Lucy (Dinkenesh) of Ethiopia – our common ancestor

Creation: Spring and Easter
Anywhere you find a road, people have passed there before. (Africa)














Lucy, whose Amharic name is Dinkenesh (“You are beautiful”) is a skeleton of a woman found at Hadar, Ethiopia. Anthropologists say all humanity originated from Lucy’s genes, and that she is about 3.2 million years old.















American anthropologist Donald Johanson was re-checking a gully, already visited twice by other workers, when he found fragments of Lucy’s body. The bones showed she was less than four feet tall, and the pelvic remains indicated that she was female. She had a pubic arch similar to modern woman. Among Lucy’s most striking features were her knee and her spine, signifying that she was accustomed to walking upright.



Today, you can find Lucy at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Some of her fossils are currently on tour of the USA.

Lucy pre-dates the Adam and Eve story by at least a couple of million years. As the common ancestor of all human beings, she also challenges concepts of racial superiority. If we accept this archeological finding, we are all either Africans or descendants of Africans. What do you think?

Black History Month - Una Marson and Bob Marley

If you are a big tree, we are a small axe. (Jamaica)

1905 - Una Marson, first major Caribbean Jamaican poet & playwright, was born.

Una Marson was born on February 6, 1905, in Santa Cruz, and attended Hampton High School. She went into journalism when she left school, and published a magazine encouraging women to join the workforce and become politically active.

Marson was an advocate on race as well as gender, encouraging Black women to be confident about their beauty. She stopped straightening her hair and went natural.

She lived between Jamaica and England, seeing to promote national literature in Jamaica, and working with the BBC during World War II. She also wrote a play jointly with Louise Bennett. Her special contribution is linking Caribbean literature and nationalism.


1945 - Bob Marley was born.

Bob Marley’s singing career started with the Wailers in the 1960s. Legendary producer Lee “Scratch” Perry took the group to success with songs like “Simmer Down” and ”Small Axe”. Bob's association with Chris Blackwell's Island Records resulted in international success with albums such as “Catch a Fire”, “Burnin’”, “Natty Dread”, and “Rastaman Vibration.” To no one’s surprise, “Exodus” was declared the album of the twentieth century.

Rastafari strongly influenced Bob, and in 1978 he visited Kenya and then went on to Ethiopia. In 1980, he had the honour of performing at Zimbabwe’s independence.

One of his special contributions to Jamaican political life was his 1978 Peace Concert where he brought Michael Manley and Edward Seaga together on stage during a time when PNP and JLP factions behaved as if they were at war.

A month before he died in 1981, Bob received Jamaica's Order of Merit in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to Jamaican culture.

On this day in:

1820: The initial group of 86 freed slaves from the United States, established a settlement in Christopolis (now Monrovia).

1939 – Jamaican musician Derrick Harriott was born.

1950 - Grammy Award singer Natalie Cole was born.

1993 - Arthur Ashe died