Between science and spirituality, four voices make the case for humanity's return to nature

In a video call recorded ahead of the Origins gathering on the Cape Peninsula, four people who normally occupy distinct fields — an Indian spiritual teacher, an award-winning South African filmmaker, an American physician and an Argentine educator — arrived, by different routes, at the same recommendation: humanity needs to return home, home here meaning nature.

The World Tribal Alliance (WTA) organized the Origins gathering in November 2025 on the Cape Peninsula, a region archaeology points to as one of the cradles of the human species. The conversation brought together four of the organization's ambassadors: Indian spiritual teacher Mohanji, WTA's founder; South African filmmaker Craig Foster, co-director of the documentary "My Octopus Teacher" (2020), winner of the 2021 Academy Award for best documentary feature; American physician Zach Bush, known for talks on gut health and the environment; and Argentine educator Matías De Stefano. Each, in his own way, tries to explain why it is worth bringing elders of different traditions together in one place.

A coastline with the first symbols

Foster says that near where the gathering would take place, a team of archaeologists found red ochre engravings roughly a hundred thousand years old — one of the earliest known records of a human being transferring an idea from inside the mind onto an outside object. For Foster, that find underpins the choice of location: "we always say when anyone comes here, welcome home," he sums up, also citing his decades of work alongside San trackers in the Kalahari desert.

A body out of sync with the earth

Zach Bush takes the conversation into biology. He argues that humanity's separation from nature — which he links to practices such as pesticide use and the fencing of land after Africa's colonization — is no longer a matter of wellbeing but of survival: he says roughly 110 countries are now seeing a decline in fertility rates, a phenomenon he ties to the breakdown of ecological relationships. "Biology thrives only in a setting of extreme interconnected relationships," he says. The claim about 110 countries was not independently verified for this report.

Nature as a mirror, according to Mohanji

For Indian spiritual teacher Mohanji, there are two natures: an inner one, which the individual would control, and an outer one, which would reflect the first. He ties the idea to the Indian tradition of Dattatreya, a master who, according to that tradition's own accounts, would answer anyone asking where to find him by saying: "all that you see is me." Mohanji also recounts personal episodes with no outside witnesses — such as a vision he says he had putting his head inside a small shrine built over the root of a sacred banyan tree in India — presented by him as lived experience, not as established fact.

The bridge inside the chromosome

Matías De Stefano offers a more biological image for a similar idea: he says the human chromosome, the structure that carries genes, works as a "rainbow bridge" linking each person to the planet's chemical history, from hydrogen to uranium. "Nature is the result of all the ideas combined," he sums up. For him, bringing together elders from different traditions helps each participant access that inner bridge before seeking any connection with the group.

The center that hosted the gathering

According to Foster, part of WTA's activities in the region are based at a San educational center — named in the recording in a way that sounds like "Quatu," a spelling that could not be confirmed — that has been running for more than two decades near Cape Town. By Foster's account, the center hosts young people from San villages for six-month stretches, teaches traditional tracking skills and, for many of them, provides their first contact with the ocean.

None of the claims about global fertility, specific archaeological finds or mystical episodes were independently verified for this report, beyond what the participants themselves describe. What remains, in any case, is the image of four people from opposing backgrounds arriving, by different routes — an archaeological clue, a metabolic crisis, a mystical tradition, a genetic metaphor — at the same strip of coastline on the Cape Peninsula, each ready to say, in their own vocabulary, the same thing: come home.