October 9, 2023- There once was a story, that when the People came across the ice and land bridge known as Beringia, they followed large, ferocious beasts, from mastodons and mammoths to smilodons (sabre-toothed cats) and short-faced bears. There was Megatherium, the larger, somewhat more irascible ancestor of today’s tree sloth. There were huge dire wolves and wild cattle, called aurochs. Some legends also say that the continent of North America was occupied by giant humans. There is evidence that some First Nations people also came by sea, from the western Pacific islands and from the Mediterranean region-and that even the Amazon Basin was peopled, before the Pacific Northwest.

Much of that lore remains to be proven. So, too, does much of the lore about who first settled what we call the Holy Land. The Old Testament recounts that the twelve tribes of Israel were led to the edge of that nation, and found Canaanites and Philistines already there. There was battle, and the Philistines were defeated. They went slightly north, became the Phoenicians , and contributed greatly to Western Civilization-as did the Jews.

People have always been on the move. Homo sapiens came out of Africa, spread throughout Eurasia, across the Pacific Islands, into Australia and to the Americas. Migrating peoples left the Eurasian steppes and Altai Mountains-some going east and becoming the Siberians and at least some of those we call First Nations peoples or Native Americans; others going west and becoming the Scythians, Kelts, Teutons, Slavs, Turks, Magyars (Huns) and Sami. Other migrating people left the Caucasus and became the Greeks, Etruscans, Latins and Illyrians of southern Europe, or, going eastward, the Persians and various peoples of north India.

African emigres sailed the Indian Ocean, and the eastern rim of Asia, to Australia, New Guinea and Melanesia. The true First Nations of the Philippines, Taiwan and Jeju (South Korea) were of African origin. In kind, Malays, who long ago left southern China and settled the Pacific Rim of southeast Asia-found their way westward, settling Madagascar, where they found and intermingled with Africans.

In Africa itself, the southern third of the continent was originally the domain of those who have been variously called Hottentots, Bushmen, Pygmies, or more recently by their own preferred name, San. Those known collectively as Bantu were migrants from western Africa, who spread across the continent, much as the First Nations peoples of the Americas spread through those continents.

The beat goes on-and still there is argument, as to who should be allowed to live where. Fighting over land is tantamount to self-defeatism. Untangling the ball of yarn will be a long, tortuous process, but can anyone really say the process of conflict and warfare is easier?

“The Earth is but one country, and Mankind its citizens”. – Baha’u’llah