FRIDAY, April 26, 2024
nationthailand

Worth remembering: We are all one species 

Worth remembering: We are all one species 

Re:  “Immigration opponents should consider the real Americans”, Letters, February 4.

I hate to break the news to Eric Bahrt, but the so-called “Native Americans”, aka American Indians, were immigrants just like the rest of the people who live in America.  The only difference is that they arrived a lot earlier than everybody else.  Thirty to ten thousand years ago, their ancestors are believed to have crossed from Asia to the Americas over a now-submerged land bridge that spanned the Bering Strait.  If we wanted to identify them by their last pit-stop before they crossed over, we could call them Siberians.
Their ancestors may have originated in Asia or even as far west as Europe.  Wikipedia calls them Paleoamericans, or Old Americans.  More recent immigrants could be called Neoamericans, or New Americans.  
But this is all academic.  Despite all the various names, labels, concepts, and categories that the busy human brain invents to divide us, the human “race” is all one species.  That is all we really need to know, and if everybody would just keep it in mind, the world would be a far less rancorous place.  
A Chinese proverb gets it exactly right:  Tian Xia Wei Gong:  “(All) under heaven is one commonwealth.”
Ye Olde Pedant

nationthailand