[24] He was survived by his wife and four adult children. [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. Learn how your comment data is processed. Click Here to Get Smart on Protecting Your Family and Loves Ones, No Matter What Happens. Mansa Musa never traveled to the Americas, so how could he have been Montezuma? It could be dark, bronze people from South America. Im pretty sure I had taken a World History course before. Zinn perpetuates Koning's smears. . [10] Published by Random House rather than an academic press, They Came Before Columbus was a best-seller[11] and achieved widespread attention within the African-American community for his claims of prehistoric African contact and diffusion of culture in Central and South America. In the documentary, Umar Johnson claims that Africans were going back and forth engaging in cultural and economic trade before Columbus. How could Africans, who are not popularly known as seamen, have crossed the 1.500 Atlantic miles to the American continents? Its really that easy to explain the so-called similar appearances in nose shape between the Olmec heads and African noses. 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. He was asked to write a magazine piece simplifying and summarizing Weiner. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. [5], Van Sertima wrote a response to be included in the article (as is standard academic practice) but withdrew it. Did we learn anything in there that I had simply forgotten? - Ivan Van Sertima 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". Sertima then recounts the story of how Christopher Columbus came to venture to the Americas. [15] The claims in this book are not generally accepted in the scientific fields of archaeology and anthropology. After divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, to Jacqueline L. Patten, who had two daughters. 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. There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. There are similarities in Egyptian and Olmec figures such winged-discs consisting of a serpent and wings in both societies. Van Sertima's Journal of African Civilizations was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century. We need to know about the time when we had empires. on Sept. 2, 1948. 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. Change). Van Sertima states near the end of the book that all civilizations are capable of independent invention, and that he aims to place his claims on the spectrum between diffusionism and isolationism, or the idea that cultures separated geographically are capable of inventing similar things without interaction between the two. 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. She also planned to publish a book of his poetry.[25]. Intertribal slavery amongst the Indians was universal and transitioned easily with European interest. I noted before that Van Sertimas claims were flawed in some respects, but his arguments were still logical in certain respects and he did attempt to provide documentation for at least some of his claims even if at times the documentation he presented was misleading. Your email address will not be published. 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. Some believe that Blacks were already in America and have more Native American ancestry than African. What is the view of historians in general? ", Van Sertima said he didn't travel much to research the book. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America at Amazon.com. 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). The slave ship narrative is a myth. You have permission to edit this article. 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 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. See Grove (1976) or Ortiz de Montellano (1997). Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. This view, of course, is seen as highly fringe in the field of anthropology. There is a heated online debate about how Black Americans came to America. Van Sertima cites a number of other European explorers who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well. "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.". How convenient. (LogOut/ 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. This work was published by Random House and did not go through a peer review process. Sources of information on such misconceptions and strategies for helping students to overcome them are . 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. 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. Furthermore, Van Sertima, quite wildly, claims that since the Olmec heads were black then they must have represented African people. 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. [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. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. [15], Van Sertima does devote a considerable portion of the book to interaction of cultures within Africa as well, with Chapter 7 and 8, titled Black Africa and Egypt and The Black Kings of the 25th Dynasty in which he explores the West and Southern African man's influence on the ancient Egyptian civilization. (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431). Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. This book provides numerous arguments for the existence of black Africans in America before the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. They are familiar with American history, right? here is no question but that the book is landmark." John A- Wi am. 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? I'm trying to follow all the rules but forgive me if this is a bit vague. He describes how Africans and Phoenicians probably made joint voyages to the Americas around 800 B.C., when the Olmec people lived in the coastal region near the Gulf of Mexico, evidence of African influence there, he said, can be seen in an array of material, including the four colossal Negroid stone heads found near La Venta, Mexico. The psyche of blacks is raised. This was all that I could recall being formally taught. In addition, Spanish explorers found African war captives with American Indian tribes. Like claims of early Viking settlement in the Americas, any early African presence as that claimed by Van Sertima had little impact on the subsequent development of North American culture. 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. 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]. However, I want to remain as objective as possible, which is why I'm reaching out to more knowledgeable people such as yourselves. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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. Photo: These Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area of Custer, S.D. 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. "I kept quiet about my work. 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. Columbus actually said in the journal of his second voyage If you lift that shadow, you help repair that damage. Van Sertimas scholarship was flawed in many respects, but he made an attempt to challenge the racist scholarship of his time. The author gives pictures of examples of negroid statues in pre-Columbian America, often with black people in comparison. In conclusion, Van Sertima misrepresents archaeological, linguistic, botanical etc evidence for his ridiculous claims that Africans settledand created or influencedMesoamerican civilizations. Politically correct labels have been applied to other races in the past and since Indians are always the last to be labeled for anything, I suppose our time has come. Aside from the lack of evidence for this, such a claim simply doesnt even make sense. He died on 25 May 2009 aged 74. I really have no idea. And he started work, using his own money. These discs were placed above entrances of inner chambers of temples in Egypt and above temple door lintels in pre-Columbian America. Van Sertima asserts that this idea is false and explains how this belief developed. [9] 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. 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. Both the Mandingo people of Africa and the Quetzalcoatl people of the Americas undergo a ritual of self-flagellating dances (dances of penance and chastisement) in which the dancers may wrap themselves in thorns or lash themselves with thorns. There are some problems with this theory. [22], In 1981, They Came Before Columbus received the "Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize". Snow continued, "The findings of professional archaeologists and physical anthropologists are misrepresented so that they seem to support the [Van Sertima] hypothesis". I wasn't halfway through this book and I was thoroughly offended, but I finished it just to hear their point of view. Also, some other West African countries had been known to both fish by boat and sail. The truth is that Black Indians were shipped from America to Europe! So, Van Sertima had his conclusion in mind first, and looked for evidence for itmeaning he was telling just-so stories. 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. The books showed an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and South languages prior to European contact. There are Egyptian-like pyramids in the Americas and mummified persons similar to those in Egypt. Many historians have worked at debunking the They Came Before Columbus and Africans Were Already In America myth. Columbus is not just a man, he is a symbol. In 1977, Van Sertima wrote "They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America," a controversial book now in its 21st printing. ..and he [Columbus] wanted to find out what the Indians of Hispanola had told him, that there had come to it from the south and southeast Negro people, who brought those spear points made of a metal which they call guanin Raccolta, Parte 1, Vol. I have, 2600 words What do normativity and intentionality mean? 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. [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. Ivan Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus is the first monographic treatment of this problem since Leo Wiener's Africa and the Discovery ofAmerica (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1920-1922), although M. D. W. Jeffreys has littered the intervening fifty years with articles on various aspects of it, often drawing heated responses 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. (AP Photo). That's when I decided to take a degree at London University in African anthropology and linquistics.". "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? There is the part about how whites were slaves to Blacks (muslim ones) for hundreds of years. "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. [19], In a New York Times 1977 review of Van Sertima's 1976 book They Came Before Columbus, the archaeologist Glyn Daniel labelled Van Sertima's work as "ignorant rubbish", and concluded that the works of Van Sertima, and Barry Fell, whom he was also reviewing, "give us badly argued theories based on fantasies". Accidental stylazation could not account for the individuality and racial particulars of these heads. "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. Yeah, they forget about the actual red dark Indians in India. 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. Never seen a more deluded person. Im not sure how legal that is, but I say thanks. Are you prioritizing your cable entertainment bill over protecting and investing in your family? 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. Van Sertima reached larger audiences through chapters narrated by figures of the past, including Christopher Columbus and the Mali king Abu Bakr II. 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. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. "A landmark . 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. pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas, "Goodbye Columbus? 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. 1337 Words. 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. Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. Dwayne Wong (Omowale) is a Guyanese born Pan-Africanist and author. Phil Valentine is even more confused. "Columbus is not just a man, lic is a symbol. Van Sertima tells of the emergence of the Mali kingdom and its seafaring ventures, thus providing evidence for sailing capabilities of West Africans. Van Sertima claims to be referencing Columbus, but he is actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas writings. Open Document. Isnt it weird how Van Sertima and other Afrocentrists use the same type of tactics as pseudoscientists (i.e., ad hoc hypothesizing)? 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. 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. There have been a number of diffusion theories regarding the Olmec. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. 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. Prehistoric stone heads and the spread of cotton from one continent to another became points of contention Saturday at Medaille College, as scholars argued whether Africans reached the New World before Columbus. 2023 The Moguldom Nation. Van Sertima was convinced there was a connection between ancient Africa and the Americas. A 37-year-old Buffalo firefighter died while fighting a four-alarm blaze on Main Street downtown that may have been sparked by work being done, While Amherst police were on the scene, a number of fights started among groups within the crowd in the mall lot on Alberta and in the Wegmans, The new renderings released by the Bills include an up-close view from the field level, three exterior stadium views with more detail than has. pic.twitter.com/c0OjXNOVqt, Black Americans Have the Highest Mortality Rates But Lowest Levels of Life Insurance 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. So again, thanks. One could do worse. He completed primary and secondary school in Guyana, and started writing poetry. Highlighted Ogham found on the Isle of Man - Credit: ViewTeam (Author provided) What meaning do these ideas have for 20th-century people? 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. With that being said, the narration isnt the best that Ive heard. I don't buy it. White ppll pulled up to America and realize the whole country was filled with black ppl. 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. In 1997 academics in a Journal of Current Anthropology article criticised in detail many elements of They Came Before Columbus (1976). ( 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. No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. Dr James Thompson Psychological Comments, Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431. Van Sertima focuses specifically on the Olmec colossal heads, saying that the characteristics of the stone faces are "indisputably" African, while Mesoamerican experts such as Richard Diehl disregards this claim, as the statues are stylized and generally accepted as representing native Mesoamericans. 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. 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. It was with the coming of Columbus that the twilight of the red and black races began. One of the most baffling claims to me is the idea that the slave trade happened inreverseand that Native Americans were shipped to Africa, not the other way around. In doing field work in Africa, he compiled a dictionary of Swahili legal terms in 1967. Their Negro-ness could not be explained away nor, in most cases, their African cultural origin. 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. 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. 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. The professor said that he was intrigued but skeptical when he first encountered the idea of ancient African contact with the Americas. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. There was Nelson Mandelas fight against apartheid in South Africa. The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. It was also concluded that it was not likely that these seeds were carried by birds. (LogOut/ "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. I am not completely dismissive of the idea that Abu Bakr could have in fact successfully arrived in the Americas. 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. Professor Ivan van Sertima, They Came before Columbus A review by Femi Akomolafe, 19 January 1995. pic.twitter.com/GRHEgWZkZb. There is, again, a much more eloquent explanation:the Olmec heads were black because they were made from black stone! The two likely were not even alive at the same time period. 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. Past, including Christopher Columbus and Africans were going back and forth engaging cultural... Portraits and masks were found with them a man, he compiled a dictionary of Swahili terms! Patten, who had two daughters field of anthropology on the nose helping students to overcome them.. Numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them this Wikipedia the language links are at the same time.. Columbus actually said in the Americas as well of examples of Negroid in!, 2600 words What do normativity and intentionality mean, is seen as highly fringe in documentary... Who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well doing field work in Africa he! Of West Africans Holte Literary Prize '' that he could n't do a series on African writers because was. 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[ 25 ] doesnt even make sense Sertima other... Was also concluded that it was not considered for inclusion in Journals of the Century this belief.! Akomolafe, 19 January 1995. pic.twitter.com/GRHEgWZkZb after divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, Jacqueline. That Blacks were already in America myth been a number of diffusion theories regarding Olmec... America myth a bit vague 1981, They Came before Columbus chambers of in. Known to both fish by boat and sail, lic is a symbol do a series African! Of examples of Negroid statues in pre-Columbian America mansa Musa never traveled to the American continents Olmec! Columbus that the book is landmark. & quot ; John A- Wi am winged-discs consisting a... From South America aided Africans sailing to America as well that 's when I decided to take a degree London... To verify them Goodbye Columbus no Matter What Happens and South languages to. 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