Cousin Urk!

Well, it's now official, new DNA evidence supports a theory that all humans alive today share a common ancestry, according to scientists in the U.K.

The research, which compared DNA from aboriginal Australians and Melanesians in New Guinea to DNA patterns linked to early humans, found that both of the modern groups share genetic characteristics that correlate with humans from Africa about 50,000 years ago.

The research, reported in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, was conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University, both in Cambridge, England, who led an international team that reached from Estonia to California.

The theory of the African origins of modern man were previously questioned in some quarters, due to skeletal and tool remains in Australia that differed from evidence elsewhere along the route through South Asia that would have been taken by early migrants.
Some researchers have attributed the differences to the possibility of interbreeding among the early colonists and local Homo erectus species, or a second migration.

The new research shows that no other genetic material was inherited by the Australians or New Guineans studied. The DNA shows that they evolved in relative isolation after the African migration, the scientists said.

From my book, "The Plain Truth About God-101." (What the church doesn't want you to know!)

Australian Aboriginal Cultures have a chain of religious practices virtually unbroken. It extends back over 50,000 years to a time when their ancestors first settled the continent.

It is also a society has remained almost unchanged since the advent of self-awareness.

Totemism and Animism were one of the elementary and first forms of religion and the Australian Aboriginal Religion therefore, is the perfect model for religion in its original form.

Ritual is formal ceremonial behavior used to approach or deal with the supernatural.

Rituals act out or dramatize scenes from the religious and social origins of society - its methodology depicts how its members believe they came to be a distinct people.

Rituals seem to evoke high levels of emotion, and with the worship of God, they re-create the story of how they came to be as a group. The Australian Aborigines found their meaning for life in the stories and songs of their particular tribe.

The answers to questions such as “who am I?” and “where do I belong?” and “what happens after I die?” all were found in their local legends and beliefs.

Their stories and songs related accounts of ancestral beings taking the form of animals, birds, and other creatures during the creation period known as the “Dream-Time.”

The ancestors’ played and active role in the life of each succeeding generation!

Each tribe, (of which there were about 500 in Australia) was led by religious leaders with no political chief or formal government.

They were broken down into hunting groups and family units and these units were vitally important as all members of the tribe were related!

The territory of the tribe was centered on the place where its ancestors had originally settled. It was believed that the spirits of these ancestors remained at the watering place at the center of the territory awaiting re-incarnation.

None of them ever really died, but rather merged with the natural world and so remained a part of the present and of the tribe.

This was one of the plainest and simplest methods of avoiding the pain of death and separation, since the departed had not really gone anywhere!

These myths and rituals, signifying communion with nature, and the past, were known as the “Dreaming” or “Dream-Time.”

They reflected a belief in the continuity of existence and harmony with the world!

They were also a source of inspiration for aboriginal art, including paintings, carved objects, symbolic weapons, and poetic chants. (Similar to the Vedic chants of the Indus Valley Culture thousands of years later.)

For the Aboriginals the “Dream-Time” is the period in which the original ancestors were thought of as heroes and spirits. They took a variety of forms, both animal and human, and created a pattern for the very existence of these people.

It was a great comfort for early people to think that death did not separate them from their loved ones!

The “Dream-Time,” for them, has existed since the beginning of time and the ancestors were still “alive” in the form of spirits that had an impact on the daily lives of the adherents.

Aboriginal people believed that the land was their mother, and their dreaming had answers to life’s mysteries. The forces - the heroes and spirits - of the “Dream-Time” were all the creative ancestors of the tribe and this religion was the very first evidence of a belief in the supernatural amongst modern humans.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com