Liber ab Exodus (Book of Departure)^69
being? Again, do we hold a funeral every time a woman menstruates? After all, the
great majority of miscarriages occur without the woman’s knowledge of ever being
pregnant. Maybe we did evolve in the womb of Africa but we emerged from that womb
just as human as any human child emerges from his or her mother. We are one people.
Today, science has a wonderful new tool called DNA by which to determine this.
Within the makeup of each and every human being is something called mitochondrial
DNA. It is found in virtually every cell in the human body but it is not a part of the
normal chromosomal DNA. Of the more than three billion base pairs of human DNA,
only about 16,500 are mitochondrial. The other more than 99.99 percent is found in
the chromosomes. Unlike chromosomal DNA, only the mother passes mitochondrial
DNA. Because it is separate from the typical chromosomal DNA, it can be used to
trace genetic lineage all the way back to one woman who lived in Africa. Often called
the Mitochondrial Eve, she is not the Elm spoke of in the first chapter. Nor is she the
child or grandchild of Ash and Elm. Instead, Mitochondrial Eve, the Eve of most mod-
ern religions, lived approximately 2,200 generations after Ash and Elm in or about
location one on the map on page 70, which is where our story begins.In or around what we now call the Congo, Ash and Elm were born about 169,000 to
148,000 BCE, or about 7,000 generations ago. From Ash and Elm did come many chil-
dren, who left to the four corners of their garden Africa. These were the first modern
humans, not at all unlike you and I. They were hunter-gatherers, negotiating in nature
with an intellect unrivaled by any other creature in their world.
But even with the same mind that just 7,000 generations later placed a man on the
moon, their first exodus from the garden was ill-fated. In the north, they found their
world ended in desert, in the west and south they found their world to end in ocean, but
to the east they could and did pass. Their first attempts at exodus brought them to the
east shore of the Red Sea where they followed the coast line north, passing the Valley
of the Kings and crossing through Gaza into the Middle East as far as Galilee and
maybe a bit further. But that is where this first exodus would end. The next attempt
would not be for thousands of years.The First Exodus: Map Location 2
Approximately 110,000 B.C.E.
Approximately 2,200 generations after Ash and ElmChanges in the climate caused the polar ice caps to swell. With the growing ice at
each pole, the amount of water at the equator decreased dramatically. The majority of
the African continent north of the equator was engulfed by the Sahara dessert as it
grew due to severe drought. The portions of humanity that remained in Africa could
migrate south as the northern portions of the continent turned into dessert. But those
who had left Africa through Gaza were trapped, unable to return to the garden that
was Africa and unable to move much further into the Middle East. As the deserts
approached from all sides, their entire line died.j WB Chap 03.p65 69 7/11/2003, 5:48 PM