GURGAON, India, Aug. 5 - Akhil Bakshi who led the multi-disciplinary Gondwanaland Expedition from the Indian Himalaya to Cape Agulhus, the southernmost tip of Africa, has questioned the theory that man originated in Africa and from there spread out to colonise the world.
The 25,200km expedition comprising of geologists, botanist, zoologist, anthropologist and medical doctor,
traversed several areas of great importance in the evolution of life on earth. In June 2006, the expedition drove across Zambia. In Lusaka the expedition scientists held meetings with professors and researchers at the University of Zambia, and with the members of the Zambia National Science and Technology Council.
In his paper \"Continental Drift and Concurrent Evolution of Human Species – A Critique of the African-origin Theory\", Bakshi hypothesises that different races of humans, like many plant and animal species, evolved independently in various parts of the planet. Presenting the existence of life on earth when Pangea broke up into Laurasia and Gondwanaland, Bakshi asks if from these life forms Homo erectus could have evolved in Africa, over millions of years, why then, from the same life forms, could he not also have evolved on other continents that had a similar ecosystem and ancestral conditions?
According to him, the landmasses of Australia, India, and South America –once attached to Africa as Gondwanaland – originally had a Negroid population that had evolved independently. These were later decimated and marginalized by the Caucasian and Mongoloid races migrating from the north. Some inter-mixed. Outside Africa, the remnants of the original Negroid population are the Aborigines in Australia-Papua New Guinea, Aeta in Phillipines, Veddas in Sri Lanka and the Great Andamanese tribals in India. They developed similar Negroid features because their evolution was rooted in the same ancestral background of Gondwanaland. This was original, indigenous population – and not people who migrated from Africa over deserts and oceans.
The full paper that will be published as an annexure in Akhil Bakshi\'s travelogue Back to Gondwanaland can be read at
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