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 repeated this claim again when hetestifiedin front of the House of Representatives in 1987: Now, I am not the first to suggest that there were Africans in America before Columbus; Columbus was the first to suggest it. How convenient. 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. In addition, Spanish explorers found African war captives with American Indian tribes. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Most average 5-year olds with decent critical thinking ability can spot the cracks in the theory. 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1980; Radner and Radner 1982: 27-52; Ortiz de Montellano 1995; Williams 1988), including an almost exclusive use of outdated secondary sources and a reliance on the pseudoscientific writing of others. They say slavery lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old You ever seen a slave ship ? [6] Also in 1979, Van Sertima founded the Journal of African Civilizations, which he exclusively edited and published for decades.[6][12]. Maize has African origins. "I felt like a man who had come upon a dozen clues to a sensational murder but did not feel too confident about the evidence," he has written. 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. I knew that the subjext was suspect. - Ivan Van Sertima Van Sertima cites a number of other European explorers who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. 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. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America at Amazon.com. (AP Photo). Keep reading with unlimited digital access. 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. 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. Classical scholar Mary Lefkowitz who debunked Afrocentric claims about ancient Greece and Rome in her book Not out of Africa explains how her colleagues let her down because of the fear of being labelled as racist like she was. 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. [5], Van Sertima wrote a response to be included in the article (as is standard academic practice) but withdrew it. "Imagine Europeans putting slaves into their ships and saying 'hold onto your spears, brothers, you're going to need to trade them.' There is a heated online debate about how Black Americans came to America. Despite this, there were however, agreed upon black kings of the 25th dynasty such as Taharqa. ". No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. I read They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America by Ivan Van Sertima. The professor said that he was intrigued but skeptical when he first encountered the idea of ancient African contact with the Americas. In Chapter 5, called "Among the Quetzalcoatls", Van Sertima narrates the arrival of Abu Bakr II to an Aztec civilization in Mexico in 1311, describing the Mali king as "a true child of the sun burned dark by its rays" in direct and explicit comparison to the Aztec "sun god" Quetzalcoatl, as Van Sertima writes. here is no question but that the book is landmark." John A- Wi am. Van Sertima also includes photos of an African man and woman for comparison, but he does not include pictures of inhabitants of the area where the artifacts were found. 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. A certain kind of shadow lifts. The launching of the expedition is recorded by Arab historian Ibn Fadl Allah al-Omari, according to Van Sertima. But once we understand, 1250 words Science is concerned with studying physical processes and phenomena. Polynesians/Melanesians went to the Americas before Columbus. How Large of a Role Did Jews Play in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? 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. Are you prioritizing your cable entertainment bill over protecting and investing in your family? This statement is horribly misinformed. For example, Van Sertimas claims that the Olmec heads are Negroid due to the broad flat noses runs into a major problem: nose shape is dictated by climate; the climate of Mesoamerica and Africa is similar; the function of nose shape is to moisten air before it goes into the lungs; therefore, since climate is dictated by nose shape and the climate of Mesoamerica and Africa is similar, then they have similar-shaped noses due to the climate they lived in. Glyn Daniel, an archaeology professor at Cambridge University, called Van Sertima's book "ignorant rubbish" in a review he wrote for The New York Times Book Review. I am not suggesting that no African people were in the Americas before Columbus. It could be dark, bronze people from South America. Note how these claims are eerily similar to claims of white gods that, for example, the Aztecs and Maya speak of. 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. 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. Van Sertima married Maria Nagy in 1964; they adopted two sons, Larry and Michael. It was also concluded that it was not likely that these seeds were carried by birds. Van Sertima also argued it was Columbus himself who suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. Sometimes the conversation will somehow, turn into a history lesson about China. The researchers wrote a systematic rebuttal of Van Sertima's claims, stating that Van Sertima's "proposal was without foundation" in claiming African diffusion as responsible for prehistoric Olmec culture (in present-day Mexico). 2023 The Moguldom Nation. (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus). He was a . A celebrated classic, They Came Before Columbus, dea. The word for tobacco also has African roots as well as the refinement of the practice of oral pipe smoking. [13] This was a record of the conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 1998 on the theme of the African Renaissance. Van Sertima believed that Mali seafarers sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Mesoamerica. 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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. Columbus never claimed that he saw black people in 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). Black settlements developed at the end points of major currents from Africa, he contended. "They couldn't be slave blacks," he said. In 1977, Van Sertima wrote "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," a controversial book now in its 21st printing. Phil Valentine is even more confused. We need to know about the time when we had empires. 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. In his famous book, They Came Before Columbus, published in 1976, anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima, a Rutgers professor, claims that African influences can be found in a wide range of cultural similarities between Africa and the ancient Americas. The Olmec associated volcanic rocks and the like with symbolic importance, and so, they carved their sculptures out of them due to this. After divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, to Jacqueline L. Patten, who had two daughters. 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. When the cheerleading coach broke the news to Katrina Kohel that she was the only one left on the cheer squad, Kohel was determined to compete anyway. 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. 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? [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. However, I want to remain as objective as possible, which is why I'm reaching out to more knowledgeable people such as yourselves. No, since they are only telling just-so stories. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. There are similarities between the Mandingo god the Dasiri of the Bambara and the god Quetzalcoatl of the Olmecs. Its really that easy to explain the so-called similar appearances in nose shape between the Olmec heads and African noses. [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). He completed primary and secondary school in Guyana, and started writing poetry. "I kept quiet about my work. He published several annual compilations, volumes of the journal dealing with various topics of African history. ( 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. So basically the vast majority of scholars reject Afrocentrism, but are too afraid to say so in public. Van Sertima claimed that Bakari II had a fleet of ships and set off from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and influenced the Vera Cruz region of what is now modern-day Mexico. This was all that I could recall being formally taught. (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). Van Sertima accomplishes this through chapters relying heavily on dramatic storytelling. They would claim them as west African too if they could. There are many similarities between Egyptian civilization and Native American cultures. Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. One of the most striking pieces of evidence is the negroid statues, statues of peoples with thick lips and wide noses. 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. What meaning do these ideas have for 20th-century people? please donate https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ZPEYVFR6AgeofReason198EKA be a monthly supporter https://www.patreon.com/. Also, some other West African countries had been known to both fish by boat and sail. In 1997 academics in a Journal of Current Anthropology article criticised in detail many elements of They Came Before Columbus (1976). 'Before Columbus': Roots of a Dispute - The Washington Post By Hollie I. So anything that isnt physical (like the mind/consciousness) cant studied by science. 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. 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. I was a friend of de Montellanos and many years ago we used to debunk Afrocentrists aka Afronuts on several forums (he posted as Quetzalcoatl on Egyptsearch), but he died I think in 2016. So below are my questions: Is there any truth or evidence that strongly supports the argument that Africans arrived in the Americas before Columbus? 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. 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. 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. [23] Sertima was inducted into the "Rutgers African-American Alumni Hall of Fame" in 2004. . Also according to Polish craniologist Wiercinsky 13.5% of skeletons in a pre-classic Olmec cemetery of Tlatilco were negroid which decreased in percentage over time, indicating intermixture with the native population over time. However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain, samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. The books showed an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and South languages prior to European contact. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Dr James Thompson Psychological Comments, Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431. But where did Menzies come up with the idea that it was Asians, not Europeans, who first arrived in America from other countries? 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. Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. If each piece of evidence and argument was listed, the list would be as long as the index. 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.". Saying slave ships are a myth is a whole new level of ignorance . And he started work, using his own money. Apparently she had read the the book They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Journal of African Civilizations) by Ivan Van Sertima and was buying what he was selling. THEY GAME GOLUM BUS The African Presence in Ancient America Ivan Van Sertima Ncruma] has demonstrated that there is far more to hlach history than the trade. Required fields are marked *. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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. Evidence indicates that humans originated in Africa. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. In a Medaille College debate moderated by Jesse E. Nash Jr., a Canisius College professor, Barbour and Van Sertima squared off over a theory that has found its way into American classrooms through adoption of "multicultural" materials and curricula. Unfortunately, the scholarship that he has inspired has tended to be of a worse quality than Van Sertimas was. Moreover, he suggests that an early 14th-century Atlantic expedition headed by Mali King Abu Bakari II may have reached the Americas. The belief that Africans were in the Americas before the Europeans were makes sense to me. "How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? 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. Isnt it weird how Van Sertima and other Afrocentrists use the same type of tactics as pseudoscientists (i.e., ad hoc hypothesizing)? Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. Barbour of the University at Buffalo. Genome-wide ancestry estimates of African Americans show average proportions of73.2% African, 24.0% European, and 0.8% Native American ancestry, according to The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States study published by U.S. National Library of MedicineNational Institutes of Health. [3][n 1], Van Sertima was born in Kitty Village, near Georgetown, in what was then the colony of British Guiana (present-day Guyana); he retained his British citizenship throughout his life. However, their African ancestors had survived relatively dark-skinned (carrying the old haplogroup C) in Oceania for over 100,000 years Continue Reading More answers below Rasager Aa She also planned to publish a book of his poetry.[25]. 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. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. Van Sertima reached larger audiences through chapters narrated by figures of the past, including Christopher Columbus and the Mali king Abu Bakr II. Van Sertimas scholarship was flawed in many respects, but he made an attempt to challenge the racist scholarship of his time. 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. [6] He attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London from 1959. No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. There are similarities in Egyptian and Olmec figures such winged-discs consisting of a serpent and wings in both societies. Since my earlier days of schooling, I have informally encountered bits and pieces of information such as the story of Mansa Musa, the richest man in history, but not much else. There are some problems with this theory. 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. On the cover of the book, John A. Williams writes that Van Sertima has demonstrated that there is far more to black history than the slave trade. Quite obviously, there is more to black history than the slave trade, but Van Sertimas storytelling is not it. So what does Sabres GM Kevyn Adams do this week? They Were Not Here Before Columbus: Afrocentricity in the 1990's Bernard Ortiz de Montellano Download Free PDF Related Papers Plant Evidence for Contact Between African and the New World Bernard Ortiz de Montellano Download Free PDF View PDF Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs Bernard Ortiz de Montellano
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