THE ancients were right: the earth must be flat. For years, entire continents disappear over the edge of our awareness. We left-overs from the 20th century have been trained to be Eurocentric in our outlook. We know more about the history of the Western world than our own, because it has been ingrained in us. We know so much about Chinese civilisation because China took care to preserve it.

We know next to nothing about the great cultures that existed in South America — for example, the Aztecs in Mexico or the Incas in Peru — before the Hispanics looted them. (One haul from the Inca treasury, a historian has calculated, consisted of a mini-Fort Knox — 5,900 kilograms of gold and 11,800 kg of silver.) We know even less about the diverse cultures of Africa, before Europeans plundered the hapless continent for precious gems, rare minerals and convoys of unwilling human assets.

There is evidence that the earliest human settlements in South America are dateable to 15,000 years ago. That is yesterday, compared to Africa where modern humans or homo sapiens lived about 300,000 years ago. Migrations from Africa across other continents began between 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, making us all cousins many times removed. That........

© Dawn