Page 229 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

Ethnogenesis is related closely to the origin and the distribution of human races. The
overall problems of the origin and the distribution (migration) are geological problems
because human beings come from and migrate through the settings of lands and seas
formed by geology.
Where do human beings come from? Some major religions, Christianity, Islam,
Judaism, have it that human beings came from the Garden of Eden, or the Garden of
Heaven which was thought to be in the region of Mesopotamia, part of Iraq now. However,
physical anthropologists suggest it was in central Asia. These regions once had a gradual
uplift. Together with the uplift, there were groups of migrating people and animals, which
gradually, also went to the lower regions.
It has been suggested that human beings did not have one origin (monogenesis) but
there were several centers of distribution (polygenesis). This is comparable to the battle of
two theories in paleoanthropology that hominids, for example Homo erectus and human
beings (homo sapiens), come from one place (Africa) then spread out throughout the world
(the “out of Africa” theory) or that the origin of hominids and human beings is plural, from
different places (the “multiregional” theory). However, there is consensus among experts
that the origin of human beings is in Asia or Africa; and not Europe, America or Australia.
The role of geology in ethnogenesis greatly influenced the migration of human
beings. After migrating and inhabiting new places, there was the process of establishing
a new race or ethnic group whose characteristics were influenced by the new physical
environment they inhabited and its geography, geology, and climate. Hence, indirectly
or directly, geology played its role in the establishment of different human populations.
The nations which became the actors in the historical drama of human beings in the
beginning, in Mesopotamia, and who had light-colored skin were the Caucasoids. The
other two kinds included in homo sapiens were the Negroid and the Mongoloid but they
did not inhabit the Middle East.
Based on the characteristics of language, in the Middle East or exactly in the arc of the
Fertile Crescent Moon (Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia) the Hamite and the Semite were
found. The Hamite spred out to the north and the north east of Sahara in Africa.
The Semite spread out to the Arabian Peninsula and its surroundings. In the meantime,
along the north coast and east of the Fertile Crescent Moon, the Indo-Europeans emerged
from the region of Georgia in the hills of the Caucasus mountains in present day southern
Russia. From there, at around 4,000 BC they spread out to Europe and Iran.

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