A cultural lesson, courtesy of Hittites

There are no more Hittites.

This utter lack of Hittites sprang to mind last week when Bob Jones University apologized for a policy that, up until 2000, forbid interracial dating.

I don't think the Hittites went quietly. I think they were full of Hittite cultural love. "The Pride of Canaan," they probably called themselves, and did they frown on the idea of their comely daughters dancing the mambo with the lazy, flat-faced Moabites down at the malt shop? They most definitely did.

"If I ever saw you dancing with a Moabite, I don't know who I'd kill first, you or myself," fathers likely told their daughters. "I didn't spend three years on the border fighting the Ammonites to come home and see you neck with some freakin' Moabie."

To be fair, Hittite culture might have been worth preserving; it might have had a lot going for it: Broiled lamb with lemon, the multiple wives, the flowing robes and hip deities.

But regardless of how classy Hittite culture was, it isn't any more.

There are no Hittites now, and no Moabites. Even the memory of the differences between them has faded. Tribes and cultures merge, blend, move on, die out and, in all but name, are forgotten.

In America, there will come a day when there are no black people. I have no idea whether that day will be 200 years from now or 2,000, or 10,000, but it will come. Likewise, there will come a day when there are no white people in this country.

Trends suggest there will be a lot of brown, mildly Asian people.

And just as there is no more nation of Canaan (that's where the Hittites and the Moabites hung their hats), there will someday be no United States of America, though I hope its ideals persevere and, dare I say, are even improved upon.

I know there will come a day when there will no longer be an ethnic group, with a shared tribal heritage, known as the Jews. For thousands of years, the Jews have been a distinct tribe, but now, 50 percent of all Jews marry people who do not share their ethnic background (me included).

There is one fact on which the Bible and the scientific community agree entirely: All humanity springs from one group of common ancestors living in one place.

Call it Eden and call them Adam and Eve or call it Central Eastern Africa and call them Homo Sapiens: We share common ancestry 100 percent. The differences between our little "tribes" are not mountains dividing us from "the others," they are molehills, separating us from our brothers.

The thing about the fact that there are no more Hittites is this: The open, loving and accepting Hittites who lived back in the day, were they to find out their descendants had blended with the descendents of 100 other tribes, likely wouldn't mind.

It would only be the prideful Hittites, the hateful Hittites, the xenophobic Hittites who would be enraged at their loss of cultural purity.

Which Hittite will we be?