The Progenitor Theory: Part 2

Photo of a 1 dollar note featuring the 'Eye of Providence'
The Eye of Providence, featured on the U.S. $1 note, is a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists who link it to Freemasonry, the Illuminati and the ancient cultures which supposedly spawned them.

One of the most significant and most long-lived archaeological theories, once investigated by recognised scientists but now confined to the realms of pseudo-science, is the idea that there once lived, in deepest, darkest prehistory, a ‘mother race.’

 Admittedly, this mother race has been ‘confirmed’ as aliens impersonating human gods; survivors of the technologically advanced civilisation of Atlantis; or an early species of hominid who survived some global cataclysm by ascending to a new plain of non-corporal existence. Depending on one’s preferred narrative, of course. 

The existence of such a mother race is at the heart of the global conspiracy because . . . well, I’m not too sure why governments, religions, scholars and corporates alike feel the need to cover up the existence of such incredible people!

 Amidst such fanciful tales, you will quickly see why mainstream academia has shunned the search for a mother race and why it resists any theory that brushes against the subject.

Such as the Progenitor Theory.

Mother Race / Mother Culture

It wasn’t long ago when my father, one of the earliest proponents of what would become the Out of Africa 2 model for human origins, was laughed at, ridiculed and even subjected to racist abuse by white peers for suggesting that all modern humans originated in Africa. 

Such an Afrocentric theory, especially when put forward by a black man, was completely at odds with the Multiregional development model prevalent at the time. A model, incidentally, which has now lost a great deal of support.

Photo of the skull of Homo Erectus
Homo Erectus is one of our evolutionary relatives and are believed to be the first of our ancestors to spread throughout Eurasia.

 More recently, my father and I were among the first scholars to suggest that modern human behaviour developed in Africa and spread out with the migration of humans. Modern human behaviour, or MHB, includes exploitation of large game, utilisation of blade technology, abstract thinking, and symbolic behaviour, including art, ornamentation, music, and dance. 

Despite the sometimes reluctant acceptance of humans’ African biological/physiological origin, many academics still felt that Africa was too backwards to be the birthplace of such evolved behaviour. Europe, or at best, South West Asia, just before humans moved into Europe, was a more likely place for it to develop. 

Now, such Eurocentrism has largely been pushed out of the limelight in favour of, and you guessed it; African origins. Indeed, numerous theories push the development of MHB in Africa back by tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Origin-al Thinking

The human body developed in Africa.

The human mind developed in Africa.

Photo of prehistoric stone tools from Blombos Cave in South Africa
Blombos Cave, in South Africa, has yielded evidence related to the behavioural evolution of modern humans, including stone tools, engraved bone and shells that may have been used as jewellery.

Of course, it has changed; it has evolved. Of course, it has become culturally distinct. Of course, the ancestors of modern Asian populations followed a slightly different evolutionary route than those of Europe, which followed a different path than those in Africa. Of course, the technologies employed varied across time and space, as did their symbolism and abstract thinking.

But all of it started in Africa.

 The African Cultural Progenitor Diffusion Model, or ACPD (but more commonly referred to as the ‘Progenitor Theory’), takes this African origin to the next level.

My father and I suggested that one early group/culture/society perfected several aspects of modern human behaviour long ago. Indeed, it seems sensible to assume that the longevity of MHB development in Africa, before we even stepped foot off the continent, would give an African population a head start on the road towards so-called civilisation. Furthermore, it probably gave us the push to migrate, to expand out into the wider world.

These ‘perfected behaviours’ manifested themselves in the form of several ‘traits’ which are traditionally associated only with ‘civilisations,’ such as monumental buildings, enhanced levels of agriculture and/or agricultural knowledge, as well as a written form of communication. 

This society was likely something similar to what we would consider a small city-state. From this city, the City of the Moon, the fundamental building blocks of civilisation were transmitted through genetic memory. This is a neuroscientific theory that knowledge and experiences are incorporated into the genome in the form of memory that exists at birth, in the absence of sensory experience. Think of it as a foundation of knowledge that the next generation can build upon without starting from scratch. While disputed by some, it is linked to the development of language, interpretation of environmental stimuli and even to phobia and trauma.   

Basically, the blueprints to the behavioural traits that would later spawn the development of the first recognised civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt developed in Africa and spread with human migration beyond the continent.

I Beg to Differ 

Such a combination of physical migration and cultural diffusion does not take anything away from the magnificence of the Ancient Egyptians or any other society. At least no more than the recognition that MHB developed in Africa. 

Indeed, it was likely tens of thousands of years before any of this innate knowledge was further utilised. Every culture, every society, every population took their own path, attempted their own experiments with social structures, with proto-states, and eventually with the trappings of what we now call civilisation. Some built pyramids that stand proud above deserts today; others collapsed into obscurity; some likely wait to be found, hidden under the dirt; others remain to this day largely unchanged. 

Photo of a human skull being excavated from an archaeological site
Despite all our differences, beneath the surface all humans can trace their ancestry back to one point: Africa.

All of these achievements should be celebrated. The diversity they represent, the individuality of the smallest tribe to the greatest empire should be revered.  

What the Progenitor Theory does, however, is reminds us a quote by the Dali Lama: “we are all basically the same human beings . . . everybody is my peer group.”

While celebrating diversity, we must also recognise our similarities, the echoes of themes and motifs in myth and folklore, the resemblance of monuments, the repetitive cycle of elitism and peasantry in social structures.

Why are such things replicated throughout cultures across the globe and spread through time?

Not because of some mother race of Atlantian seafarers spreading the seeds of civilisation to the masses in some supremacist, racist hyper-diffusionist model. But because such thoughts, such behaviours, are hardwired into our brains, into our genetic memory.

 My father and I have spent years compiling evidence of this process. We have unified genetic, anatomic, historical, oral, epigraphic, mythological and archaeological evidence for the existence of the Progenitors.

 However, without irrefutable proof, all the evidence we have compiled will forever remain a single interpretation whose importance swells and declines according to academic fashion, walking the narrow line between mainstream theory and pseudo-science.

The Moon Mask  

And that is why the Moon Mask matters. 

Because of all the similarities teased by the resemblance of pyramids across continents, the appearance of almost identical heroes in mythology, in the agricultural practices and social structures of disparate cultures across the globe, the Moon Mask legend is the clearest.

A fallen piece of the moon, fashioned into a mask which can show its wearer the future and then ripped asunder by ancient gods.

Out of all the versions of the Moon Mask legend, found from Africa to South America, the Bouda tale is the only one that potentially has a physical manifestation to pursue archaeologically- a search for the man represented on that graffiti at Wassu. 

If we can find this man, the last Great King of the Bouda, I believe that we can find the Moon Mask. Such a discovery would draw the Bouda out of the realms of myth and into reality –  and with them the Progenitors.

If I can find the Moon Mask, I can prove that the global repetition of the legend is no mere coincidence. 

I can prove that it was retained in the genetic memory of our very species thanks to the experience and achievements of our earliest ancestors.

The Progenitors.