Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Upon casual reading, it does at least make one take its thesis seriously. Open Document. Below are pictures of various Olmec sculptures. We were taken from Africa, but who were we before slavery? [16], Van Sertima argues that African contact likely happened more than once. ", Van Sertima said he didn't travel much to research the book. There are, of course, numerous problems with these claims: most importantly, the evidence that Van Sertima provides in his book to prove an ancient African presence in America is highly lacking. "Human beings in any population have a great deal of variation," pointed out Barbour, whose methodical approach contrasted sharply with Van Sertima's more theatrical arguments. (LogOut/ 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. Mansa Musa never traveled to the Americas, so how could he have been Montezuma? 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. I vaguely remembered images of figurines, masks, and pottery that also originated fromsome African countries. However, anthropologists and archaeologists who specialized in Mesoamerican history, rightly, reject Van Sertimas storytelling. 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. Van Sertima tells of the emergence of the Mali kingdom and its seafaring ventures, thus providing evidence for sailing capabilities of West Africans. There have been a number of diffusion theories regarding the Olmec. A certain kind of shadow lifts. He researched the book at the British Museum, and in libraries at Princeton, London University and Douglas College, and the corresponded with scholars all over the world. On 7 July 1987, Van Sertima testified before a United States Congressional committee to oppose recognition of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas. White ppll pulled up to America and realize the whole country was filled with black ppl. Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. They follow that quote with this statement: "In spite of the above evidence, education and curriculum development literature are generally silent on the Olmecs" (pg 5). The slave ship narrative is a myth. I want to make a point of clarification here. 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. Unfortunately, the scholarship that he has inspired has tended to be of a worse quality than Van Sertimas was. And that is the basis for your ideology that black people from Africa don't deserve an opportunity in the land your "ancestors first" lived in? on Sept. 2, 1948. Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. "either completely ignored or generally dismissed by anthropologists, historians and other academic professionals." How can these accounts be explained away? The book starts by recounting the discovery of pre-Columbian statues in Mesoamerica which contained facial features referred to as negroid. Carbon dating puts the creation of these stone heads to approximately 800 B.C. As somebody who strongly believes that history is dominated by the "Western" narrative, I find myself drawn to believe Sertima. Other stone heads have been uncovered in Mexico. In addition, there are stories of Egyptian mariners. Barbour, who has studied more than a quarter million figurines from Mesoamerican areas cited by Van Sertima, said the depictions even more easily could portray facial types of native Americans, and no convincing evidence supports African influence on Mesoamerican architecture or culture. The others are unidentified. In 1977, Van Sertima wrote "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," a controversial book now in its 21st printing. All human behavioral traits are, 4150 words Introduction It is claimed that genes (DNA sequences) have a special, privileged role in the development of all traits. {{start_at_rate}} {{format_dollars}} {{start_price}} {{format_cents}} {{term}}, {{promotional_format_dollars}}{{promotional_price}}{{promotional_format_cents}} {{term}}, Sabres place Alex Tuch on injured reserve; top-line winger's status is uncertain, Paula's Donuts to move Clarence store that faced backlash for tax breaks to Amherst, Nebraska cheerleader competes by herself at state competition, but crowd doesn't let her feel alone, Chad Hall's departure from Buffalo Bills to Jaguars remains a bit of a mystery. All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. 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 Chapter Four, "Africans Across the Sea", Van Sertima explores numerous ways that he claims Africans could have travelled by boat to South and Central America. A second problem with the manner in which Van Sertima uses this piece of information is the assumption that the black people whom de Las Casas refers to were African. 'Before Columbus': Roots of a Dispute - The Washington Post By Hollie I. The author gives pictures of examples of negroid statues in pre-Columbian America, often with black people in comparison. 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. We need to know about the time when we had empires. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble? For example, whereas Van Sertima argued that Africans influenced the civilization of the Americas, Clyde Ahmad Winters goes further by suggesting that Africans founded the Olmec and all other major American civilization, which is a claim that Van Sertima never made. Dan Von Hoyel ~ Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America Odd Salon DISCOVERY: Six stories of rigorous inquiry and accidental revelations, [] It could be dark, bronze people from South America. In response to Daniel's review Clarence Weiant, who had worked as an assistant archaeologist specialising in ceramics at Tres Zapotes and later pursued a career as a chiropractor, wrote a letter to the New York Times supporting Van Sertima's work. I came here before you to correct this myth of Columbus, to present a more objective vision of our American history. Neither Columbus nor de Las Casas wrote anything about African spears. [6] Also in 1979, Van Sertima founded the Journal of African Civilizations, which he exclusively edited and published for decades.[6][12]. If there were an African presence in the Americas, he asked, "why do we not find more African stylistic artifacts?". How could Africans, who are not popularly known as seamen, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the American continents? 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. ( Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus) Ivan Van Sertima is a fringe Afrocentric theorist (they all are), who argued that there was an African presence in America, long before Colombus set shore in the Bahamas in 1492. "Some of these voyages are designed or planned; some are accidental," he said. Some paint themselves white, others red, and others of what color they find. Van Sertima's Journal of African Civilizations was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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. 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. But the claims presented in Hidden Colors and the claims presented by others who promote the notion of Black aboriginals are so misinformed that in many cases they just seem nonsensical. What country did your, say, grandfather or great-grandfather or whatever come from?. 'Roots' goes back to the time when the damage was beginning. Did we learn anything in there that I had simply forgotten? They paint themselves black, and they are the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white. Im pretty sure I had taken a World History course before. West May 9, 1977 Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. Many historians have worked at debunking the They Came Before Columbus and Africans Were Already In America myth. If anything, the only thing Van Sertimas book is good for is a good laugh into the delusions of someone with the conclusion in mind, working backward to prove it (meaning, hes using the type of reverse engineering that EPists use). This is an inference that Van Sertima makes, but he presents his inference as a fact. (LogOut/ 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. 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).