Customer Reviews

African Presence in Early America

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I've often wondered if (why) people deny that the Australian "aboriginals" were African or of African ancestry. (Are they European, of Chinese extraction, Arabs? or just created from a vacuum?) If this is true and they are of African descent, and since they have been in Australia for over 30,000 years, what makes folks think that these same phenotype Africans couldn't have lived in North and South America, even before the so called "Olmecs" and Africans were all over the globe.... But that doesn't fit the European cultural-political purpose and he who has the gold (resources and institutions) writes the history.

Deeper than just pictures, so save the slideshow!

This volume presents what is presently known about the links between Africa and America before the age of Columbus. It makes a convincing case for pre-Columbian contacts between Africa and America before the era of the slave trade. The contributors draw upon the evidence of cultures in private collections and findings from excavations, and evidence of ancient African mathematics, astronomy, map-making, scripts, navigations, trade routes, pyramidal structures, linguistic connections, and technological and ritual complexes. The volume is profusely illustrated. Many readers will find the evidence presented here startling.

Ivan Van Sertima is professor of African studies at Rutgers University. He has been visiting professor at Princeton University and lectured at more than one hundred colleges and universities. Professor Ivan Van Sertima's pioneering work in linguistics and anthropology has appeared in numerous scholarly journals. He edits the Journal of African Civilizations, which has greatly changed the way in which African history and culture are taught and studied.

In 1983 he edited a book titled Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. He also treated that topic in his contribution to the volume African Renaissance, published in 1999 as a record of the conference held in Johannesburg in September 1998 on the theme of the African Renaissance. His article (pp. 305-330) is titled "The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview". In it he presents early African advances in metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, engineering, agriculture, navigation, medicine and writing. He notes that such higher learning, in Africa as elsewhere, was the preserve of elites in the centers of civilizations, rendering them very vulnerable in the event (as happened in Africa) of the destruction of those centers.

Some of his works include Blacks in Science, Nile Valley Civilizations, African Presence in Early America, Black Women in Antiquity, Egypt Revisited, Egypt: Child of Africa, African Presence in Early Europe, Golden Age of the Moor, African Presence in the Art of the Americas, Great Black Leaders, Great African Thinkers (co-edited with Larry Obadele Williams), and African Presence in Early Asia (co-edited with Professor Runoko Rashidi). In 1998 Transaction Press produced produced Van Sertima's Early America Revisited, the definitive statement on the subject.

I found this book and the subject interesting when I first read it,which is why I first gave it four stars. After reading it I eventually came across critics of this book. They did raise some interesting and obvious counters to many of Van Sertima's claims,such as,why didn't Van Sertima seriously consider that the Olmec heads were probably the faces of Indians in Mexico and not those of Egyptian/Nubians?

Do the Olmec heads look African at first glance? Yes, but when compared to the faces of Mexican area Indians,there's also a similarity between them and the Olmecs stone heads. Also, Van Sertima uses the seven braids on the back of one of the Olmec heads as proof of their Africanism,but you will have a hard time finding an ancient Egyptian or Nubian match for this. Most paintings and sculptures of Egyptians and Nubians show them with full headed braid styles,and not with just seven braids. So far no Olmecs heads have been found with a full headed braid style like the Egyptians and Nubians.

As far as Alexander Von Wuthenau's collection of terra cottas potraying African faces. I've read that Von Wuthenau's terra cottas have been declared fakes by pre-Colombian experts because they weren't excuvated from any controlled archeological sites. So I guess that baically means that no one is exactly sure where in Mexico Alexander Von Wuthenau got his terra cotta figures. I'd be interested in hearing Van Sertima's response to the Von Wuthenau collection being declared fakes. These and other counters to Van Sertiam's claims are why I feel this topic definitly needs to be debated more.

Length:: 6:13 Mins

This video is a rebuttal to some of the claims made by Van Sertima (and Clyde Winters on the side) but primarily Van Sertima in his three books, They Came before Columbus, Early America Revisited, and African Presence in Early America (Which he co-authored with other hyperdiffusionists and afrocentrics). I read all three to get a better grasp of what was being claimed. Neither Van Sertima or his contributors are primary researchers. None studied archaeology, linguistics or anthropology to any degree to claim expertise in the subject. In fact what they do is comb other people's research and/or writings in search of any quotes they can use to support their theiories. They are both known for using outdated, refuted, and even misquoted studies and to ignore statements in later studies or even IN THE SAME STUDY or the SAME AUTHOR which categorically rebutt these Pseudo Historian's claims.

Since the first migrations across the Beringian coastal regions, archaeological and anthropological evidence has spoken of a population that migrated from Asia and would be the founders, not only of modern Native Americans, but also of modern Asians. As Asia has shown diversity that spans from Australian Aborigines and Melanesians to South Asians to the Siberian Yupik. These same phenotypes have been reflected in Native American morphology. Since the first studies of ancient skulls like Peñon woman and Luzia we have seen a morphological continuity that spans many phenotypes and is still in existence today. Olmecs show this variety of phenotypes in their sculptures. Excavations in nearby Tlatilco have shown similarity in phenotype to modern Native Americans as well. In all excavations sundadont and sinodont populations have been found and neither of these dental patterns exist in African populations that means they developed in populations that had already migrated out of Africa, and could not exist in either Egyptian or Mande populations. Since Luzia and Peñon woman to the extinct Pericu, and the modern Huichol, Fuegians, Botocudos, Xingu, Moche and others, the thick lips and features seen in Olmec sculpture and modern Native populations have always been there. They are not an import from another continent but direct descendants of the earliest Paleolithic people on the Asian continent who migrated to the Americas. Olmecs were products of the Americas.

A better version of this video exists in the reviews for Van Sertima's paperback version of"They came before Columbus". I uploaded a smaller flv file her but the other one is a better quality wmv file.