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‘Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it’s not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known,” said the Bishop of Worcester’s wife when she heard about Charles Darwin’s seminal work, On the Origin of Species.
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was controversial from the start, earning him the title of “the most dangerous man in Europe”.
In other words, he was the Nelson Mandela of the 1960s and the Osama bin Laden of our time – a terrorist.
In Tennessee, US, the teacher John Scopes was arrested and tried for teaching human evolution in school. That was as recent as 1925, which in evolution years is less than a nanosecond ago.
The discovery of Homo naledi has made many South Africans uncomfortable. It’s easy to accuse them of ignorance, but as the evolution of thought tells us, they are not alone.
Professor Lee Berger discovered what was edited out of the scriptures. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, we know. The Prophet Muhammad was born in Arabia. But Adam and Eve, the great professor has discovered, lived in South Africa. Berger has stumbled upon the Garden of Eden, so we should be creating a tourism story around Homo naledi.
Religious tourism is big business. For example, on any given day, 82% of the Vatican’s population are tourists, and 2 million pilgrims visit Mecca every year. Unlike wildlife tourism, religious tourism never goes extinct. It will last until the end of time.
We should tell the world that we have found the Garden of Eden and it is in Mogale City, near Johannesburg.
The problem surrounding Homo naledi is that our people have been so hurt by their own history that they have become afraid of it. We prefer the affirmation of others over scientific reason.
Some of our leaders sound like the bishop’s wife. We should make money from this discovery. The local government should build roads to that area and help boost the tourism industry.
Artists should imagine life in Homo naledi’s period and recreate it in movies, books, poetry and music. Movies are big business. Last year, the industry generated $564 billion (R7.5 trillion) in the US alone, and the biggest-grossing movies are in the fantasy adventure genre. Jurassic World, for example, raked in $650 million.
Homo naledi needs to fetch some of that money for this country. We know that where the cameras rolled, tourists soon followed with their cash.
Nations are not created by the accuracy of history, but by their myths and legends. Before Christianity, Africans believed the first man on Earth was Mnguni or Mokone in Sesotho, Ngoni in east Africa. Those legends have disappeared – buried under years of an education that teaches us that we are a product of a curse.
Professor Berger has given this country the licence to create stories that will excite people around the world. We now have the means to take people to an old world, where viewers can find themselves.
He has given us a chance to be original with our stories and not have to be a cheaper copy of others. If we do not do it, someone else will, and they will tell our stories.
William Shakespeare did wonders for Rome by writing the legend of Julius Caesar. Italian tourism will never be able to repay him. Elizabeth Taylor, in her role as Cleopatra, made the world fall in love with Egypt, the pyramids, the Sphinx and all things Egyptian.
If we black people are uncomfortable with nature casting us as the original human beings, call Charlize Theron. It won’t matter. We will still find another reason to complain.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive,an advertising agency
