Perspective on the World

I started this post over a year ago. Not sure why it got caught in my drafts folder.

I have mentioned that I am reading Peter Frankopan's book entitled The Silk Roads and I have to say, he is thought-provoking.

A passage I read today in his chapter The Road of Gold made me think about perspective. Now, this probably isn't going to sound right and I don't mean any disrespect, it's just that perspective has been on my mind a lot as I read this book about world history (or at least history outside of my narrow focus of Western Europe.)

It did not take long before African rulers began to protest. The King of Kongo made a series of appeals to the King of Portugal decrying the impact of slaving. He protested about young men and women - including those from noble families - being kidnapped in broad daylight to be sold to European traders who then branded them with hot irons. He should stop complaining, the Portuguese sovereign replied. Kongo was a huge land that could afford to have some of its inhabitants shipped away; in any event, he went on, the Kingdom of Kongo benefited handsomely from the trade, including that of slaves.

Slavery is ugly; the result is ugly. But I had never heard of formal communications going on between the rulers of European nations and African nations. (This book alone is exposing my ignorance.) But from a DNA perspective, and we all know how interested I am in that, the King of Kongo has populated (is that the right word? probably not, conquered? that's not the right word either) lands far and wide. I am only talking about a DNA perspective here. All humankind sprang from the African continent; slavery and kidnapping is an ugly way to do it again, but it's a different perspective on populations of current nations, like Haiti, the Caribbean, Brazil... From a DNA perspective. If we think that cells are trying to reproduce to live to reproduce, the King of Kongo got the DNA from his kingdom over much of the planet - in an ugly way.... but from the perspective of a cell, domination. It make me think of Genghis Khan, too. There was a man who got his DNA all over Asia. Powerful from that perspective.