RETHINKING MANKIND

Africa, as the craddle of mankind, may be seen

as the center of the human universe.

Recently, the magazine Nature (see below) published an interesting piece about the need to update our language. For exemple, the expression 'The New World' to designate the Americas is valid for people of European descent, but not to the original inhabitants of North and South America, for whom their lands were not a 'newly discovered place' but simply home...

The idea is excellent, but its extent must be enlarged to all of what we now know about our species, our planet and our place in the universe. We have to rethink (and rename) everything. Let's do it in a methodical fashion.

First, our species originated from Africa. It appeared there, lived there, evolved there, and, reather recently, relatively speasking, spread beyond it. 'Recently', because, if our whole history, whose duration spans millions of years, is reduced to a period of 24 hours, we've set foot out of Africa something like a few minutes ago. That's not such long ago, compared to the vast amount of time spent on what was then our only continent. When we lived there, and onyl there, we weren't even aware, then, of the need to create such a word as 'continent'....

What all that means, is that Africa is the one continent where our roots are the deepest, by far. Some of the descendants of the first humans are still there: they're today's Africans. And all the other descendants lives elsewhere on the planet, out of Africa. Africa can then be labelled the Motherland, the Cradle of Mankind, the Navel of Earth, the First continent, and as such the Old World par excellence. since, for us, there could be no older place than Africa.

At this present point in the drifting of the tectonic plates, all the other continents inhabited by us forms a sort of crown around Africa, starting with South America, to the south-west, followed by North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, to the south-east. By their positions respective to Africa, those continents should then be called the Crown-Lands, the New Continents, the New World. As for Antarctica, at the southern tip of our planet, it should aptly be nicknamed the Great White Emptyness, due to its isolation, its absence of permanent human settlement, and its snowy blanket.

It should be noted that all those lands, even Antarctica, are part of the domain of Gaïa, the representation of Life, made up of all the creatures, from the gigantic and to the microscopic, that lives on Earth, whether human, animal, vegetal or viral. All those creatures, in their billions and trillions, forms a kind of soup, or blanket, that covers all the planet, from deep in the ground to high in the sky, the same way like an apple is covered by a skin.

Also, all around our planet, Earth, wich is to say Terra, are other worlds, planets, satellites, comets, and everything else that are in orbit around our Sun, which is to say Sol, and who collectively constitutes our Solar System. That system is the Neighborhood of Mankind. If Terra is Home, the system of wich it is a part is Mankind's Surroundings.

Our only satellite, the Moon, and the nearby planet most like ours, Mars, are both the targets of a vast exploration and exploitation movement that is only beginning. The Moon and Mars, and also the low orbit of Terra and the Lagrange points, forms together the First Frontier, the area of our first settlement outside of Earth. The presence of our species is already almost permanent on the lower orbit of Terra. In a few decades, a network of bases will be created in the First Frontier: scientific bases, mining bases, observatory bases, military bases, communications bases, fuelling bases, agricultural bases, solar energy bases, etc.

From there, from Earth and the First Frontier, one can go inward, that is to say Sun-ward, in the direction of Venus and Mercury, and also the orbital world around Sol. There, is the Second Frontier. Human settlement there would be much more difficult, because of the physical conditions of those worlds, and it probably will happen through the use of temporary bases and/or automated installations.

In the other direction, outward from Earth and the First Frontier, that it to say Deep Space-ward, can be found a great number of planets, great and small, satellites, asteroids, comets, etc. This will be the Third Frontier. It also will likely be covered by a network of bases, eventually, despite the enormous distances and difficult conditions.

The settlement of the Second and Third Frontier will conclude the colonization of the solar system. It will take decades, and probably centuries, but, one day, far away in the future, the whole solar system will be settled through the energy and determination of humans, the most sentient children of Gaïa. All the ecological niches that can be found would have been filled with terrestrial life, the human version of it, of course, but also the animal, vegetal, and microbial versions.

The System of Sol will then become our new, enlarged home, the new Home of Mankind, and also, in a larger sense, the new Home of Gaïa. All its worlds, small and large, will be part of the Human Archipelago.

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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00992-4