at the dawn of modern humans when the facial features and brain cases we recognize today as human first appeared.

The fossils date precisely from the time when biologists using genes to chart human evolution predicted that a genetic “Eve” lived somewhere in Africa and gave rise to all modern humans.

“We’ve lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that’s where the Herto fossils fit,” said paleoanthropologist Tim White, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-leader of the team that excavated and analyzed the discovery site. “Now, the fossil record meshes with the molecular evidence.”

“With these new crania,” he added, “we can now see what our direct ancestors looked like.”

“This set of fossils is stupendous,” said team member F. Clark Howell, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of integrative biology and co-director with White of UC Berkeley’s Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies. “This is a truly revolutionary scientific discovery.”

Howell added that these anatomically modern humans pre-date most neanderthals, and therefore could not have descended from them, as some scientists have proposed.

The international team is led by White and his Ethiopian colleagues, Berhane Asfaw of the Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The results of the find will be reported in two papers in the June 12 issue of the journal Nature.

The research team also unearthed skull pieces and teeth from seven other hominid individuals, hippopotamus bones bearing cut marks from stone tools, and more than 600 stone tools, including hand axes. All are from the same sediments and, thus, the same era.

“These were people using a sophisticated stone technology,” White said. “Using chipped hand axes and other stone tools, they were butchering carcasses of large mammals like hippos and buffalo and undoubtedly knew how to exploit plants.”

They lived long before most examples of another early hominid, the neanderthal, or Homo neanderthalensis, proving beyond a reasonable doubt, White said, that Homo sapiens did not descend from these short, stocky creatures. More like cousins, neanderthals split off from the human tree more than 300,000 years ago and died out about 30,000 years ago, perhaps driven to extinction by modern humans.

“These well-dated and anatomically diagnostic Herto fossils are unmistakably non-neanderthal,” said Howell, a co-author of the Homo erectus paper that details the hominids and an expert on early modern humans. “These fossils show that near-humans had evolved in Africa long before the European neanderthals disappeared. They thereby demonstrate conclusively that there was never a neanderthal stage in human evolution.”

Because the Herto fossils represent a transition between more primitive hominids from Africa and modern humans, they provide strong support for the hypothesis that modern humans evolved in Africa and subsequently spread into Eurasia. This hypothesis goes against the theory that modern humans arose in many areas of Europe, Asia and Africa from other hominids who had migrated out of Africa at a much earlier time.

The fossil evidence, said Asfaw, “clearly shows what molecular anthropologists have been saying for a long time – that modern Homo sapiens evolved out of Africa. These fossilized skulls from Herto show that modern humans were living at around 160,000 years ago with full-fledged Homo sapiens features. The ‘Out of Africa’ hypothesis is now tested, … (and) we can conclusively say that neanderthals had nothing to do with modern humans. They went extinct.”

The fossil skulls

The three fossil skulls remain in Ethiopia, but replicas made from them were compared by the research team with many examples of neanderthal and earlier hominid skulls, as well as those of modern humans. Many of the modern human comparison skulls came from a worldwide sample of skeletal remains in the collection of UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

The most complete of the three new fossil skulls, probably that of a male, is slightly larger than the extremes seen in modern Homo sapiens, yet it bears other characteristics within the range of modern humans – in particular, less prominent brow ridges than pre-Homo sapiens and a higher cranial vault. Because of these similarities, the researchers placed the fossils in the same genus and species as modern humans but appended a subspecies name – Homo sapiens idaltu -to differentiate them from contemporary humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Idàltu, which means “elder” in the Afar language, refers to the adult male’s antiquity and individual age. The man, though probably in his late 20s to mid-30s, had heavily worn upper teeth and a brain size slightly larger than average for living people.

Scientists tracking evolution through changes in mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to daughter, have estimated that humans derive their mitochrondrial genes from an ancestral mother nicknamed “Eve” who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago. Other scientists studying the male Y chromosome have reached similar conclusions. The new Herto fossils are from a population living at exactly this time.

“In a sense, these genetic findings were impossible to seriously test without a good fossil record from Africa,” said White. “Back in 1982, when Becky Cann and Allan Wilson of UC Berkeley were using molecules to study evolution, they concluded that the common ancestors of all modern humans lived in Africa 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. For the last 20 years we’ve been looking for good, well-dated fossil evidence of that antiquity.”

Previously found fossils were younger, from sites scattered around Africa, often poorly dated and incomplete. These include fossil skull fragments from Klasies River Mouth in South Africa, dating from about 100,000 years ago, and Middle Eastern fossils from Qafzeh and Skhul dating from 90,000 to 130,000 years ago. Ethiopia has yielded some modern human fossils, including those from Omo, which are approximately 100,000 years old, and the Aduma fossil finds of the Middle Awash, which date from about 80,000 years.

While these previous discoveries appear also to be Homo sapiens, the new finds from Herto are older, well-dated and more complete without sharing characteristics of more primitive human ancestors such as Homo erectus or the neanderthals.

Discovery

The fossil-rich site was discovered on Nov. 16, 1997, in a dry and dusty valley bordering the Middle Awash River near Herto, a seasonally occupied village. During a reconnaissance, White first spotted stone tools and the fossil skull of a butchered hippo emerging from the ground. When the team returned to intensively survey the area 11 days later, they discovered the most complete of the adult skulls protruding from the ancient sediment. It had been exposed by heavy rains and partially trampled by herds of cows.

A portion of the large adult’s left front cranium (the braincase) had been crushed and scattered, but the team was able to excavate the rest of the skull, minus the lower jaw, and reconstruct it.

Over 200 pieces of a child’s cranium were found broken and distributed over the surface of sands churned by cattle, goats and camels. The recovered pieces are shown here being assembled by the discoverer, Dr. Berhane Asfaw. Photo © 1998 David L. Brill, Brill Atlanta

The child’s skull, found nearby, was fragmented and scattered from having been exposed for many years. The team recovered most pieces of the cranium, more than 200 in all, from a 400 square-foot area, and Asfaw painstakingly pieced them together over a period of three years.

Based on the presence of unerupted teeth, the skull is that of a child of six or seven. Interestingly, this skull and a second adult’s, too fragmentary to reconstruct, showed cut marks pointing to ancient mortuary practices, White said. The child’s skull bore marks indicating that, after death, the muscles had been cut from the base of the skull. The rear of the cranial base was broken away and the edges polished, and the entire cranium was worn smooth as if by repeated handling. The second adult skull showed parallel scratches around the perimeter of the skull apparently made by a stone tool repeatedly drawn across the skull’s surface in a pattern different from that created during defleshing, as for food. Even the nearly complete adult skull had a few cut marks.

The mortuary rituals of the Herto people differ from those of earlier hominids, some of whom cut flesh from skulls but apparently did not polish or decorate them with scratch marks. Modifications like those seen in the Herto skulls have been recorded by anthropologists from societies, including some in New Guinea, in which the skulls of ancestors are preserved and worshipped.

The Herto skulls were not found with other bones from the rest of the bodies, which is unusual, White said, leading the researchers to infer that the people “were moving the heads around on the landscape. They probably cut the muscles and broke the skull bases of some skulls to extract the brain, but why, whether as part of a cannibalistic ritual, we have no way of knowing.”

The team also recovered more than 640 stone artifacts, though they estimate that the entire Herto area contains millions of such artifacts: hand axes, flake tools, cores, flakes and rare blades. Renowned African prehistorian J. Desmond Clark of UC Berkeley analyzed many of them before his death in February of last year. Clark and colleagues Dr. Yonas Beyene of Ethiopia’s Authority for Research and Conservation of the Cultural Heritages and Dr. Alban Defleur of Marseilles, France, concluded that the stone tools were transitional between the Acheulean period, characterized by a predominance of hand axes, and the later flake-dominated Middle Stone Age.

“The associated fossil bones show clearly that the Herto people had a taste for hippos, but we can’t tell whether they were killing them or scavenging them,” said Beyene. “These artifacts are clues about the ancestors who made them.”

Ancient lake shore

The early humans at Herto lived along the shores of a shallow lake created when the Awash River temporarily dammed about 260,000 years ago. The lake contained abundant hippos, crocodiles and catfish, while buffalo roamed the land.

The sediments and volcanic rock in which the fossils were found were dated at between 160,000 and 154,000 years by a combination of two methods. The argon/argon method was used by colleagues in the Berkeley Geochronology Center, led by Paul R. Renne, a UC Berkeley adjunct professor of geology. WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Bill Hart of Miami University in Ohio used the chemistry of the volcanic layers to correlate the dated layers.

The Middle Awash team consists of more than 45 scientists from 14 different countries who specialize in geology, archaeology and paleontology. In this single study area, the team has found fossils dating from the present to more than 6 million years ago, painting a clear picture of human evolution from ape-like ancestors to present-day humans.

“The human fossils from Herto are near the top of a well-calibrated succession of African fossils,” White said. “This is clear fossil evidence that our species arose through evolution.”

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in combination with the Hampton Fund for International Initiatives of Miami University and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.