From the Southern United States to South Africa

 I originally wrote about my interest in genealogy (family origins research)  beginning with the genogram I was asked to create in 1992 while in psychotherapy training. Maybe I was wrong about when my interest in prehistoric humans began. Maybe it began before the family genogram.......... Maybe it began when I used to search plowed fields  for arrowheads ( such as these in the pic above). The center arrowhead I found in 1972. It was lodged in an uprooted tree stump on the edge of a river. I will never forget the feeling of seeing it sticking out from the roots of that fallen tree. I later learned it was from a Native American Tribe that lived  around 3000 BC......They were us-- homosapiens. They too had traveled Out of Africa around 55,000 BC. When we turned to head toward Europe they turned to turned to travel to Northern Russia,  and later crossed the Bering Straight to settle in America around 20,000 BC, and into my home state  of Georgia by about 5000 BC.....Little did I know that when I was looking for arrowheads in the fields as did  Lee Berger Phd, now the Director of the Department of Human Evolution at Wits University in Johannesburg South Africa, did the same when he was a boy.  One reason I went to visit him and  the fossil vault at Wits ( 2015 ), is because I had read Berger's book and knew he  and I shared this same experience. And I was thrilled not only to meet Berger, but professor Francis Thackery as well.  By the way, I was 19 years old when I found that  large ancient Native American artifact in the center of the pic above. I believe the journey started then!!