Elio Nogueira's 'Our Mother' Honors Gaia for Numero Russia 060 | Mitochondrial Eve on AOC

Numéro Russia 060 has produced a new editorial titled ‘Our Mother’, as a reflection on “the short moment of peace that nature experienced when the impact of human kind was stalled due to COVID-19. What for us is still a nightmare, was a moment for Mother Nature to breathe and rejuvenate due to our absence. We should be more aware of the fact that we are a pandemic to our planet.”

The editorial features model Nora Danielsson styled by Lauren Smith in divinely beautiful images by Elio Nogueira (IG) who also acted as creative director on the project.

Gaia Theory on AOC

The fashion story comes at a moment when AOC is about to delve deeply into Gaia theory from an ongoing content perspective. The subject has long held my interest, and it seems so important now more than ever, given the fragility of our planet and the possibility — as Elio Nogueira’s words note — that humans are a pandemic to the health of our planet.

Our Earth Mothers Were Africans

Running parallel to my interest in Gaia theory from a sustainability standpoint, is AOC’s and my personal commitment to articulating the story of humanity’s rise out of Africa. No, white people did not come from the Siberian North and people of color from Africa. Only white nationalists embrace the northern rise, Siberian story.

In what’s a spectacular development in humanity’s story, actor and AOC muse Lupita Nyong’o has DNA from the oldest maternal haplogroup called Mitochondrial Eve. This discovery about Lupita’s precious DNA was rebroadcast in November 2020 on the PBS show ‘Finding Your Roots with [Harvard scholar] Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The show originally broadcast in 2017, and I totally missed it

At this time, scientists believe that all humans were originally people of color and our true Earth Mother is metaphorically [and for real] a woman of color.

Lupita Nyongo’s Eve Gene

Note that the concept of mitrochondrial Eve does not mean that the species is the first female in the evolutionary emergence of homo sapiens. Rather mitrochondrial Eve is “the most recent female historically from which all living animals of a species can trace their ancestry. Think of her like the peak of a genealogical pyramid, in which all ancestors of a species meet. While everyone below is descended from her, that doesn’t mean that there is no other female above her, or that lived at the same time as her. Perhaps some of her contemporaries had no surviving children. Or they only had sons, which wouldn’t have passed on their mitochondrial DNA,” writes Smithsonian Magazine.

This clarification of the scientific definition of mitrochondrial Eve DNA does not lesson the excitement of finding it in Lupita Nyong’o’s makeup. As Professor Gates explains with great amazement: he has never seen the discovery in his work of studying race, evolution and DNA in modern-day celebrities, who agree to be tested.

Where and When for the Eve Gene

In researching the rise of our modern-day humanity out of Africa, one must be very conscious of research date-checking. As recently as 2016, the assumption was the mitrochondrial Eve DNA originated only in East Africa.

In 2020, a new argument has arisen pinpointing an area called Makgadikgadi in present-day Botswana as an even earlier source of mitrodhondrial Eve. This theory, advanced by author Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the University of Sydney in Australia “concluded that mitochondrial Eve and her descendants lived in this region for about 30,000 years, 200,000-170,000 years ago before the L0 lineage split into its first subgroup and further subgroups in order to create the variety and diversity of humanity we see today”, writes Shannyce Adamson in ‘The Eve Gene’ for Shades of Noir UK.