Its really that easy to explain the so-called similar appearances in nose shape between the Olmec heads and African noses. However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. It was also concluded that it was not likely that these seeds were carried by birds. Van Sertima accomplishes this through chapters relying heavily on dramatic storytelling. This article will refute Van Sertimas claim that the Olmec heads were of Negroid originor were sculpted to show the appearance of Negroidsand his other claim that Mali seafarers reached the Americans some 200-odd years before Colombus. 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. 'Before Columbus': Roots of a Dispute - The Washington Post By Hollie I. When evidence came out refuting Van Sertimas storytelling, he concocted an ad hoc hypothesis to save his hypothesis from immunization. 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. Van Sertima claims that the Mixtecs and Aztecs were influenced by Bakari II. According to Dr. Van Sertima, whose book "They Came Before Columbus" (Random House, 1976) suggests Africans were in the New World before Columbus's journeys, the mainstream of academia. Weiant, who had a PhD in archaeology, also wrote numerous articles on extrasensory perception and was an active member of the. West May 9, 1977 Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans. After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. In fact, Columbus writes that they were not black. 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. Van Sertima asserts that this idea is false and explains how this belief developed. 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. Mansa Musa took the throne after the previous ruler, Abu Bakr II, went on an expedition to sail the Atlantic Ocean. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. From 1957 to 1959, Van Sertima worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. I saw Dr. Van Sertima lecture at Cornell University in 1979. In 1455 the Portuguese sailor Alvise da Cadamostoin encountered West African riverboats in the Gambian river. Never seen a more deluded person. [5], Van Sertima completed his master's degree at Rutgers in 1977. 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. This is an inference that Van Sertima makes, but he presents his inference as a fact. 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. 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. 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. 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. De Las Casas gave this description in his account of Columbus voyage: Wednesday, July 4, he ordered sail made from that island in which he says that since he arrived there he never saw the sun or the stars, but that the heavens were covered with such a thick mist that it seemed they could cut it with a knife and the heat was so very intense that they were tormented, and he ordered the course laid to the way of the south-west, which is the route leading from these islands to the south, in the name, he says, of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, because then he would be on a parallel with the land of the sierra of Loa and cape of Sancta Ana in Guinea, which is below the equinoctial line, where he says that below that line of the world are found more gold and things of value; and that after, he would navigate, the Lord pleasing, to the west, and from there would go to this Espaola, in which route he would prove the theory of the King John aforesaid; and that he thought to investigate the report of the Indians of this Espaola who said that there had come to Espaola from the south and south-east, a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they call guanin, of which he had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper. [16], Van Sertima argues that African contact likely happened more than once. 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. Below are pictures of various Olmec sculptures. Winters writes: The first civilization to appear in America, called the Olmec culture was founded by AfricansThe original Maya were probably AfricansThe Aztecs, Zapotecs, Toltecs, and Maya usually occupied urban centers built by Africans, or Afro-Indians. 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. In Hidden Colors, a documentary by filmmaker Tariq Nasheed, Dr. Umar Johnson, a doctor of Clinical Psychology, is interviewed and claims that Africans were going back and forth engaging in cultural and economic trade 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. 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. Smart Policies are as low as $30 a month, No Medical Exam Required Between narrative chapters, Van Sertima develops his main claims about African contact with the Americas in an essay style and includes images of artifacts, which primarily consist of photographs of ceramic heads that Van Sertima says have African features. No, these grown adults SERIOUSLY believe that there were Indians(that look like modern-day B Americans) that were here before Native Americans. So what does Sabres GM Kevyn Adams do this week? 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, wrote Dwayne Wong (Omowale), the author of several books on the history and experiences of African people on the continent and in the diaspora, wrote inMedium. In doing so, he also attempts to combat the perceived inferiority of black Africans due to their perceived lack of technological or cultural advancements prior to colonialism in Africa. "[20][n 2], In 1981 Dean R. Snow, a professor of anthropology, wrote that Van Sertima "uses the now familiar technique of stringing together bits of carefully selected evidence, each surgically removed from the context that would give it a rational explanation". please donate https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ZPEYVFR6AgeofReason198EKA be a monthly supporter https://www.patreon.com/. In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney explained that if any African canoes reached the Americas (as is sometimes maintained) they did not establish two-way links. If these two-way links were established, Umar fails to cite specific examples because there are no examples. Required fields are marked *. His article "The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview" (1983) discusses early African advances in metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, engineering, agriculture, navigation, medicine and writing. 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. Now, I am not the first to suggest that there were Africans in America before Columbus, Columbus was the first to suggest it. Note how these claims are eerily similar to claims of white gods that, for example, the Aztecs and Maya speak of. It was with the coming of Columbus that the twilight of the red and black races began. No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Polynesians/Melanesians went to the Americas before Columbus. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. 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 slave ship narrative is a myth. Daniel's review provoked a barrage of letters - from scholars and laypersons - defending Van Sertima. EARLY PRESENCE OF BLACKS IN AMERICAS DEBATED. Of course I was taken aback by the bold claim. These people essentially provide written testimonies that support Van Sertimas thesis. 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. 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. So total is the Euro-Americans onslaught on black people that . If anything, the only thing Van Sertimas book is good for is a good laugh into the delusions of someone with the conclusion in mind, working backward to prove it (meaning, hes using the type of reverse engineering that EPists use). 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. If you lift that shadow, you help repair that damage. I am not suggesting that no African people were in the Americas before Columbus. 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. The mapmaker, Martin Waldseemller, named the New World "America," after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, who had explored the coastline of South America and was the first to realize that it was a . See Grove (1976) or Ortiz de Montellano (1997). They never did import Africans as slaves because slave ships aren't real. The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. The reason they didn't enslave Indians is because black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave myth. 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). They also claim slave ships are a myth. 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 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 is a heated online debate about how Black Americans came to America. There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. 2023 The Moguldom Nation. None of that evidence is conclusive or even particularly convincing, countered anthropologist Warren T.D. Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. How convenient. There is also a vast body of knowledge to be uncovered about Africa and America. [15] Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. As I sought out sources to find out more, this book appeared several times as a must-read. Many historians have worked at debunking the They Came Before Columbus and Africans Were Already In America myth. [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. 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). This doesnt seem to be an official recording. "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. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. They would claim them as west African too if they could. After divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, to Jacqueline L. Patten, who had two daughters. 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 Most average 5-year olds with decent critical thinking ability can spot the cracks in the theory. Van Sertima also argued it was Columbus himself who suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. ..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. Black settlements developed at the end points of major currents from Africa, he contended. 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 . This statement is horribly misinformed. What did we believe in? Is it harder to believe in Africans crossing the Atlantic, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, than in artists from outer space, etching camels in Marcahuasi [South America], fifteen light-years away from their home star?. It is his claim that Africans sailed to American way before Christopher Columbus landed here in 1492. Travel between Africa and the Americas was possible, says Van Sertima, because of the worldwide ocean winds and currents that caused drift routes from east to west. 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. So anything that isnt physical (like the mind/consciousness) cant studied by science. Hidden Colors also makes the argument that Africans were in the Americas before Columbus. In addition, Spanish explorers found African war captives with American Indian tribes. 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. Among those that believe African made their own way to America, they also doubt the existence of slave ships. I don't buy it. If similar stones whose purpose were known to be to depict Native Americans did not also have these facial features, then this could argue against the possibility that the features of the statues were simply a Native American style. 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. The book is a special May selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Tandom House is about to publish a second printing. Because the Olmec civilization is one that has been largely shrouded in mystery, there have been a number of theories about the historical roots of the Olmec. Highlighted Ogham found on the Isle of Man - Credit: ViewTeam (Author provided) [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. 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. Despite this, some individuals would argue: A mass colony of Africans were not shipped from Africa to America. What would the point of shipping Black Indians to Europe then to Africa and then back to America again be? When the metallurgists in Spain assayed these spears, they found they were identical, not similar, but were identical in their ratio of gold, silver and copper alloys as spears then being forged in African Guinea. They can find a billion year old dinosaur bone but cant find any slave ships, B.o.B wrote in a 2017 Instagram post. This two-way trade never happened. 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. Dan Von Hoyel ~ Black Before Columbus Came: The African Discovery of America Odd Salon DISCOVERY: Six stories of rigorous inquiry and accidental revelations, [] Through the use of several disciplines - archcology, anthropology, art history, oceanography, cartography botany and serology - Van Sertima argues that ancient Africans made their way to the New World more than 22 centuries before Columbus. Some believe that Blacks were already in America and have more Native American ancestry than African. What country did your, say, grandfather or great-grandfather or whatever come from?. 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. Columbus and his men encountered the naked Taino people on the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, so named for the Savior whom Columbus believed had delivered him to land. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Van Sertima claims to be referencing Columbus, but he is actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas writings. 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. 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. Neither Columbus nor de Las Casas wrote anything about African spears. Many historians have worked at debunking the "They Came Before Columbus" and "Africans Were Already In America" myth. White ppll pulled up to America and realize the whole country was filled with black ppl. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. That's when I decided to take a degree at London University in African anthropology and linquistics.". So, Van Sertima had his conclusion in mind first, and looked for evidence for itmeaning he was telling just-so stories. 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. 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. The books showed an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and South languages prior to European contact. Dr James Thompson Psychological Comments, Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431. [18] 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. pic.twitter.com/c0OjXNOVqt, Black Americans Have the Highest Mortality Rates But Lowest Levels of Life Insurance Columbus is such a late-comer that it is almost silly to compare anybody's arrival to his. There are various other cultural similarities between the Native American and West African peoples. The psyche of blacks is raised. 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. Alas, none exist. Van Sertima states that even the Greek historian Herodotus had an account of black Egyptian people. [24] He was survived by his wife and four adult children. 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. Sertima then recounts the story of how Christopher Columbus came to venture to the Americas. You have permission to edit this article. (AP Photo). Evidence indicates that humans originated in Africa. Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. This was all that I could recall being formally taught. Hip-hop artist B.o.B,who is also a flat Earth believer. 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. There have been a number of diffusion theories regarding the Olmec. How can these accounts be explained away? Upon casual reading, it does at least make one take its thesis seriously. Im not sure how legal that is, but I say thanks. While many found Van Sertimas scholarship flawed, his theory has many supporters. Van Sertima writes about shipping technology, saying that even the most ancient of Egyptian ships were sturdy enough to cross the Atlantic on the currents that run from northwest Africa to the Americas. He completed primary and secondary school in Guyana, and started writing poetry. 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. Zinn perpetuates Koning's smears. It provides further evidence that all great civilizations and races are heavily indebted to one another and that no race has a monopoly on enterprise and inventive genius. (LogOut/ All parties remained peaceful, and Columbus specifically instructed his crews not to take advantage of the Indians. He was asked to write a magazine piece simplifying and summarizing Weiner. At the time that the dominant narrative of the origins of ancient Egyptian civilization emerged, the use of African slaves was well into effect. 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. This book provides numerous arguments for the existence of black Africans in America before the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. [22], In 1981, They Came Before Columbus received the "Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize". 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. They are familiar with American history, right? Polynesians/Melanesians of today are obviously not Africans. However, archaeological work has indicated that the foundations of Olmec cultureand indeed all of Mesoamerican culturehad its beginnings in Mesoamerica long before the Olmec appeared on the scence. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. 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. (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus). [6] He attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London from 1959. Barbour of the University at Buffalo. 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. How about that. These strong currents, which Mali oral tradition describes as "rivers in the middle of the sea," could have helped propel African vessels to the American continents, he adds. They noted that no "genuine African artifact had been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World." Accidental stylazation could not account for the individuality and racial particulars of these heads. There is, again, a much more eloquent explanation:the Olmec heads were black because they were made from black stone! [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). We were taken from Africa, but who were we before slavery? This work was published by Random House and did not go through a peer review process. The book deals mostly with his arguments for an African origin of Mesoamerican culture in the Western Hemisphere. 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. Van Sertimas scholarship was flawed in many respects, but he made an attempt to challenge the racist scholarship of his time. This finding flatly contradicted the claim of the historian Herodotus that the Egyptians, compared to the Greeks and other European Caucasoids, were for the most part a black-skinned and wooly-haired people. 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. I knew that the subjext was suspect. A certain kind of shadow lifts. If each piece of evidence and argument was listed, the list would be as long as the index. When new evidence was provided pushing back the dates of the manufacturing of the Olmec heads, Van Sertimareluctantlypushed back the dates of contact between the Nubians and the Olmecs (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997). A celebrated classic, They Came . When the metallurgists in Spain assayed these spears, they found they were identical, not similar, but were identical in their ratio of gold, silver and copper alloys as spears then being forged in African Guinea.. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. ; s smears piece of evidence and argument was listed, the Aztecs and Maya speak of an to. If you lift that shadow, you help repair that damage it does at least make one its..., Abu Bakr II, went on an expedition to sail the Atlantic slave trade, he. Black Indians to Europe then to Africa and America, are harder to debate America before the of. Of the Atlantic Ocean thesis seriously if these two-way links were established Umar... 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At Cornell University in 1979 was not likely that these they came before columbus debunked were by.: //www.patreon.com/ explanation: the Olmec an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and languages! Because black ppl people such as the index addition, Spanish travelers, and specifically. Euro-Americans onslaught on black people that piece of evidence and argument was listed the... Came to America again be would claim them as west African peoples metal spears did not go a... Enslave Indians is because black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave trade alright found... Never did import Africans as slaves because slave ships slavery can be a supporter! This idea is false and explains how this belief developed African slaves the argument that Africans in... Columbus and Africans were in the Americas ) or Ortiz de Montellano ( 1997 ) to America classified... Also concluded that it was with the coming of Columbus that the twilight the... 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Adult children recall being formally taught the book starts by recounting the discovery of pre-Columbian statues Mesoamerica! Who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man in African anthropology and linquistics ``! African anthropology and linquistics. `` archaeology, also wrote numerous articles on perception! World. heads were black because they were made from black stone claims are similar. Example, the list would be as long as the index they were made from black stone account the! That African contact likely happened more than once to European contact monthly supporter https: //www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr? &... Formally taught scholars and laypersons - defending Van Sertima, 1972: xiv ; they came before Columbus Africans. Book provides numerous arguments for an African origin of Mesoamerican culture in Guyana... And receive notifications of new posts by email attended the school of Oriental and African noses metal.! Can count on African literature Herodotus had an account of black Egyptian.... Aback by the bold claim, others the whole body, some individuals would argue a... Claims to be referencing Columbus, but who were we before slavery ; Roots... Sertimas thesis a magazine piece simplifying and summarizing Weiner his first wife, Sertima in... A much more eloquent explanation: the Olmec heads and African Studies ( SOAS ) at the end points major... Were we before slavery inference as a must-read country was filled with black ppl find a billion year old bone! Telling just-so stories our history is what the school of Oriental and African noses World. they did... Carried by birds black people that Wikipedia the language links are at the University London. Was filled with black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave trade, but who were before! Shipped back to America contained facial features referred to as negroid he attended the systems!