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| An African Odyssey A Memoir by Hugh Massey | ||||
| When Hugh Massey found himself in the Free French colony of Cameroon in West Africa during the Second World War, he had little idea that the ground was being laid for a personal research project which was to preoccupy him for most of his life. The combination of his observation of African wild life - great apes in particular - and his contact with different sections of the local African population came to take on an unexpected new perspective when he found himself the victim of TB. Such was the seriousness of his condition - in the days before new drug technology made the breakthrough in the treatment of this devastating disease - that he was considered effectively to have been given a death sentence. Seemingly by chance, but in Hugh’s view by destiny, he happened to come across the theories of F.M. Alexander, which offered him a faint ray of hope in his desperate situation. The extraordinary cure he was able to effect through this unorthodox approach led him to some radical conclusions concerning human evolution. In his view, the key to understanding the ascent of man lay in the matter of posture. Significantly, this was the lynchpin of Alexander’s whole theory of health and well being, as embodied in his internationally regarded Alexander Technique. Hugh Massey’s chance encounter with a band of pygmies in the hinterland of Cameroon - of a kind whose characteristics are significantly different from the mainstream pygmy population – was the experience that was to give him the starting-point for his idea. He came to believe that the emergence of man came not via the great apes but through varieties of monkey with particular characteristics, and that the pygmy holds an important place in this development. However, it is important to recognise that Hugh was not singling out the African pygmy in this respect. The cornerstone of his theory was based on the realisation that until relatively recent times the whole Equatorial belt had been home to pygmoid peoples, nearly all of whom had disappeared. He concluded that this population as a whole had been the transitional element in the evolutionary emergence of man. Only through particular geographic conditions has pygmy survival been exclusive to Africa in our own times and it was precisely the environmental conditions on the Equator that allowed this evolutionary transition. He quite reasonably surmised, on the basis of the notable difference in height, colour and build between the mainstream local pygmy population and the group that he had encountered in the forests of Cameroon, that pygmy populations worldwide had grown taller. Moreover, this had happened over a surprisingly short period of time; a fact supported by specialised anthropological research. Pygmies had also been disappearing to a significant extent through miscegenation with the local population. The remarkable fact about Hugh Massey’s thesis, which he began to develop in outline in the late 1940s, is that at the present time, 50 to 60 years later, certain parallels seem to be emerging between his ideas and the work of respected mainstream scientists. Such an eminent geneticist as Luka Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University argues, on the basis of DNA analysis, that the pygmies are probably our oldest human ancestor.* Similarly, Owen Lovejoy of Case Western University has focused in on posture as a significant factor in human evolution, in a number of his research papers. Hugh’s account of his experiences and research in An African Odyssey make it a unique combination of elements, genre-wise. It is at one and same time, a travel book, an autobiography, an account of the efficaciousness of an unorthodox therapeutic approach and a theory of human evolution. The resulting structure of the book, which has been preserved editorially, was entirely appropriate to the author’s individuality, breadth of experience and wide-ranging interests. * The History and Geography of Human Genes by Luka Click for extracts from An African Odyssey - If you would like to order a copy by mail, please contact us first to check for availability. The cost is £14.99 plus £1.75 p&p, by cheque made out to Pomegranate Books. (UK customers only). If you live overseas please contact us for payment details. We regret that at present we are unable to accept credit card payments (Hardback) £14.99 + £1.75 p&p
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