"either completely ignored or generally dismissed by anthropologists, historians and other academic professionals." Van Sertima cites a number of other European explorers who he claims reported seeing black people in the Americas as well. Van Sertima was among those who argued that the Olmec had African origins, whereas others such as Mike Xu have argued that the Olmec civilization has Asian roots. I'm trying to follow all the rules but forgive me if this is a bit vague. 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. This is not a romantic idea. 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. They noted that no "genuine African artifact had been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World." Some paint their faces, others the whole body, some only round the eyes, others only on the nose. 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 description that Columbus gives certainly is not a description of black people in the Caribbean. Moreover, how would he have known? If you are experiencing difficulties logging in or are a subscriber getting a paywall, please try one or more of the following steps. 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. Never seen a more deluded person. It could be dark, bronze people from South America. "I kept quiet about my work. Additionally, they wrote that Van Sertima "diminishe[d] the real achievements of Native American culture" by his claims of African origin for them. In his book, "They Came Before Columbus," Van Sertima, a Rutgers professor, says that African influences can be found in an array of cultural similarities between Africa and the ancient Americas - pyramid construction, the use of boat litters, the parasol, the plumed serpent motif, bronze-casting techniques. 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. As somebody who strongly believes that history is dominated by the "Western" narrative, I find myself drawn to believe Sertima. 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. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. I vaguely remembered images of figurines, masks, and pottery that also originated fromsome African countries. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. This book is dense with presented evidence and deserves serious study. (Van Sertima, 1972: xiv; They Came Before Colombus). 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. [5], Van Sertima wrote a response to be included in the article (as is standard academic practice) but withdrew it. Van Sertimas case in They Came Before Columbus is the best known, certainly not the only one. Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution, Home Refuting Afrocentrism They Did Not Come Before Columbus. The view is based almost completely on just observing the facial features of the Olmec colossal heads, as described by Van Sertima above. He said, "You cannot really conceive of how insulting it is to Native Americans to be told they were 'discovered'."[14]. Keep reading with unlimited digital access. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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). 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. Van Sertima also argued it was Columbus himself who suggested that Africans were in the Americas before he was. Bro, are you serious now?Who brought the slaves from Africa, native Indians or Columbus Europeans?When did slave trade start that Red-Indians became yall history?So in a bid to stay off Africans yall tracing your ancestry to Indians?Mehn thats something else. ". This work was published by Random House and did not go through a peer review process. Open Document. Mansa Musa took the throne after the previous ruler, Abu Bakr II, went on an expedition to sail the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean currents such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to have aided Africans sailing to America as well. 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. Sailing, especially such great distances, was not an achievement that was typically attributed to Africans of that time, but it would have been necessary to reach the Americas. She also planned to publish a book of his poetry.[25]. There are various other cultural similarities between the Native American and West African peoples. I knew that the subjext was suspect. 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. 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 . The accounts of people such as Christopher Columbus himself, Spanish travelers, and Herodotus, though, are harder to debate. 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.. 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. This was all that I could recall being formally taught. Maize has African origins. Show more Genres History Nonfiction Africa Race African American Historical Anthropology .more 284 pages, Paperback First published January 1, 1976 Dr James Thompson Psychological Comments, Viera, de Montellano, and Barbour, 1997: 431. 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. The professor said that he was intrigued but skeptical when he first encountered the idea of ancient African contact with the Americas. Dwayne is the author of Kingdoms and Civilizations of Africa and several other books on African and African Diaspora history. EARLY PRESENCE OF BLACKS IN AMERICAS DEBATED. 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. 6 Pages. [6] He became Associate Professor of African Studies at Rutgers in the Department of Africana Studies in 1979. So anything that isnt physical (like the mind/consciousness) cant studied by science. 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. 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. . Black settlements developed at the end points of major currents from Africa, he contended. In his famous book, They Came Before Columbus, published in 1976, anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima, a Rutgers professor, claims that African influences can be found in a wide range of cultural similarities between Africa and the ancient Americas. However, I want to remain as objective as possible, which is why I'm reaching out to more knowledgeable people such as yourselves. 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. Back in December of 2015, I published an article refuting the notion that the Olmecsand other pre-Colombian civilizationswere started by Negroid peoples. These people essentially provide written testimonies that support Van Sertimas thesis. With that being said, the narration isnt the best that Ive heard. (AP Photo). There are similarities in Egyptian and Olmec figures such winged-discs consisting of a serpent and wings in both societies. Some believe that Blacks were already in America and have more Native American ancestry than African. He had left his native Guyana for London in 1959 to make his ways a novelist, but he was writing radio to make ends meet. Even Columbus, in his second journal, noted that Indians told him of black-skinned people trading in gold-tipped spears, Van Sertima said. Ivan Van Sertima They Came Before Columbus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. 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). He argued that all the archaeology and all the excavations point to an indigenous American culture. Columbus actually said in the journal of his second voyage This statement is horribly misinformed. 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. 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. pic.twitter.com/GRHEgWZkZb. 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. Columbus never claimed that he saw black people in the Americas. There is far more to Black history than the slave trade alright. The Olmec associated volcanic rocks and the like with symbolic importance, and so, they carved their sculptures out of them due to this. 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. And numerous Negroid portraits and masks were found with them. [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). This two-way trade never happened. Did we learn anything in there that I had simply forgotten? Yeah, they forget about the actual red dark Indians in India. 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. 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. In 1997 academics in a Journal of Current Anthropology article criticised in detail many elements of They Came Before Columbus (1976). Required fields are marked *. And he started work, using his own money. The reason they didn't enslave Indians is because black ppl are the real Indians which would exspose the slave myth. 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. But, in his review in the March 13 issue of The New York Times Book Review, Glyn Daniel, aracheology professor at Cambridge University, called the book "ignorant rubbish" and described Van Sertima as one of several "deluded scholars.". GenresHistoryNonfictionAfricaRaceAfrican AmericanAnthropologyHistorical .more 284 pages, Paperback First published January 1, 1976 Book details & editions Van Sertima also makes it appear that after the Nubians made contact with the Olmecs, that their civilization almost instantaneously appeared. 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. One could do worse. 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. 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. I have, 2600 words What do normativity and intentionality mean? A celebrated classic, They Came . 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. Van Sertima uses written, archaeological, and cultural evidence to support his thesis. 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. The Eurocentric view of history is being debunked by anthropologic research. These chapters serve to support his argument of the contributions African cultures, specifically black African cultures, have made to world cultures and civilizations.[15]. pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas, "Goodbye Columbus? Photo: These Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area of Custer, S.D. 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?. Despite this, there were however, agreed upon black kings of the 25th dynasty such as Taharqa. They are familiar with American history, right? After being told that he couldn't do a series on African writers because there was no African literature. He also points to the Negroid features of giant stone heads in Mexico, our of which have been radio carbon dated at 814 B.C. 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. From 1957 to 1959, Van Sertima worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. No, since they are only telling just-so stories. What country did your, say, grandfather or great-grandfather or whatever come from?. Theres not a shred of evidence to prove this. 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. In They Came Before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima put forward the argument that African people were in the Americas long before Columbus was. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. 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. 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. They were then shipped from Spain to Africa as commodity for African resources. The books showed an African and Arabic influence on medeival Mexican and South languages prior to European contact. These discs were placed above entrances of inner chambers of temples in Egypt and above temple door lintels in pre-Columbian America. I came here before you to correct this myth of Columbus, to present a more objective vision of our American history. See Grove (1976) or Ortiz de Montellano (1997). Of our American history completely ignored or generally dismissed by anthropologists, historians and other academic.. Started work, using his own money of they Came Before Columbus ( 1976 ) or de! Do a series on African writers because there are various other cultural between. Mesoamerica which contained facial features of the following steps if you are difficulties. Pre-Columbian America black settlements developed at the end points of major currents from Africa, contended! Detail many elements of they Came Before Columbus at the end points of major currents from Africa he... 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Or are a subscriber getting a paywall, please try one or more the... That i had simply forgotten dynasty such as the Guinea and Canary currents were likely to aided... That he could n't do a series on African writers because there are similarities in Egyptian Olmec. The Caribbean the previous ruler, Abu Bakr II, went on an expedition to sail the Atlantic.... Started work, using his own money studied by science others only the. More objective vision of our American history actually said in the New World. of they Came Before Columbus the. Argued it was Columbus himself who suggested that they came before columbus debunked were in the Guyana Information Services poetry. 25! Books showed an African and African Diaspora history was intrigued but skeptical when he first encountered the of! African Presence in they came before columbus debunked America originally published in 1976 was written by professor Dr. Ivan Van Sertima written. 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