On February 22, 1988, a baby opened her eyes. Sun streamed through the curtains as the sounds of the world filled her ears.
Little did anyone know that 21 years later this young child would grow into a woman of such spellbinding beauty and elegance that it could be presumed she was molded personally by the hands of God himself.
She would grace stages in magical lands, across the bluest oceans to the applause of people from the most faraway cultures and build a fan base in all corners of the world. Along the way she would stand side-by-side with the world’s most stunning women both as friend and competitor.
In 2009, Ximena Navarrete Rosete entered a local beauty pageant and was crowned Nuestra Belleza Jalisco in her home state. Later that year she defeated 33 other contestants to win the national Nuestra Belleza Mexico in the Yucatan. It would make her a rising star in Mexico, a role model for many aspiring girls in the world of beauty pageantry and a twinkle in the eye of many a charmed young romantic.
But it would be on August 23, 2010 that Ximena would cross the line from shining star to international celebrity after being crowned Miss Universe 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She would become the second Mexican delegate to win the title. In 2011 she was the face of L’Oreal Paris and Old Navy, and spent much of her time traveling abroad participating in a variety of social activities. What nobody had yet realized was that she carried in her anatomical blueprint a fairly rare mitochondrial DNA known in the science world as haplogroup J.
It was in 2012 that Ximena agreed to be a part of a genetics study and learned that haplogroup J existed in her maternal lineage. What makes it so interesting is that it can be traced back in time to approximately 45,000 years ago and essentially be thought in terms of a family tree.
The period of 45,000 years ago is known as Upper Paleolithic (10,000-50,000 years ago). To put it into perspective, modern humans are thought to have developed about 200,000 years ago, though bipedal humans could have been in existence at least one million years prior to that time. Large time spans are often difficult for people to comprehend, but with the advancement in technology it is becoming easier to gauge the immensity.
My research into the Upper Paleolithic age didn’t occur by accident. In 2007-2008, I was writing maxims for a website. They began appearing on other websites and in advertisements and, thanks to social media, began circling the globe. Many people have used them over the years in a variety of contexts. I was on Twitter one evening when I noticed that Ximena had used one of my favorites, “Laugh at yourself once in a while—give yourself a break.” It is a maxim that has been popular and used by many people, including Angela Simmons (actress from Run’s House and daughter of media mogul Russell Simmons), Mandy Hale (New York Times bestselling author and founder of the immensely popular women’s blog The Single Woman) and many more.
As I do with all verified people who use my maxims, I like to research them and find out who they are. I learned about Ximena, the beauty queen and remarkable person, but what astounded me was the story about her mitochondrial DNA and the fact that it can be loosely traced back 45,000 years.
Knowing nothing at the time about the Upper Paleolithic period I assumed that the people of those times were ape-like and ran around on their knuckles, grunting and clubbing each other over the head … but I was sorely mistaken. These people were instead highly intelligent and capable people with organized settlements and a civilized way of life.
They were hunter-gatherers and there is evidence that they even may have practiced food storage to compete with natural food shortages caused from animal migrations or drought. They were not sedentary but were curious and adventurous. They explored and colonized, and evidence indicates they existed in Australia, Europe and the Americas. Archaeologists have given a name to this global migration as the Azilian. Ximena’s DNA was traced to the southwestern France, northern Spain area.
The Paleolithic people created tools including needles that suggests they sewed. They created beautiful pottery and sculpture, understood the complexity of music and produced sophisticated musical instruments that can play songs of today. The most impressive of all though are their cave paintings. There are many locations where cave paintings have been discovered, including Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain, but the drawings that intrigued me the most were the masterpieces created in France’s Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave.
The cave walls are adorned with the world’s oldest surviving paintings. The drawings show the diversity of animals that lived during that period of time in that part of the world, such as lion and rhinoceros, bear and wild horse and butterflies. Some of the animals that appear on the walls are now extinct, but amazingly humans are not. What makes the drawings so incredible is their precision and sophistication. There are multiple instances where early animation is practiced.
When the Paleolithic people viewed the drawings before a flickering torch, the animals would appear to be moving. This was ingenious, and 35,000-40,000 years before Walt Disney was even born!
A spectacular article on this period of time is “Upper Paleolithic-Modern Humans Take the World,” by K. Kris Hirst. It drills down into the Upper Paleolithic period breaking it down into sub-periods in minute detail, bringing to life a modern man once thought to be little more than a Neanderthal.
In my research on the subject I stumbled upon a documentary by famed filmmaker Werner Herzog titled “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” It records Herzog and a small crew of scientists, sound and video engineers and archaeologists as they document for the world a singular glimpse into a time forgotten by humans. In fact, it was a remarkable time filled with activity.
These artists, musicians and engineers, living, breathing people with beating hearts and joys and worries, passed along the DNA that eventually became Ximena. It is a remarkable story having to do with a scientific field that will keep revealing new secrets allowing new stories to be written.