Naomi Campbell Taps Humanity's Origins in Dazed Magazine 'Celebration' Issue 2025

Updated December 22, 2025: AOC is reporting a major change to the assertion that the Blombos Caves of South Africa are home to the earliest beads used as human adornment.

Secondly, I add commentary for the first time about the massive expansion of our Asian readers on Anne of Carversville.

Given that I’m a very serious person, this expanding readership brings responsibility to my Asian audience that should and will impact our writing on AOC.

In the course of this updated article, I weave my very significant Asian audience into the analysis for the first time.

Previously written June 23, 2025.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell takes one cover of Dazed Magazine’s [IG] Summer 2025 issue, the last one under the editorial vision of IB Kamara [IG]. Ted Stansfield has succeeded Kamara as Dazed Editor in Chief, expanding his duties as editorial director of Dazed Digital and AnOthermag.com and editor of Another Man. Stansfield’s first issue will debut in September.

Kamara photographs Naomi, working on styling with Imruh Asha./ Makeup by Esther Edeme; hair by Lorenzo Barcella

Meanwhile, the glorious Naomi Campbell channels humanity’s oldest African origins and self-adornment using beads, shells and hair collages made of twigs, real flowers, leaves and even stones and butterflies that honor the deep ties between humans and nature.

Bizmoune Cave in Morocco

In the six months since this article was written, shell beads from Bizmoune Cave in Morocco, dated 142,000-150,000 years ago, are now considered the world’s oldest jewelry, surpassing the aforementioned Blombos Cave beads from South Africa.

In the unending race to understand our collective human origins, the Blombos Cave beads dating moved them into the premier position, ahead of Morocco’s perforated Nassarius gibbosulus shell beads from Grotte des Pigeons (Taforalt, Morocco), North Africa.

Officially in December, 2025, Morocco is back in the lead in the current analysis of earliest self-adornment among early humans. To be clear, leading involves going back in time — meaning that human behavior habits once believed to be 50,000 years old just added 100,000 years.

There’s also major changes in the lives of early women and men. One post can only handle so much information, so Anne punts for today on that topic.

The Blombos Cave, South Africa

Shell beads in the Bonobos Caves, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa, are dated to 76,000 years ago, making them currently the oldest beads of adornment on record. Of interest to AOC, a nearby Rising Star Cave system was so extremely narrow that it required the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger to recruit six of the smallest-possible physique archaeologists to penetrate this sacred ground.

Six highly-credentialed women able to fit through a narrow chute just 7.5 inches wide were the first humans to penetrate the cave on an expedition that launched in November, 2013. Their discoveries are labeled the homo naledi early humans.

A consistent theme of all of these discoveries is layers of complexity that our earliest humans displayed. Self-adornment as Naomi expresses visually is only one of these complexities.

Transit In and Out of Africa Was Not a One-Way Ticket

No discovery has unseated the region of Lake Turkana, which includes the Omo Valley of southern Ethiopia and the Great Rift Valley in Kenya as the route early humans took out of Africa.

The theory that is gaining more scientific credibility each year includes at least two migration routes for early humans living on the vast continent of Africa.

Key Migration Routes & Models:

Northern Route [Levantine Corridor]: Through Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and into the Levant [modern Israel/Palestine], evidenced by early modern human fossils at Skhul and Qafzeh.

Southern Route [Coastal Route]: Across the narrower Bab-el-Mandeb strait [Horn of Africa to Arabian Peninsula] during lower sea levels, following coastlines into Asia and Australia. 

An AOC in Asia Update

I’m well aware of dramatic changes to Anne of Carversville’s reader base in recent months. With these changes, AOC accepts responsibility for sharing research about other theories of human migration with a focus on Asia.

My June 2025 commentary on white nationalism in American politics should not be misunderstood by our rapidly expanding Asian audience.

For new readers not aware of my business experience in Asia, it was major for 10 years. I have deep respect for all the people of Asia and am both humbled — and honored — by these very dramatic changes in our reader base.

Human Migration in Asia

Although other human evolution theories in Asia — Peking Man in China, to cite one significant theory — are embraced by some Asians, they are not examples of a belief in a superior race in my own lens of analysis. My personal belief is that wherever the science takes us, I will support it.

In this article, written a month before the dramatic change in our multi-national Asian readership began — I did share major news of new DNA analysis that refutes the superior race of white people theory. This theory has harmed people in every part of the world — and in America specifically. I mean Asians in America, many of them US citizens.

Just now, I did research if the DNA results I reference in my personal condemnation of white nationalism coming in a couple paragraphs, apply to DNA results in Asia. The Google AI answer is that:

Multiple studies conducted by Chinese geneticists, including prominent researchers like Professor Jin Li and his team at Fudan University, provide strong DNA-based evidence that the ancestors of modern Chinese populations came from Africa around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Their research shows that 97.4% of the modern Chinese genetic makeup is from these African ancestors.

In deference to the many Asian peoples from Seoul to Shanghai and south to Bangkok, who I worked with every month in many cases — like I got on an airplane and flew to Asia monthly — I promise to do further research specifically on human migration and evolution on the Asian continent in 2026.

For the sake of credibility, I should have been more serious about it before. But now I feel a great responsibility to do so, and I will deliver on this promise.

Pushing Back Against White Nationalist Theories

AOC readers understand the attempts by white nationalists to press the case for a superior group of humans who came from the north, eventually reaching the Levant themselves.

Anne has a personal mission to follow this argument very closely. MAGA voices Steve Bannon and Pete Hegseth may cling tightly to the theory, but scientists have thrown the white men came from the Nordic north theory into the trash and slammed the door.

What we do know in recent years is that the transit in and out of Africa was far more frequent among early humans — often driven by climate change. This creates a tableau for multiple migrations and humans not always following the same geographical routes out of Africa.

African DNA DOES Include Neanderthal Genes

The single greatest DNA discovery that cuts the legs off the second group of humans — more white and coming from the north — theory is very recent and highly improved DNA analysis among Africans.

It’s widely established now that Humans and Neanderthals shared a common history in central Europe much longer than science understood. DNA analysis of ‘white people’ confirms that shared history and Neanderthals were much more sophisticated early humans than we understood. Frequent sex and procreation existed between the two groups, which you probably know about.

The white nationalist argument was that African DNA did not exhibit this contact with Neanderthals or even white people carrying the DNA signature back to Africa. Today, no one is arguing that Neanderthals set up shop in Africa. But their genetic history had frequent contact with early Africans.

Recent genetic studies, particularly utilizing a new method called IBDmix, have identified Neanderthal ancestry in African populations that is much greater — like 20-30x as great — than previously known. Note it was originally a tiny, fractional number. This new discovery suggests that migration from Eurasia back into Africa introduced these Neanderthal genes.

What’s critical is that every new discovery slams the door in the face of a separate group of really smart white people coming from the north, who were not ‘contaminated’ by contact with Africans. It’s a viscious, ignorant lie — and it has penetrated MAGA deeply.

Onto Jews and Palestinians

The second false argument that has been dispelled in the last five years is unsettling to some AOC readers. I fought deeply during the 2024 presidential election — at all hours of the night — trying to interact with progressives and Palestinians who argue that they share no DNA with Jews.

Specifically, I was begging people, pleading with them to stop the Killer Kamala narrative.

Jews and Palestinians are Blood Brothers and Sisters

Since I was 21 years old I’ve known that Jews and Palestinians share a large amount of DNA, but this archaelogical science was banned decades ago among hardliners on both sides. Our universities haven’t helped the situation over decades.

Now DNA science is setting the record straight that all these arguments on who owns the land are fraught with nasty facts. Jews and Palestinians are blood brothers whether they want to accept that reality or not.

Just as we’re all happy to know that DNA analysis is sending white nationalists packing with their hate-filled theories, here’s the most recent DNA analysis among self-identified Palestinians and the Jewish people.

Genetic studies have highlighted shared ancestry between Jews and Palestinians, indicating they both originated from ancient Canaanites who interacted with other regional populations. Research points to genetic continuity in both groups despite the Jewish diaspora.

Palestinians and Jews are genetically closer to each other than Jewish groups are to populations in their host countries, with studies showing a large percentage of men in both groups sharing Y chromosomes from common paternal ancestors in the region.

A significant portion of the Y chromosome pools of Jews and Palestinian Muslim Arabs overlap. Studies suggest many Muslim Palestinians are descendants of local inhabitants, including Christians and Jews, who converted to Islam after the 7th century AD. 

Recent studies, such as a 2021 one, found that modern Palestinian DNA largely matches that of Bronze Age Canaanites. Another study in 2020 suggests genetic continuity between Arabic-speaking Levantine populations and various Jewish groups. 

These discoveries underscore significant genetic connections between Jews and Palestinians despite their cultural and religious differences, suggesting a shared ancestral past in the Levant. This YouTube talking history video, summarizes this Holy Land history I’ve just shared and was posted yesterday. Happy thinking. ~ Anne