Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. [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. They say slavery lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old You ever seen a slave ship ? But where did Menzies come up with the idea that it was Asians, not Europeans, who first arrived in America from other countries? Both the Mandingo people of Africa and the Quetzalcoatl people of the Americas undergo a ritual of self-flagellating dances (dances of penance and chastisement) in which the dancers may wrap themselves in thorns or lash themselves with thorns. In They Came Before Columbus, Van Sertima argues that Egyptian journey to the Americas happened during the rule of the 25th dynasty, which was the Kushite dynasty that ruled Egypt. Unfortunately, the scholarship that he has inspired has tended to be of a worse quality than Van Sertimas was. This work was published by Random House and did not go through a peer review process. [15], A chapter is also devoted to the presence of bottle gourds originally from Africa found in ancient Mesoamerican graves. Zinn perpetuates Koning's smears. It sounds like someone chose to record himself reading the book and decided to upload the files to YouTube. The others are unidentified. Columbus is not just a man, he is a symbol. 'Roots' goes back to the time when the damage was beginning. I found an audio version of this book on YouTube. Van Sertima cites a number of other European explorers who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well. Sidenote: I enjoyed the story of Mali in Chapter 3. I'm trying to follow all the rules but forgive me if this is a bit vague. They would claim them as west African too if they could. [18] There is evidence of African cotton seeds in America. 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. (LogOut/ Phil Valentine is even more confused. However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain, samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus). He posited that higher learning, in Africa as elsewhere, was the preserve of elites in the centres of civilisations, rendering them vulnerable in the event of the destruction of those centres and the loss of such knowledge. Some believe that Blacks were already in America and have more Native American ancestry than African. The Olmec heads, quite obviously, represent the peoples living in lowland Mexiconot Nubians who supposedly sailed across the Atlantic and made contact with pre-Colombian civilizations (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997). Columbus never claimed that he saw black people in the Americas. [22], In 1981, They Came Before Columbus received the "Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize". Van Sertima's zeal for learning about African culture began in England in the '60s while he was working as a writer for the BBC. There is a heated online debate about how Black Americans came to America. [1], Van Sertima retired in 2006. "They couldn't be slave blacks," he said. Moreover, the slave narratives all make it very clear that the enslaved population in the Americas came from Africa so much so that in Cuba some enslaved persons committed suicide, in hope that their spirit would return to Africa. No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. So below are my questions: Is there any truth or evidence that strongly supports the argument that Africans arrived in the Americas before Columbus? When evidence came out refuting Van Sertimas storytelling, he concocted an ad hoc hypothesis to save his hypothesis from immunization. They paint themselves black, and they are the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Photo: These Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area of Custer, S.D. Your email address will not be published. on Sept. 2, 1948. When you push one door, other doors begin to open.. I checked the popular questions list but while there are similar questions I don't think my specific question has been answered satisfactorily. please donate https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ZPEYVFR6AgeofReason198EKA be a monthly supporter https://www.patreon.com/. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. This view, of course, is seen as highly fringe in the field of anthropology. "Columbus is not just a man, lic is a symbol. 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 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). pic.twitter.com/sKrVa4a2JQ, I figured you say something like that.Are these people mixed with "native American" or are they just Black indigenous indians? It was also concluded that it was not likely that these seeds were carried by birds. Long time lurker, first time poster. 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. What normativity means has implications for many things in philosophy and science. Van Sertima uses written, archaeological, and cultural evidence to support his thesis. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. Bro, are you serious now?Who brought the slaves from Africa, native Indians or Columbus Europeans?When did slave trade start that Red-Indians became yall history?So in a bid to stay off Africans yall tracing your ancestry to Indians?Mehn thats something else. These Black Indians, now mistaken as African Americans, were shipped back to America and classified as African Slaves. This part of our history is what the school systems fail to mention in history programs. ..and he [Columbus] wanted to find out what the Indians of Hispanola had told him, that there had come to it from the south and southeast Negro people, who brought those spear points made of a metal which they call guanin Raccolta, Parte 1, Vol. 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. Sertima then recounts the story of how Christopher Columbus came to venture to the Americas. There are Egyptian-like pyramids in the Americas and mummified persons similar to those in Egypt. "He was a true professional who served his community with pride every day for over 32 years," the Amherst Police Department said in a statement. [5] Instead, Van Sertima replied to his critics in "his" journal volume published as Early America Revisited (1998). "'Roots' does not do that. Barbour of the University at Buffalo. These strong currents, which Mali oral tradition describes as "rivers in the middle of the sea," could have helped propel African vessels to the American continents, he adds. Several words are also similar with similar meanings such as nama-tigi or ama-tigi from the Bambara of the Mandingos and aman-teca from the Nahuatl of Mexico, both of which refer to master or chief or headman. Van Sertima presents an argument for the transformation of the word banana with African origins. Barbour, the first African-American to earn a doctorate in archaeology, is an expert on Mesoamerican culture and associate scientific director of the African Burial Ground Project in Lower Manhattan. The books showed an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and South languages prior to European contact. There are some problems with this theory. Experts have determined that the gourds floated across the Atlantic and washed ashore in the Americas to be adopted by Mesoamerican cultures. When you push one door, other doors begin to open.". But Van Sertima always defended his book. Aside from the lack of evidence for this, such a claim simply doesnt even make sense. When I thought about it more, I realized that in high school and probably prior I had learned about American History, Western European History, the dynasties of China and Egypt, but what about where my people were likely from? He said, "You cannot really conceive of how insulting it is to Native Americans to be told they were 'discovered'."[14]. Because the Olmec civilization is one that has been largely shrouded in mystery, there have been a number of theories about the historical roots of the Olmec. He employs a number of tactics commonly used by pseudoscientists (Cole 1980; Radner and Radner 1982: 27-52; Ortiz de Montellano 1995; Williams 1988), including an almost exclusive use of outdated secondary sources and a reliance on the pseudoscientific writing of others. Snow continued, "The findings of professional archaeologists and physical anthropologists are misrepresented so that they seem to support the [Van Sertima] hypothesis". 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". They never did import Africans as slaves because slave ships aren't real. Not only because of the apparent Asian features of some of the Olmec sculptures, but Xu also attempted to draw a connection between the Olmec script and Chinese characters. The launching of the expedition is recorded by Arab historian Ibn Fadl Allah al-Omari, according to Van Sertima. In addition to his creative writing, Van Sertima completed his undergraduate studies in African languages and literature at SOAS in 1969, where he graduated with honours.[6][7][8]. History, as taught in the Western and Western-dominated world, gives the impression that the first Africans to reach the Americas were brought as slaves, in shackles on slaves-ships. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. I have, 2600 words What do normativity and intentionality mean? [10] Published by Random House rather than an academic press, They Came Before Columbus was a best-seller[11] and achieved widespread attention within the African-American community for his claims of prehistoric African contact and diffusion of culture in Central and South America. There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Ivan Van Sertima They Came Before Columbus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Are you prioritizing your cable entertainment bill over protecting and investing in your family? Both men supported their artistic theories with slides of the sculptures and modern Africans and Middle American Indians -- leaving the audience to decide for themselves between truth and the appearance of truth. This two-way trade never happened. I saw Dr. Van Sertima lecture at Cornell University in 1979. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Your email address will not be published. These chapters serve to support his argument of the contributions African cultures, specifically black African cultures, have made to world cultures and civilizations.[15]. [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). "I nver expected any money," he explains. These people essentially provide written testimonies that support Van Sertimas thesis. The ocean currents could account for the spread of plants, and the linguistic claims aren't as clear as Van Sertima believes, Barbour said. The sickle cell trait, an adaptation to ward off malaria found mostly in people from West Africa, was also discovered in the secluded Mayan tribe, the Lancodon Indians by Dr. Alfonso de Garay, Director of the Genetic Program of the National Commission for Nuclear Energy in Mexico. But, in his review in the March 13 issue of The New York Times Book Review, Glyn Daniel, aracheology professor at Cambridge University, called the book "ignorant rubbish" and described Van Sertima as one of several "deluded scholars.". Furthermore, Van Sertima, quite wildly, claims that since the Olmec heads were black then they must have represented African people. Van Sertimas case in They Came Before Columbus is the best known, certainly not the only one. [5] Except for a brief mention, the book had not previously been reviewed in an academic journal. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Columbus actually said in the journal of his second voyage when he was in Haiti, then known as Espanola, Native Americans came to him and told him that Black people had come in large boats from the south and southeast trading in gold-tipped metal spears. Many historians have worked at debunking the "They Came Before Columbus" and "Africans Were Already In America" myth. - Ivan Van Sertima 6 Pages. No, since they are only telling just-so stories. In his book, "They Came Before Columbus," Van Sertima, a Rutgers professor, says that African influences can be found in an array of cultural similarities between Africa and the ancient Americas - pyramid construction, the use of boat litters, the parasol, the plumed serpent motif, bronze-casting techniques. He was a . He completed primary and secondary school in Guyana, and started writing poetry. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Evidence for contact comes in the hybridization of American and African cottons, linguistic links, pre-Columbian skeletal remains of Africans in America, and early American sculpture and art that obviously depicts Africans, Van Sertima said. Sailing, especially such great distances, was not an achievement that was typically attributed to Africans of that time, but it would have been necessary to reach the Americas. Between narrative chapters, Van Sertima develops his main claims about African contact with the Americas in an essay style and includes images of artifacts, which primarily consist of photographs of ceramic heads that Van Sertima says have African features. 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? A certain kind of shadow lifts. 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.. Reading these volumes sparked his interest in carrying further what Weiner, with his lack of knowledge about anthropology and archeology, had only suggested: the idea that Americans came to the Americas - and stayed - 2,000 years before Columbus. He published his They Came Before Columbus in 1976, as a Rutgers graduate student. "How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? Im pretty sure I had taken a World History course before. You have permission to edit this article. Van Sertima quit and wrote the series for an independent company. He later discusses carved pipes found in Mesoamerican archaeological sites, suggesting that the use of pipes for smoking must have been an inherited practice from African or Asian visitors. It provides further evidence that all great civilizations and races are heavily indebted to one another and that no race has a monopoly on enterprise and inventive genius. Are some Black Americans trying to distance themselves from Africa and rewrite history by ignoring such evidence as DNA? "The problem was not that the research hadn't been done," he says, "but that no one had examined the available documents and material and pulled from together.". West May 9, 1977 Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans. 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 . As the dogma slowly gets pushed out of science and history we are coming to realize that people of all. In Hidden Colors, a documentary by filmmaker Tariq Nasheed, Dr. Umar Johnson, a doctor of Clinical Psychology, is interviewed and claims that Africans were going back and forth engaging in cultural and economic trade before Columbus. Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (26 January 1935 25 May 2009) was a Guyanese-born British associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States. Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. How can these accounts be explained away? (LogOut/ 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. Weiant wrote: "Van Sertima's work is a summary of six or seven years of meticulous research based upon archaeology, egyptology, African history, oceanography, astronomy, botany, rare Arabic and Chinese manuscripts, the letters and journals of early American explorers, and the observations of physical anthropologists. As one who has been immersed in Mexican archaeology for some forty years, and who participated in the excavation of the first giant heads, I must confess, I am thoroughly convinced of the soundness of Van Sertima's conclusions. The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. 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Your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts email.: Internet Archive by ignoring such evidence as DNA school systems fail to mention in history programs account. Doors begin to open. `` in 1981, they Came Before Columbus received the `` L.... I found an audio version of this book on YouTube book on YouTube back to America classified!