[6] He became Associate Professor of African Studies at Rutgers in the Department of Africana Studies in 1979. 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. This view, of course, is seen as highly fringe in the field of anthropology. pic.twitter.com/c0OjXNOVqt, Black Americans Have the Highest Mortality Rates But Lowest Levels of Life Insurance 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. Experts have determined that the gourds floated across the Atlantic and washed ashore in the Americas to be adopted by Mesoamerican cultures. It could be dark, bronze people from South America. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Columbus actually said in the journal of his second voyage (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus). Moreover, how would he have known? They were then shipped from Spain to Africa as commodity for African resources. So what does Sabres GM Kevyn Adams do this week? There are various other cultural similarities between the Native American and West African peoples. 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. Barbour of the University at Buffalo. 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. 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. His widow, Jacqueline Van Sertima, said she would continue to publish the Journal of African Civilizations. 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. "People have different definitions of realism," he added, pointing out stylistic conventions and showing slides that depicted convincingly similar but totally unrelated rattlesnake scale designs from the early American city of Teotihuacan and decorations on a Louis XVI commode. Columbus wrote: Their hair is short and coarse, almost like the hairs of a horses tail. My best guess would be from somewhere(s) in west and/or maybe central Africa. 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. Laster that year he returned to this country to teach at Rutgers. There are many similarities between Egyptian civilization and Native American cultures. Maize has African origins. Columbus never claimed that he saw black people in the Americas. Debunking The Black Indian Myth: From They Came Before Columbus to Hidden Colors In They Came Before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima put forward the argument that African people were in the. EARLY PRESENCE OF BLACKS IN AMERICAS DEBATED. One of the most baffling claims to me is the idea that the slave trade happened in reverse and that Native Americans were shipped to Africa, not the other way around. 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. Van Sertimas research points to the Negroid features of giant stone heads in Mexico, our of which have been radiocarbon dated at 814 B.C. Despite this, there were however, agreed upon black kings of the 25th dynasty such as Taharqa. 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. 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. 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? Van Sertima was convinced there was a connection between ancient Africa and the Americas. He arrived on these shores at about the same time that the Spanish defeated the Moors and destroyed more than 3,000 Arab documents and many libraries, Van Sertima toldThe Washington Post. . First discovered by Charles Spearman in 1904, noting that schoolchildren, 1550 words Introduction The role of the Jews in the slave tradeand in the civil warhas garnered a great amount of scholarly attention. Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. What meaning do these ideas have for 20th-century people? In doing field work in Africa, he compiled a dictionary of Swahili legal terms in 1967. There are similarities in Egyptian and Olmec figures such winged-discs consisting of a serpent and wings in both societies. This doesnt seem to be an official recording. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. The occasion was his first visit to the United States from Britain, where he was working in 1970. "I kept quiet about my work. Im not sure how legal that is, but I say thanks. 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. 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. 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 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). Van Sertima added, How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? They say slavery lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old You ever seen a slave ship ? Any other significant information about the history of my people tended to start with, we were slaves. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. He published his They Came Before Columbus in 1976, as a Rutgers graduate student. 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. The reason they didn't enslave Indians is because black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave myth. [15] This is one of many examples of Van Sertima's theories that Mesoamerican mythologies are based on Pre-Columbian African contact theories. I have, 2600 words What do normativity and intentionality mean? "Columbus is not just a man, lic is a symbol. [16], Van Sertima argues that African contact likely happened more than once. While his Olmec theory has "spread widely in African American community, both lay and scholarly", it was mostly ignored in Mesoamericanist scholarship, and has been dismissed as Afrocentric pseudoarchaeology[2] and pseudohistory to the effect of "robbing native American cultures". Many historians have worked at debunking the They Came Before Columbus and Africans Were Already In America myth. 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. 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. This is an inference that Van Sertima makes, but he presents his inference as a fact. Van Sertima married Maria Nagy in 1964; they adopted two sons, Larry and Michael. 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 . Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution, Home Refuting Afrocentrism They Did Not Come Before Columbus. [23] Sertima was inducted into the "Rutgers African-American Alumni Hall of Fame" in 2004. 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. Wow, so you (your black ancestors) got there before the Indians and the Europeans? 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. Your email address will not be published. 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 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. At the time that the dominant narrative of the origins of ancient Egyptian civilization emerged, the use of African slaves was well into effect. 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. Dwayne Wong (Omowale) is a Guyanese born Pan-Africanist and author. It was with the coming of Columbus that the twilight of the red and black races began. here is no question but that the book is landmark." John A- Wi am. [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. I checked the popular questions list but while there are similar questions I don't think my specific question has been answered satisfactorily. But where did Menzies come up with the idea that it was Asians, not Europeans, who first arrived in America from other countries? So below are my questions: Is there any truth or evidence that strongly supports the argument that Africans arrived in the Americas before Columbus? Polynesians/Melanesians went to the Americas before Columbus. 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. "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], Van Sertima wrote a response to be included in the article (as is standard academic practice) but withdrew it. No, since they are only telling just-so stories. 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. How could Africans, who are not popularly known as seamen, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the American continents? All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. 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. 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 certain kind of shadow lifts. It could be dark, bronze people from South America. What did we believe in? document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431). Photo: These Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area of Custer, S.D. Van Sertima reached larger audiences through chapters narrated by figures of the past, including Christopher Columbus and the Mali king Abu Bakr II. 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. 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. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered. Most average 5-year olds with decent critical thinking ability can spot the cracks in the theory. 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. The spears, he claimed, were identical to weapons from African Guinea. During the 1960s, he worked for several years in Great Britain as a journalist, doing weekly broadcasts to the Caribbean and Africa. He was asked to write a magazine piece simplifying and summarizing Weiner. 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. It was generally "ignored or dismissed" by academic experts at the time and strongly criticised in detail in an academic journal, Current Anthropology, in 1997. Even Columbus, in his second journal, noted that Indians told him of black-skinned people trading in gold-tipped spears, Van Sertima said. There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. 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. Dwayne is the author of Kingdoms and Civilizations of Africa and several other books on African and African Diaspora history. 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. [5] Except for a brief mention, the book had not previously been reviewed in an academic journal. Intertribal slavery amongst the Indians was universal and transitioned easily with European interest. 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. However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain, samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. Hidden Colors also makes the argument that Africans were in the Americas before Columbus. Dr James Thompson Psychological Comments, Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431. 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). Keep reading with unlimited digital access. [5], Van Sertima completed his master's degree at Rutgers in 1977. It was also concluded that it was not likely that these seeds were carried by birds. Van Sertima believed that Mali seafarers sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Mesoamerica. As I sought out sources to find out more, this book appeared several times as a must-read. He said, "You cannot really conceive of how insulting it is to Native Americans to be told they were 'discovered'."[14]. Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. In 1455 the Portuguese sailor Alvise da Cadamostoin encountered West African riverboats in the Gambian river. 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. ". 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.". Highlighted Ogham found on the Isle of Man - Credit: ViewTeam (Author provided) Columbus is not just a man, he is a symbol. With that being said, the narration isnt the best that Ive heard. [18] 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. These discs were placed above entrances of inner chambers of temples in Egypt and above temple door lintels in pre-Columbian America. She also planned to publish a book of his poetry.[25]. Van Sertima's Journal of African Civilizations was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century. This video is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima who made is transition on May 25th, 2009. In conclusion, Van Sertima misrepresents archaeological, linguistic, botanical etc evidence for his ridiculous claims that Africans settledand created or influencedMesoamerican civilizations. This book is dense with presented evidence and deserves serious study. 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. - Ivan Van Sertima On the day he submitted his piece, he learned about Alexander von Wuthenau, and art historian who had excavated a large number of Negroid heads in clay, gold, copper and copal sculpted by pre-Columbian American artists. Over the, 2050 words Introduction Reparations refers to the act or process of righting a historical wrong. How Large of a Role Did Jews Play in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. 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. Van Sertima never explained why he selected this particular dynasty, but his reasoning for doing so is important because he later altered the date in African Presence in Early America to 948 or circa 1000 B.C. Van Sertima was forced to alter his thesis in light of new evidence which demonstrated that the Olmec civilization was older than was originally believed, which leads me to the next issue. This interaction is not rooted in historical evidence and Van Sertima does not offer a cited source to back up his narrative. "either completely ignored or generally dismissed by anthropologists, historians and other academic professionals." Though these features may be common among black people of African Ancestry, one cannot exclude that these features also exist to some degree in Native Americans. 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. They paint themselves black, and they are the color of the Canarians, neither black nor white. 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. They then raised their discovery to the community at large, but it was quickly disregarded as being impossible under the logic that no Europeans had visited the Americas before Columbus. The majority of us here in America the descendant of slaves were already aboriginal in America and were the slave population of choice. There are similarities between the Mandingo god the Dasiri of the Bambara and the god Quetzalcoatl of the Olmecs. 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. See Grove (1976) or Ortiz de Montellano (1997). Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America at Amazon.com. [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). 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 . 1337 Words. However, anthropologists and archaeologists who specialized in Mesoamerican history, rightly, reject Van Sertimas storytelling. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. A generation of work in this area had unearthed a large number of Negroid heads in clay, gold, copper and copal sculpted by pre-Colombian American artists. 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. 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. Hip-hop artist B.o.B,who is also a flat Earth believer. He never returned, though some (including Van Sertima) argued that he arrived in the Americas. 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. 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. 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". Required fields are marked *. Dan Von Hoyel ~ Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America Odd Salon DISCOVERY: Six stories of rigorous inquiry and accidental revelations, [] Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. "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.". 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.". Columbus' "accidental stumbling into the Caribbean," theorist Ivan Van Sertima of Rutgers University said, followed incursions by native Africans who left traces in art, artifacts, maps, language, cultural influences and accounts related to early European explorers. 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 Saying slave ships are a myth is a whole new level of ignorance . Ivan Van Sertima They Came Before Columbus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. 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. They noted that no "genuine African artifact had been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World." 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. Oral traditions of Native Americans, according to reported Mexican authority, Nicholas Leon, include the belief that the oldest inhabitants of Mexico were Negroes among other stories. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble? The story of Hannibal of Carthage always stuck with me since high school, though his story was told probably because of its relation to European history. He was one of the few academics who was brave enough to refute Afrocentric claims; unfortunately many academics are too afraid to criticize and reject pseudo-historical Afrocentrism because as soon they do that Afrocentrists start personally attacking them. Smart Policies are as low as $30 a month, No Medical Exam Required 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). document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); 5000 words Introduction General Intelligence or g is championed as the hallmark discovery of psychology. 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. Never seen a more deluded person. 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. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Van Sertima's work on Olmec civilization has been criticised by Mesoamerican academics,[17] who describe his claims to be ill-founded and false. In the documentary he says that Mansa Musa is the same person as Montezuma. This is not a romantic idea. 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.