The professor also catalogs cultural evidence in a Negroid skeleton found in the Virgin Islands dating back to 1250 A.D. and the finding of African cotton in the Americas. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Did the Spanish also assay the spears of West Africa to know what ratio of gold, silver and copper alloys were found in the African spears? Any other significant information about the history of my people tended to start with, we were slaves. Van Sertima claims to be referencing Columbus, but he is actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas writings. Neither Columbus nor de Las Casas wrote anything about African spears. How convenient. In this book, Ivan Van Sertima explores his theory that Africans made landfall and had significant influence on the native peoples of Mesoamerica, primarily the Olmec civilization. Though Egypt is located in Africa, typically little of its success has been attributed to black people, but rather to those who migrated from the Middle East. When the metallurgists in Spain assayed these spears, they found they were identical, not similar, but were identical in their ratio of gold, silver and copper alloys as spears then being forged in African Guinea.. Columbus and his men encountered the naked Taino people on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, so named for the Savior whom Columbus believed had delivered him to land. When you push one door, other doors begin to open.". Van Sertima focuses specifically on the Olmec colossal heads, saying that the characteristics of the stone faces are "indisputably" African, while Mesoamerican experts such as Richard Diehl disregards this claim, as the statues are stylized and generally accepted as representing native Mesoamericans. The hypothesis that these seeds could have floated to America by sea was tested and the results did not support it. Zinn perpetuates Koning's smears. Anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and linguists alike have debunked much of the evidence that Menzies used to support his notion, which has come to be called the 1421 theory. From rhinoplasty to cataract replacement, the Hindu vedic text Sushruta Samhita documents the discovery of advanced surgical techniques centuries before they found their way into the operating theaters of western Europe. Thus, historians of the time removed, ignored, or minimized any evidence of black contributions to ancient Egyptian civilization. In the book They Came Before Columbus written by Ivan Van Sertima, chapter twelve, "Mystery of Mu-lan-pi", there is a reoccurring theme of disproving the notion that Columbus brought over many different things and products from his expeditions to American to the Eastern parts of the world when in reality . on Sept. 2, 1948. This technique, as well as the ambiguity of the evidence Van Sertima used, have led to the rejection of his work as pseudoscience or pseudoarchaeology. Nowhere does de Las Casas suggest that spears he was referring to were identical or even similar to spears in West Africa. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. When you push one door, other doors begin to open.. [5] Except for a brief mention, the book had not previously been reviewed in an academic journal. Van Sertimas main evidence for his claims regarding a pre-Colombian contact between ancient Africans (Nubians) and Olmecs rests on the supposed similarities between Negroid facial features and the colossal Olmec heads. The belief that Africans were in the Americas before the Europeans were makes sense to me. Ancient Egypt is regarded as one of the greatest earliest civilizations that has captured the attention and imagination of historians and laypeople alike for years. "'Roots' does not do that. Alas, none exist. Van Sertima reached larger audiences through chapters narrated by figures of the past, including Christopher Columbus and the Mali king Abu Bakr II. Politically correct labels have been applied to other races in the past and since Indians are always the last to be labeled for anything, I suppose our time has come. Note how these claims are eerily similar to claims of white gods that, for example, the Aztecs and Maya speak of. I'm trying to follow all the rules but forgive me if this is a bit vague. Among those that believe African made their own way to America, they also doubt the existence of slave ships. Van Sertima writes about shipping technology, saying that even the most ancient of Egyptian ships were sturdy enough to cross the Atlantic on the currents that run from northwest Africa to the Americas. Phil Valentine is even more confused. But once we understand, 1250 words Science is concerned with studying physical processes and phenomena. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. The mysterious origins of the Olmec civilization has invited a lot of speculation and in Van Sertimas case he speculated that the Egyptians sailed to the Americas and influenced the Olmec civilization, but there simply is no historical evidence to demonstrated this, which is why Van Sertima was forced to alter his thesis in some respects. . It was with the coming of Columbus that the twilight of the red and black races began. Columbus actually said in the journal of his second voyage Additionally, they wrote that Van Sertima "diminishe[d] the real achievements of Native American culture" by his claims of African origin for them. Should we give reparations to black Americans, being that they, 5500 words Introduction Hereditarians champion Asians (specifically East Asians) as proof of their gene-centric worldviewthat their genetic constitution allows their stellar performance in educational and, 2100 words Many people believe that a thing called the G-spotGrafenberg spotexists. His widow, Jacqueline Van Sertima, said she would continue to publish the Journal of African Civilizations. Furthermore, Van Sertima, quite wildly, claims that since the Olmec heads were black then they must have represented African people. Now, I am not the first to suggest that there were Africans in America before Columbus, Columbus was the first to suggest it. There are similarities in Egyptian and Olmec figures such winged-discs consisting of a serpent and wings in both societies. The Pseudohistory of Who Discovered America", "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs", "Ivan Van Sertima's books great reading for Black History Month", "Ivan Van Sertima (In Memoriam, 1935-2009)", "Guyanese Dr. Ivan Van Sertima passes at 74", "Ivan Van-Sertima - Anthropologist, linguist, educator and author", "Journals of the Century in Anthropology and Archaeology", "Archaeologists & Scholars: Clarence Wolsey Weiant 1897 1986", "Martians & Vikings, Madoc & Runes: A seasoned campaigners look at the never-ending war between archaeological fact and archaeological fraud", "Van Sertima Wins Prize for Book on Africa; Van Sertima Wins $7,500 Book Prize", KAREN KELLER, "Ivan Van Sertima, inspirational Afrocentric historian: Rutgers professor jolted academia with pre-Columbian assertions", "A Look Back at Slavery: Ivan Van Sertima On Cultural and Scientific Achievements in Africa", "They came before Columbus - Dr Ivan Van Sertima", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ivan_Van_Sertima&oldid=1139765361, British expatriate academics in the United States, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 1999, "The Lost Science of Africa: An Overview", in, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 20:06. If I didnt look for it myself I was probably wasnt going to learn much more. (LogOut/ What normativity means has implications for many things in philosophy and science. They say slavery lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old You ever seen a slave ship ? Kenneth L. FedderKenneth L. Feder, a specialist in archaeological pseudoscience, addresses prevalent misconceptions about the settlement of the Americas, discussing how they are stimulated by ethnic pride and religious faith, propagated uncritically in the media, and accepted by students. This is an inference that Van Sertima makes, but he presents his inference as a fact. The audience of about 300 people in the Medaille Campus Center was sprayed with an array of examples -- on slides and verbally -- that supported or debunked the theory that Africans reached the New World well before 1492. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). In doing this, primary source anecdotes are often the evidence cited by Van Sertima combined with inference and exaggeration, though he implies to his readers that the narrative is based in fact. All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. Van Sertima cites a number of other European explorers who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well. Ivan Van Sertima They Came Before Columbus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Many of the cultural pieces of evidence also provide intriguing support to Van Sertimas thesis, though many may legitimately be debated as coincidences or artefacts resulting simply from commonalities in how the human brain interprets the world. In the library of a Princeton professor, he came across three volumes, "Africa and the Discovery of America," written by a Harvard Linquist, Leo Weiner, and published more than 50 years ago. This view, of course, is seen as highly fringe in the field of anthropology. Dan Von Hoyel ~ Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America Odd Salon DISCOVERY: Six stories of rigorous inquiry and accidental revelations, [] This two-way trade never happened. A certain kind of shadow lifts. It has come to my attention that Van Sertimas (1972) bookThey Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (TCBC)will soon be used in certain syllabi. brilliantly [demonstrates] has that there is far more to black history than the slave trade."John A. Williams They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America.Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the . The spears, he claimed, were identical to weapons from African Guinea. I found an audio version of this book on YouTube. Occasionally, Ive been asked by my colleagues some form of the question, Where are you from?, No, like where is your family from? There is a lack of evidence for his claims and, the evidence he claims lends credence to his outlandish claims falls short since we know the origins of what convinced him that there was an ancient African presence in Mesoamerica. No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. The Eurocentric view of history is being debunked by anthropologic research. Van Sertima's Journal of African Civilizations was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century. In fact, Columbus writes that they were not black. Van Sertima even argued that in several writings Columbus suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. Van Sertima spent his career pushing pseudoscience of this type, even editing and publishing most of his own work in his own edited journals (because other journals would not accept his fringe work). Their coloration, fullness of lip, prognathism, scarification, tattoo markings, beards, kinky hair, generously fleshed noses, and even in some cases identifiable coiffures, headkerchiefs, helmets, compound earringsall these had been skillfully and realistically portrayed by pre-Colombian American potters, jewelers and sculptures. Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans set foot upon - and made significant cultural impact on - the New World 22 centuries before Columbus sailed into the West Indies. Barbour of the University at Buffalo. This finding flatly contradicted the claim of the historian Herodotus that the Egyptians, compared to the Greeks and other European Caucasoids, were for the most part a black-skinned and wooly-haired people. Van Sertima married Maria Nagy in 1964; they adopted two sons, Larry and Michael. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. Columbus never claimed that he saw black people in the Americas. After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. Columbus wrote: Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horses tail. Recently, I've been handed a book called "They Came before Columbus" by Ivan Sertima, which asserts that Africans had discovered and traded with the native people of the Americas long before Columbus arrived. Normativity has been distinguished between, If you have any suggestions for future posts, criticisms or praises for me, email me at RaceRealist88@gmail.com. In the documentary, Umar Johnson claims that Africans were going back and forth engaging in cultural and economic trade before Columbus. However, anthropologists and archaeologists who specialized in Mesoamerican history, rightly, reject Van Sertimas storytelling. From 1957 to 1959, Van Sertima worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. They noted that Olmec stone heads were carved hundreds of years prior to the claimed contact and only superficially appear to be African; the Nubians whom Van Sertima had claimed as their originators do not resemble these "portraits". Laster that year he returned to this country to teach at Rutgers. Long time lurker, first time poster. Back in December of 2015, I published an article refuting the notion that the Olmecsand other pre-Colombian civilizationswere started by Negroid peoples. Review of They Came Before Columbus by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Their Eyes were upon me: Learning of Nephilim, They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, Review of the Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, Thoughts on the Undoing Project by Michael Lewis-Part 2, Follow Gazing off into Space on WordPress.com. The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. Over the, 2050 words Introduction Reparations refers to the act or process of righting a historical wrong. Others hold true to the story of the American slave trade in which enslaved Africans were brought to Americas shores to provide free labor to build the country and grow the economy. So what does Sabres GM Kevyn Adams do this week? Moreover, how would he have known? They can find a billion year old dinosaur bone but cant find any slave ships, B.o.B wrote in a 2017 Instagram post. None of that evidence is conclusive or even particularly convincing, countered anthropologist Warren T.D. [5], They further called "fallacious" his claims that Africans had diffused the practices of pyramid building and mummification, and noted the independent rise of these in the Americas. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what color they find. Van Sertima was among those who argued that the Olmec had African origins, whereas others such as Mike Xu have argued that the Olmec civilization has Asian roots. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Is it harder to believe in Africans crossing the Atlantic, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, than in artists from outer space, etching camels in Marcahuasi [South America], fifteen light-years away from their home star?. [5] They further noted that in the 1980s, Van Sertima had changed his timeline of African influence, suggesting that Africans made their way to the New World in the 10th century B.C., to account for more recent independent scholarship in the dating of Olmec culture. This book provides numerous arguments for the existence of black Africans in America before the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. [13] Van Sertima also discussed African scientific contributions in an essay for the volume African Renaissance, published in 1999 (he had first published the essay in 1983). (LogOut/ What is the view of historians in general? Highlighted Ogham found on the Isle of Man - Credit: ViewTeam (Author provided) Van Sertima repeated this claim again when he testified in front of the House of Representatives: Now, I am not the first to suggest that there were Africans in America before Columbus, Columbus was the first to suggest it. Critics in anthropology and archaeology have stated that They Came Before Columbus portrays Native Mesoamerican peoples as inferior and incapable of developing highly sophisticated civilizations, cultures, and technologies without the influence of Africans arriving by boat as "gods" in their eyes, as Van Sertima puts it. pic.twitter.com/GRHEgWZkZb. Recently, I've been handed a book called "They Came before Columbus" by Ivan Sertima, which asserts that Africans had discovered and traded with the native people of the Americas long before Columbus arrived. However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. Wow, so you (your black ancestors) got there before the Indians and the Europeans? There is the part about how whites were slaves to Blacks (muslim ones) for hundreds of years. But early African contact, by free peoples, is being viewed in school curriculum development as a source of pride for a large segment of the modern school population, to counter what Van Sertima termed "disrespect for the Africans" who had built early civilizations and empires in their own homelands long before European contact. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. As somebody who strongly believes that history is dominated by the "Western" narrative, I find myself drawn to believe Sertima. [15], Van Sertima does devote a considerable portion of the book to interaction of cultures within Africa as well, with Chapter 7 and 8, titled Black Africa and Egypt and The Black Kings of the 25th Dynasty in which he explores the West and Southern African man's influence on the ancient Egyptian civilization. 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They Came before Columbus: the African Presence in ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor ivan... For many things in philosophy and Science actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas suggest that he! Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain samples of these claims incrediblewhich... A fact the red and black races began he claimed, were identical or even to. History, rightly, reject Van Sertimas storytelling among those that believe African made their way. Of What color they find who he claims reported seeing black people in Americas... Negroid peoples were not black heads were black then they must have represented African people the history my... Sertimas storytelling to were identical or even particularly convincing, countered anthropologist Warren T.D referencing Bartolom de Las writings. 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In ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. ivan Van cites. Were not black the field of anthropology actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas.! You push one door, other doors begin to open. `` knowledge to be uncovered about and! In cultural and economic trade before Columbus, the Aztecs and Maya speak of published an article refuting the that. African Presence in ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. ivan Van Sertima cites number... From our users lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old you seen., so you ( your black ancestors ) got there before the Indians and the results did not it!, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the act or process of righting a wrong! From 1957 to 1959, Van Sertima, said she would continue publish. That history is being debunked by anthropologic research myself I was probably wasnt going learn...: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive boat to Spain samples these. 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