[M. Dodge Thomas]

"It seems he feels we are all African and these Africans traveled to different parts of the world to become different ethnic groups."

I haven’t read about this stuff for a while, but ten years or so back the then current theory based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA was that homo sapiens at one time passed though a genetic “choke point” where out ancestral population had been reduced to a very small group, almost certainly located in Africa.

If so at least in that sense, we are all “African-Americans”.

[blam]

"I haven’t read about this stuff for a while, but ten years or so back the then current theory based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA was that homo sapiens at one time passed though a genetic “choke point” where out ancestral population had been reduced to a very small group, almost certainly located in Africa."

The 'bottleneck' was caused by the Volcano Toba explosion 74,000 years ago that sent the earth into a 'hard' Ice Age environment. Only 2-10,000 humans survived worldwide...the deaths were worldwide and not linked to just the site of the eruption. There was a tremendous amount of 'branching' just after this incident and another 23-18,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum(LGM).

[Marysecretary]

I'm sure the program will be on for some time. Perhaps you could catch it. It was very interesting to say the last. I think it was called Journey of Man.