How could Africans, who are not popularly known as seamen, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the American continents? Many historians have worked at debunking the "They Came Before Columbus" and "Africans Were Already In America" myth. 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. 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. "Europe is twice as distant from America as Africa," he added, noting that Africa and South America are only 1,500 miles apart at their closest points. 2023 The Moguldom Nation. (LogOut/ In the library of a Princeton professor, he came across three volumes, "Africa and the Discovery of America," written by a Harvard Linquist, Leo Weiner, and published more than 50 years ago. What did we do? They say slavery lasted 400 yrs America is only 250 yrs old You ever seen a slave ship ? He was a . Dan Von Hoyel ~ Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America Odd Salon DISCOVERY: Six stories of rigorous inquiry and accidental revelations, [] The reason they didn't enslave Indians is because black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave myth. Required fields are marked *. 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. 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. . This interaction is not rooted in historical evidence and Van Sertima does not offer a cited source to back up his narrative. Did we learn anything in there that I had simply forgotten? However, I want to remain as objective as possible, which is why I'm reaching out to more knowledgeable people such as yourselves. If you are experiencing difficulties logging in or are a subscriber getting a paywall, please try one or more of the following steps. 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. 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. He never returned, though some (including Van Sertima) argued that he arrived in the Americas. Your email address will not be published. Van Sertima makes this claim at the very beginning of the video below. Occasionally, Ive been asked by my colleagues some form of the question, Where are you from?, No, like where is your family from? 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. When evidence came out refuting Van Sertimas storytelling, he concocted an ad hoc hypothesis to save his hypothesis from immunization. [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). To assuage the Christian conscience for the enslavement of a people, one could not believe that black people were intelligent enough and capable of such feats as the ancient Egyptians. So basically the vast majority of scholars reject Afrocentrism, but are too afraid to say so in public. 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. [5], They further called "fallacious" his claims that Africans had diffused the practices of pyramid building and mummification, and noted the independent rise of these in the Americas. Columbus was quoted before as noting that the natives sometimes painted themselves black, so for all we know the black people being referred to were people who were painted black as opposed to black skinned people. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. [6] He became Associate Professor of African Studies at Rutgers in the Department of Africana Studies in 1979. The professor also catalogs cultural evidence in a Negroid skeleton found in the Virgin Islands dating back to 1250 A.D. and the finding of African cotton in the Americas. {{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. 6 Pages. 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. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. 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. Glyn Daniel, an archaeology professor at Cambridge University, called Van Sertimas book ignorant rubbish in a review he wrote for The New York Times Book Review. No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. 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. Despite this, there were however, agreed upon black kings of the 25th dynasty such as Taharqa. 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. Van Sertima married Maria Nagy in 1964; they adopted two sons, Larry and Michael. Note how these claims are eerily similar to claims of white gods that, for example, the Aztecs and Maya speak of. Mansa Musa never traveled to the Americas, so how could he have been Montezuma? 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. Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans set foot upon - and made significant cultural impact on - the New World 22 centuries before Columbus sailed into the West Indies. "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. All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. He published several annual compilations, volumes of the journal dealing with various topics of African history. [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. From 1957 to 1959, Van Sertima worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. 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). Wow, so you (your black ancestors) got there before the Indians and the Europeans? 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. How Large of a Role Did Jews Play in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? I really have no idea. Im not sure how legal that is, but I say thanks. 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? White ppll pulled up to America and realize the whole country was filled with black ppl. Experts have determined that the gourds floated across the Atlantic and washed ashore in the Americas to be adopted by Mesoamerican cultures. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. Their coloration, fullness of lip, prognathism, scarification, tattoo markings, beards, kinky hair, generously fleshed noses, and even in some cases identifiable coiffures, headkerchiefs, helmets, compound earringsall these had been skillfully and realistically portrayed by pre-Colombian American potters, jewelers and sculptures. These discs were placed above entrances of inner chambers of temples in Egypt and above temple door lintels in pre-Columbian America. Yeah, they forget about the actual red dark Indians in India. 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. Even Columbus, in his second journal, noted that Indians told him of black-skinned people trading in gold-tipped spears, Van Sertima said. I saw Dr. Van Sertima lecture at Cornell University in 1979. Also, Van Sertimas case could be strengthened if statues and art known to intended to depict Native Americans were also shown in comparison. 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. https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1404242564585246720?s=20&t=Lv4XscKZw3SR_tmBhetmbg, https://twitter.com/tariqnasheed/status/1501640824576110595?s=20&t=Lv4XscKZw3SR_tmBhetmbg, https://twitter.com/RDCRaissa/status/1503381403836293127?s=20&t=Lv4XscKZw3SR_tmBhetmbg, https://twitter.com/JaKaB0i_116/status/1503133876637638663?s=20&t=Lv4XscKZw3SR_tmBhetmbg, The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. There is the part about how whites were slaves to Blacks (muslim ones) for hundreds of years. ( 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. In Koning's telling and in Zinn's, Columbus set out to enslave a uniformly gentle people for the sole purpose of enriching himself with gold. Technically, Carthage was a part of Northern Africa too. As the dogma slowly gets pushed out of science and history we are coming to realize that people of all. 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 1977, Van Sertima wrote "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," a controversial book now in its 21st printing. 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