"Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"

[cab67]

21. African origins aren't as new as many think.

Darwin himself argued that human roots are to be found in Africa, where our closest living relatives (chimps and gorillas) can be found. He wasn't the only one who thought that way.

It's true that this wasn't the only perception. In fact, it might not have even been the majority perception. But from the late 19th century, African origins had always been considered, if not fully adopted.

Failure to accept it probably does reflect racism. The American-Asiatic Expeditions to the Gobi in the 1920's are famous for having discovered the first nests of dinosaur eggs and some animals we now see as iconic, including Velociraptor. But for some who promoted or even directed the expeditions were really trying to trace human origins, which they thought were in Asia rather than Africa. But even here, its racist overtones are uneven; some of these people were hard-core white supremacists, but others (e.g. William Diller Matthew) thought all modern mammal groups arose in Asia, and that humans - being a mammal group - would logically be one of them. I don't think people like W.D. Matthew expected to find what we would now call hominins (humans and such), but rather primates along their stem lineage - so I don't know how hostile they'd have been to the concept of these purported Asian ancestors dispersing to Africa, becoming more human, and then infesting the rest of the planet.