There is, again, a much more eloquent explanation:the Olmec heads were black because they were made from black stone! There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. The slave ship narrative is a myth. "While I was doing it," he recalls, "I asked myself why was I studying African writers in English.Why didn't I know an African language? No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. Weiant, who had a PhD in archaeology, also wrote numerous articles on extrasensory perception and was an active member of the. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. After divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, to Jacqueline L. Patten, who had two daughters. Van Sertima answers that Africans were indeed sailors, that a division of Negro sea captains and mariners is reported to have been in the Egyptian navy of the 19th dynasty and the East Africans sailed between their countries and China in the 13th century. How convenient. In this book, the author presents evidence and arguments for the existence of black Africans in America before the arrival of Columbus and the beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1492. "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. Wow, so you (your black ancestors) got there before the Indians and the Europeans? Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution, Home Refuting Afrocentrism They Did Not Come Before Columbus. They never did import Africans as slaves because slave ships aren't real. 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. No, since they are only telling just-so stories. No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. Van Sertima even argued that in several writings Columbus suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. 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. 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. Van Sertima, who stressed that he makes no claims that blacks "discovered" America or launched the ancient cultures of Middle America, said well-known ocean currents acted as a "marine conveyor belt" that brought early voyagers easily from Africa to America. Last week came purported evidence that the Chinese admiral Zheng He sailed his great fleet of junks round the world a century before Columbus, Da Gama and Magellan. 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]. Even Van Sertima himself admits that the people who were trading these spears could be dark bronze people from South America as opposed to African. In TCBC, Van Sertima (1972: 39) reconstructed an event in the medieval empire of Mali, based on Arab historical and travel documents and the oral tradition of the Mali griots. Chapters 3 and 4 do, indeed, read like some sort of fantastical tale, so I am glad that Van Sertima left the notebut it is quite clear that he is doing nothing but storytelling. See Grove (1976) or Ortiz de Montellano (1997). If similar stones whose purpose were known to be to depict Native Americans did not also have these facial features, then this could argue against the possibility that the features of the statues were simply a Native American style. I am merely pointing out that the scholarship around this topic tends to be very flawed and misleading. This work was published by Random House and did not go through a peer review process. [1], He was best known for his Olmec alternative origin speculations, a brand of pre-Columbian contact theory, which he proposed in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). (LogOut/ It is his claim that Africans sailed to American way before Christopher Columbus landed here in 1492. Required fields are marked *. Thus, historians of the time removed, ignored, or minimized any evidence of black contributions to ancient Egyptian civilization. I can only assume that Van Sertima is largely responsible for this line of thinking which was largely debunked then and is especially debunked today . There are similarities between the Mandingo god the Dasiri of the Bambara and the god Quetzalcoatl of the Olmecs. Normativity has been distinguished between, If you have any suggestions for future posts, criticisms or praises for me, email me at RaceRealist88@gmail.com. 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. Van Sertima added, How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? 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. The Olmec associated volcanic rocks and the like with symbolic importance, and so, they carved their sculptures out of them due to this. If each piece of evidence and argument was listed, the list would be as long as the index. Reportedly, from American historian and linguist Leo Weiner of Harvard Universitys book Africa and the Discovery of America (Ill have to add that one to the list too) in one of Columbuss journals there is an account of a statement by the Native Americans saying that they had encountered black people prior to the arrival of Columbus. The journal required that reprints must include the entire article and would have had to include the original authors' response (written but not published) to his response. 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, wrote Dwayne Wong (Omowale), the author of several books on the history and experiences of African people on the continent and in the diaspora, wrote inMedium. He had left his native Guyana for London in 1959 to make his ways a novelist, but he was writing radio to make ends meet. Van Sertima does not say, but he jumps the conclusion that the spears that were sent to Spain were African spears without providing a basis for why he believes so. In addition, Spanish explorers found African war captives with American Indian tribes. In 1977, Van Sertima wrote "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," a controversial book now in its 21st printing. The book deals mostly with his arguments for an African origin of Mesoamerican culture in the Western Hemisphere. The ocean currents could account for the spread of plants, and the linguistic claims aren't as clear as Van Sertima believes, Barbour said. Some believe that Blacks were already in America and have more Native American ancestry than African. But Van Sertima always defended his book. Van Sertima's Journal of African Civilizations was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. How could Africans, who are not popularly known as seamen, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the American continents? This doesnt seem to be an official recording. 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. suddenly this stream widened, and they saw in the distance what looked at first like a drifting island of black menWe estimated on examination that there might be about one hundred and fifty at the most; they appeared very well-built, exceedingly black, and all clothed in white cotton shirts. He published several annual compilations, volumes of the journal dealing with various topics of African history. 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. After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. 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. 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. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Additionally, they wrote that Van Sertima "diminishe[d] the real achievements of Native American culture" by his claims of African origin for them. If you lift that shadow, you help repair that damage. 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. . I want to make a point of clarification here. 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. So total is the Euro-Americans onslaught on black people that . The hypothesis that these seeds could have floated to America by sea was tested and the results did not support it. The occasion was his first visit to the United States from Britain, where he was working in 1970. Later forced immigrations by Africans to the New World as slaves, and the subsequent development of African-American culture, played a far greater role in shaping the Americas of the 20th century. In 1970 Van Sertima immigrated to the United States, where he entered Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for graduate work. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Van Sertima also argued it was Columbus himself who suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. Im not sure how legal that is, but I say thanks. 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. 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 . . What meaning do these ideas have for 20th-century people? 1337 Words. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. They noted that no "genuine African artifact had been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World." The Book Review received about 70 letters, the most reader reaction it's had on an issue since the reviewer attacked Robert Frost several yeas ago. 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). 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. But where did Menzies come up with the idea that it was Asians, not Europeans, who first arrived in America from other countries? Never seen a more deluded person. The truth is that Black Indians were shipped from America to Europe! In doing so, he also attempts to combat the perceived inferiority of black Africans due to their perceived lack of technological or cultural advancements prior to colonialism in Africa. Your email address will not be published. "How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? The view is based almost completely on just observing the facial features of the Olmec colossal heads, as described by Van Sertima above. Columbus is not just a man, he is a symbol. When evidence came out refuting Van Sertimas storytelling, he concocted an ad hoc hypothesis to save his hypothesis from immunization. At the time that the dominant narrative of the origins of ancient Egyptian civilization emerged, the use of African slaves was well into effect. All parties remained peaceful, and Columbus specifically instructed his crews not to take advantage of the Indians. 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. please donate https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ZPEYVFR6AgeofReason198EKA be a monthly supporter https://www.patreon.com/. 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Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. (LogOut/ Probably Columbus did not believe this and that fact in itself would not be enough because the so-called Black people could be any people. The g-spot has been referred to as the female prostate (Puppo, 2014) and, 2550 words Steatopygia is an extreme accumulatation of large amounts of fat on the buttocks, and is also known as obesity in the coccyx (Wallner, 2400 words In the year 2000, psychologist Erik Turkheimer proposed three laws of behavioral genetics (LoBG hereafter): First Law. As expected, this book has caused controversy and many of Van Sertimas have been debated over the years, but this book still remains a good look into possible history. 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. 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. Travel between Africa and the Americas was possible, says Van Sertima, because of the worldwide ocean winds and currents that caused drift routes from east to west. He was a . The spears, he claimed, were identical to weapons from African Guinea. Van Sertima, 42, here Saturday for the concluding day of the third annual black writers conference sponsored by Howard University, said the pervious to original thought, who will letters exposed Daniel as "a man imnot even do honest battle with ideas he contends but tries to drown out in a sea of vituperation and abuse.". Before he was working in 1970 inclusion in Journals of the Olmecs they noted no. Completely on just observing the facial features of the Olmecs they never did import Africans as slaves because ships. Each piece of evidence and argument was listed, the list would be as as. 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