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. All of these claims are incrediblewhich means that they deserve incredible evidence in order to verify them. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Furthermore, Van Sertima, quite wildly, claims that since the Olmec heads were black then they must have represented African people. 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. Zinn perpetuates Koning's smears. In the documentary, Umar Johnson claims that Africans were going back and forth engaging in cultural and economic trade before Columbus. Van Sertimas scholarship was flawed in many respects, but he made an attempt to challenge the racist scholarship of his time. Change). 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. ", Van Sertima said he didn't travel much to research the book. It could be dark, bronze people from South America. The spears, he claimed, were identical to weapons from African Guinea. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Moreover, he suggests that an early 14th-century Atlantic expedition headed by Mali King Abu Bakari II may have reached the Americas. So below are my questions: Is there any truth or evidence that strongly supports the argument that Africans arrived in the Americas before Columbus? Haslip-Vierra, de Montellano and Barbour. [5], Van Sertima wrote a response to be included in the article (as is standard academic practice) but withdrew it. I may hear about anything from the cultural revolution, to ancient Chinese dynasties, to Genghis Kan. 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. "How many of us know the African influence on ancient Greece and Rome? However, Columbus actually sent back on a mail boat to Spain, samples of these gold-tipped metal spears. Even Columbus, in his second journal, noted that Indians told him of black-skinned people trading in gold-tipped spears, Van Sertima said. This book provides numerous arguments for the existence of black Africans in America before the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Your email address will not be published. [6] He became Associate Professor of African Studies at Rutgers in the Department of Africana Studies in 1979. "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. [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. There are many similarities between Egyptian civilization and Native American cultures. [6] He attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London from 1959. Hip-hop artist B.o.B,who is also a flat Earth believer. 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]. Saying slave ships are a myth is a whole new level of ignorance . Polynesians/Melanesians of today are obviously not Africans. Van Sertima also makes it appear that after the Nubians made contact with the Olmecs, that their civilization almost instantaneously appeared. 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. 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. A celebrated classic, They Came . 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. Van Sertima claims to be referencing Columbus, but he is actually referencing Bartolom de Las Casas writings. He devotes Chapter 8 to discussing the beneficial innovations and flourishing of culture under Nubian rulers in Egypt. With that being said, the narration isnt the best that Ive heard. 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. And he started work, using his own money. (Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431). Many historians have worked at debunking the They Came Before Columbus and Africans Were Already In America myth. For example, whereas Van Sertima argued that Africans influenced the civilization of the Americas, Clyde Ahmad Winters goes further by suggesting that Africans founded the Olmec and all other major American civilization, which is a claim that Van Sertima never made. 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. There are various other cultural similarities between the Native American and West African peoples. 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. These chapters serve to support his argument of the contributions African cultures, specifically black African cultures, have made to world cultures and civilizations.[15]. Occasionally, Ive been asked by my colleagues some form of the question, Where are you from?, No, like where is your family from? Your email address will not be published. Also according to Polish craniologist Wiercinsky 13.5% of skeletons in a pre-classic Olmec cemetery of Tlatilco were negroid which decreased in percentage over time, indicating intermixture with the native population over time. In the first place, there are no Egyptian historical records which suggest that the Egyptians ever sailed to America or even attempted such a journey. 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. West May 9, 1977 Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans. 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. 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. 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. If you are experiencing difficulties logging in or are a subscriber getting a paywall, please try one or more of the following steps. 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. [23] Sertima was inducted into the "Rutgers African-American Alumni Hall of Fame" in 2004. Over the, 2050 words Introduction Reparations refers to the act or process of righting a historical wrong. Unfortunately, the scholarship that he has inspired has tended to be of a worse quality than Van Sertimas was. He published several annual compilations, volumes of the journal dealing with various topics of African history. The two likely were not even alive at the same time period. 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. This is not a romantic idea. 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. Theres not a shred of evidence to prove this. - Ivan Van Sertima Weiant, who had a PhD in archaeology, also wrote numerous articles on extrasensory perception and was an active member of the. The book deals mostly with his arguments for an African origin of Mesoamerican culture in the Western Hemisphere. 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. 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. Van Sertima quit and wrote the series for an independent company. 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. The belief that Africans were in the Americas before the Europeans were makes sense to me. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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 . Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution, Home Refuting Afrocentrism They Did Not Come Before Columbus. 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. She also planned to publish a book of his poetry.[25]. 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. My best guess would be from somewhere(s) in west and/or maybe central Africa. 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). 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