However, there is a difference in celebrating and reclaiming one's own history and promoting nonsense. endstream
The abstract reads: In 1976, Ivan van Sertima proposed that New World civilizations were strongly influenced by diffusion from Africa.

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They Came Before Columbus: Featured Book. 6 0 obj ), De Orbo … <>>> Taylor Gordon .

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223415.They_Came_Before_Columbus Nature Knows No Color Line J. However, there is a difference in celebrating and reclaiming one's own history and promoting nonsense. Thank you for your enlightening answer and for linking the paper. I can understand why this revisionism is attractive: Columbus was, by modern standards, a despicable character. The earliest documentation of a spherical Earth comes from the ancient Greeks (5th century BC). News, commentary and analysis from the black left. What Kagame has done to Rusesabagina, of Hotel Rwanda fame, embarrasses the US foreign policy establishment that has lionized his brutal regime for so long, writes Ann Garrison. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, Africans in the Americas Prior to Europeans. ",#(7),01444'9=82. Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. endobj In an interview before the reception, Van Sertima, who was born in Guyana, said evidence shows that Africans were in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America long before 1492. The heads most resemble the indigenous people of Gulf Coast. <> stream At the heart of this magnificent volume is a group of huge stone heads, weighing ten to forty tons, dating to the Olmec culture of Mexico at least 800 years before Christ. Lopez de Gomara, Historia de Mexico, Anvers, 1554. Cheikh Anta Diop - The African Origin of Civilization - Myth or Reality [LIVRO] Slave Trade and Slavery - John Henrik Clarke.

%���� You said it better than I could. Long time lurker, first time poster. You mentioned van Sertima and the view of historians in general: This paper, entitled "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs", comes from several scholars of pre-Columbus Mesoamerica. This theory has spread widely in the African-American community, both lay and scholarly, but it has never been evaluated at length by Mesoamericanists.

The Portal for Public History 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. endobj Despite vehement protestations to the contrary, van Sertima has in effect trampled on the self-respect of Native Americans by minimizing their role as actors in their own history, denigrating their cultures, and usurping their contributions to the development of world civilizations.

One can get so caught up trying to challenge the 'traditional' lens of history that one ignores that other claims are also biased in their own ways. I know Columbus day has passed us by but I couldn’t help but post a link to this classic work by the late Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. 3 0 obj Van Sertima labored heroically to break the white choke-hold on the human narrative.

The Olmecs in fact predate the 25th dynasty, and have clear precursors within Mesoamerica, with no evidence of outside influence. �%��%O J8J:=����t�ې6gIg&���K:L �u��'�6�KB�DۄPg��T�H��DI����DI�5o�5�$\3�Q3J�5h5�$]���f�����KF���]QJF���Ͱ�(I����%JҮ�8JҮ̉�f��+#�Z�(iW���&��V2Ҥ]�T�w5i�[̴�$Ѥ]�jV�$�r�Y�ft��qA��A����V��r�Ӆb����9������g��X�P������:*����]�]`�g�ǫ���e���a����Ïï�?���XQ$� Random House . P.S. African Presence in Early America, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1992, p.30.

Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. Regardless, those mummies are completely different in technique and form, and the oldest group (Chinchorro) pre-date Egyptian mummies but a considerable time period. Ivan Van Sertima: Fighting Racism Through Science, Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal, Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles, Bill Cosby Should Have Been Denounced by Black America Long Ago. Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus, New York, Random House, 1976, p.19-23. The Black Wall Around Barack Obama: Who Does It Protect Him Against? Mesoamerican pyramids start to appear before that Dynasty, and in form and function are distinct from Egyptian pyramids.

Van Sertima was at best misguided and at worst a charlatan; the Ancient Aliens Guy of his time. Mummification was not practiced in Mesoamerica.

The Nubian dominated 25th Dynasty of Egypt visited the Americas to jump start Mesoamerican civilization.

McManus, Damian.

Rudolph R. Windsor - The Valley of the Dry Bones. Well, Current Anthropology is a little different from most journals in that each article comes with commentary from other academics in the field. Press J to jump to the feed. Martin, G.I. <> First, no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World.

Those are the only explanations I can think of for the endurance of his claims, since they are easily and consistently debunked. Van Sertima makes a couple of points, all of which are have no actual evidence and are often self-contradictory.

It wasn't just light brown-skinned with straight hair so called "Indians" they saw. edit: see also this post from a few months ago, Africans in the Americas Prior to Europeans. One of the comments on Haslip-Viera et al. END NOTES.

The first and most important contact, he argued, was between Nubians and Olmecs in 700 B.C, and it was followed by other contacts from Mali in A.D, 1300.

Afro-Eurasian plants in the Americas are evidence of contact, The presence of these plants is better explained by natural diffusion; show up thousands of years before van Sertima's purported contact; and some even show evidence of being cultivated in the Americas before cultivation in the "Old World.". According to renowned American historian and linguist Leo Weiner of Harvard University, one of the strongest pieces of evidence to support the fact that Black people sailed to America before Christopher Columbus was a journal entry from Columbus himself. Columbus Himself. Answers must be in-depth and comprehensive, or they will be removed. This article shows the proposal to be devoid of any foundation. 3. Cremation and burial were the predominant mortuary practices. Americas before Columbus.

The authors are Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, and Warren Barbour, all Mesoamericists. Aside from going through several of van Sertima's points and showing how they are blatantly wrong, the authors specifically note that rejecting the "Western" narrative to insert Africans into Mesoamerican history, van Sertima is engaging in the same form of racism he purports to be combating. <>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>>

By endorsing van Sertima's writings, the Afrocentrists and cultural nationalists have accepted a hegemonic and racialist view of pre-Columbian America that is completely lacking in historical accuracy. The US sows hysteria about China because Washington can no longer dictate global affairs without any significant challenge. The most authoritative refutation of van Sertima was in the journal Current Anthropology by Haslip-Viera et al.

endobj Ibid. The presence of African-origin plants such as the bottle gourd (Laegenaria siceraria) or of African genes in New World cotton (Gossypium hirstutum) shows that there was contact between the Old World and the New, but this contact occurred too long ago to have involved any human agency and is irrelevant to Egyptian-Olmec contact. There's also an unpleasant strain of supremacism that runs through it: Sertima, for instance, can't ignore the Viking contact, so he dismisses it as insignificant and after the Nubians anyway. I'd add that van Sertima's proposition of the Nubians as essentially building Olmec society for them has an uncomfortable resemblance to a colonial morality tale: The wise British Nubians turn up, share their superior technology and culture, and thus rescue the benighted Africans Olmec from their darkness. Please read the rules before participating, as we remove all comments which break the rules. A majority of New York City cops are non-white, but their union endorsed the re-election of Donald Trump, with no loud protest from the darker ranks. Kani Saburi Ayubu October 17, 2009 1 Comment. <> I've only just started reading Van Sertima's book but I wanted to be aware of the counter arguments and pitfalls going into it. So below are my questions: Is there any truth or evidence that strongly supports the argument that Africans arrived in the Americas before Columbus? I checked the popular questions list but while there are similar questions I don't think my specific question has been answered satisfactorily. EDIT: I'd urge you all to also read and upvote u/400-rabbits's response - he is actually flaired, and he presents some of Haslip-Viera et al's rebuttal, condensed. <>

endobj They Came Before Columbus: Featured Book. Additionally, Nubians, who come from a desert environment and have long, high noses, do not resemble their supposed "portraits."

:). Prof. Van Sertima is most famous for his book, They Came Before Columbus, published in 1976. Books like: They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima PhD, and everything written by J. As an aside, is there any credence to any form of Americas contact with anyone pre-Vikings? Only now it is Americans having their history erased by Africans, instead of Africans having their history erased by Europeans. They Came Before Columbus . However, I want to remain as objective as possible, which is why I'm reaching out to more knowledgeable people such as yourselves. "Prof. Van Sertima almost single-handedly introduced and defended the proposition that Africans made significant contact with the people of the Americas, not just before Columbus, but before the birth of Christ." They have also accepted a theory and a methodological approach that grossly distort the historical record at the expense of Native Americans. They certainly do not resemble East Africans and the heads depict features (such as epicanthic folds) not found in the African populations van Sertima claims visited the Americas.

The myth of the flat Earth is a modern misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat rather than spherical.. The incoherence of the Biden-Trump debate will be repeated every election cycle until Blacks and progressives break with the corporate duopoly.

Reactions to the Breonna Taylor murder, settlement and verdict all have one thing in common: Black people’s inability to protect our lives. State the implications of the work of Matthew Stirling, Alexander Von Wuthenau, and Ivan Van Sertima. These comments can refute points, expand on a particular subject, clarify something referenced in the text, etc. Long Before Columbus Posted by . In the same way European historians once claimed that Great Zimbabwe had been built by whites or a Lost Tribe of Israel, Afrocentrists impose modern conceptions of race and nationality on peoples who didn't share them, thus robbing those peoples of their own identity - whether it's Diop dividing the world into "Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid", and then casting a ridiculously broad net that lets him crowbar every significant ancient civilization into "African", or van Sertima's pseudohistory. The colossal Olmec heads, which resemble a stereotypical "Negroid", were carved hundreds of years before the arrival of the presumed models. Ivan van Sertima has a certain draw because of the general charisma of an argument that challenges the "official story." That pretty much sums it up. Students will be able to: 1. I believe it is important that other cultures celebrate and promote their history, but we need to be wary of making claims that just don't stand up to scrutiny.