Customer Reviews

African Presence in Early Europe (Journal of African Civilizations)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a compilation book by various authors, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, who also contributed one chapter himself. The chapters treat the following contents: The evolution of the "caucasoid" and the inhabitation of Earth; the first (black skinned) homo sapiens settlers in Europe; original black inhabitation of ancient Greece and later influence in the classic period of Mediterranean Europe; black popes and madonnas; the definitions of the "Moors" and their contribution on the Iberian peninsula and beyond; other blacks in Western Europe inclusive a focus on black women; ancient black settlers on the British isles, Greenland, in Scandinavia and the Caucasus; biographies of (black) Abraham Hannibal, Alexander Pushkin and Ira Aldridge in Russia and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges in France; parallels between Shakespeare's Othello and real life Leo Africanus.

This book was written in 1985, I read the ninth edition of 2006. The historical data is largely still fresh. However, human knowledge currently doubles every five years. Therefore, I strongly advise to skip the chapter on paleoanthropology and most certainly the two on genetics. Instead read one or two very recent genetic books. Ivan Van Sertima would be thankful, as all the new findings in these areas support his claims more than the lacking data possibly could in the ancient genetic years of the 1980s. Since there is no respective update/word of caution in this new printing I have subtracted one star of an otherwise simply astonishing book. And I thought I knew a bit about African influence on Europe already! Interesting, how the system makers and keepers were/are able not to make this knowledge known to the larger public. Considering that some of the chapters are rather reviews and updates of yet older, some indeed much older books.

This book doesn't only provide information in the sense of new/revealed data, but occasionally indeed in an enlightening way. I wish, some chapters would have been followed up in the re-prints. Also, for the massive African influence on Europe, many subjects could be merely mentioned and my guess is, some had to be left out. Yet nobody interested in the subject matter should leave out this incredible work.

"Snowden approached...all of the writings of the 'classical writers' of Greece and Rome for the actual references made to Africa and Africans...Ethiopians were the yardstick by which blackness was measured...European family crests showing black faces and coarse hair are accompanied frequently by such African derivatives as Mawr, Moore, Moorehead, Morris, Morrison, Mora, Maurice, Mareau, Moretti, Muir, Mohr, meaning a person from Mauritania [the Moors]. Sometimes the label is more indirect with names such as Schwartz, Schwartzkopf, and Schwartzmann, which are German for Black, Blackhead and Blackman...

...the physical evidence for a [black African] presence in Greece and Rome is compelling and extensive...including photographs of carvings, pottery, paintings and coins...it is only because the racism of the present is projected by today's authors into an ancient world that did not know racism as we do, that we have become so misinformed about Africans, and therefore misinformed about history."

from AFRICAN PRESENCE IN EARLY EUROPE
"Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience"
A review by Asa G. Hilliard

And now it's time for a really good book.

Ivan Van Sertima, genius anthropologist and author of numerous critically acclaimed books including the international best- seller THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS, is the mastermind behind this collection of essays. These essays on the largely untold history of people of African descent and their influence on Western Civilization are from authors who have been all but ignored or maligned by much of the scholarly classical intelligentsia for decades (and in some cases centuries). However, thanks to the changing times, their work and historical perspectives--made practically impregnable with mountains of corroborative archealogical, literary and anthropological evidence--are coming closer to becoming the new standard with each passing generation. If you're a person who has a passing interest in this thing that people have been labelling "Afrocentric" scholarship for generations now, even from a modern sociological perspective as opposed to historical, this book, in its quilt of various writers, disciplines, perspectives, styles and subjects looped together with the thematic umbrella of Africa's cultural centrality and preeminence in the ancient world and its influence on every Western world in history thereafter, is a great place to start. Just the same, I would say this is more a book for anyone who, instead of being merely turned on by the intellectual side of the politics of Multiculturalism and Identity in modern times (which, unfortunately, is just another subtle form of applied racism), has found a spark go off in their minds about the subject matter in particular and what it means to the modern human's soul.

With Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell and countless other figures of African descent in late 20th Century culture--not to mention Technology and Globilization's obliterating of the old plantation economic rules--America and Europe has had no need to hold so tightly onto the old rules of racist perspectives on other cultures to maintain a sense of intellectual order or economic/social supremacy. This has been evidenced by many aspects of today's world. Yet it is precisely this visible progress that makes such books as this, returning to a sober, balanced perspective on our actual past--our world history--MORE important, as opposed to not. There was a time--in fact, when most of the authors listed began writing--when such scholarship was taken as seriously as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock on stage. Now times have changed such that the Aryan intellectual paradigms that still govern so much of the unconscious of Western scholarship (wihtout the majority of us even realizing to what degree it has shaped our perspective on society and ourselves) have lost their hold on the world enough to let the light of truth shine in.

There is so much information about the African contribution to world civilization that merely contemplating it and its spiritual/cultural implications will create a transformative hunger in you for knowledge that otherwise would have never materialized. This book is a great appetizer in that context--and a great introduction to more than two centuries of wonderful full course meals.

As is usually the case with these kinds of books, they need an editor to fix several typographical errors that are pretty unnecessary. That and some of the writings that come off a little bit too much like sermons as opposed to lessons keep this from being a five star book for me. But none of that will stop you from from being fed by it; the bibliographies of each writer's essay alone make the book worth its weight in gold.

With works as varied, provocative and mind-blowing as Martin Bernal's lecture on the actual evidence of Ancient pre-Hellenic Greece's colonization by ancient Egypt, English author/professor Edward Scobie's revealing of the history of Black African Popes in the early Catholic church, and many others, this will easily become an important book in the library of anyone who owns it, regardless of ethnic background. Enjoy.

I guess rather then Afrocentrist we should rely on "Eurocentric" bias. Van Sertima only uses records mainly from European sources that have been repressed. Pictures, manuscripts, eyewitness accounts, but that's not good enough for some people. They would rather believe Africa stood still for 1000's of years until the Europeans saw that the coast was clear,picked the fleas and ticks off of themselves, grabbed their dog, then their woman, crawled out of the caves, and lead everyone to civilization. I go with Dr. Naim Akbar, I think a lot of white america needs to be put on the couch. The younger generation though seems to be alot different than the old guard though. But many of you have what's called "perceptual distortion, denial of reality"
So sad...

Just one of many in the vast portfolio of the master teacher Dr. Ivan Van Sertima. Splendid and replete. You will be sorely missed (RIP.)

To the person who asked the simplistic question on why Europeans, during and after the slave trade, only found 'primitive' cultures with 'no technology' I say this:

YOU must learn how to understand historical records. What do you think Europeans found in African with the pyramids? Yeah, the pyramids were built BEFORE the Greeks came to Egypt. Egypt, no matter what museums have done, is PART OF AFRICA.

Where did the Egyptians get the technology to BUILD the pyramids? FROM NUBIA. Oh, let's not forget that the Romans fought the Nubians to a draw (during the great Julius Ceasar rule), and when the Nubians sued for peace, the Romans were only too eager to say 'yes'.

The Nubians took their technology of 'step pyramids' to western Africa, to most likely the Shonghai or Mali and from there to Mexico. The step pyramids in Mexico stem directly from the step pyramids of Nubia, and date AFTER the step pyramids of Nubia.

And, according to carbon dating, the giant heads of basalt, the 'black heads' of the olmecs, are dated to AT LEAST 600-800 BC, which predates even the famed Greek Civilizations. Archeologists, for the most part, have conceded that these heads ARE that old and ARE of Western African design.


The British found out about technology and strategy/tactics when the faced their own 'Custer's Last Stand' at the Battle of Isandhlwana in 1878, when almost 2000 British troops were annihilated by at the hands of the Zulu.

I won't even get into the centers of learning in Africa such as Timbuktu and Alexandria. Oh, before he whines that Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, yes, I know that. However, the Greeks didn't view the world in 'color'. In fact, they sent many of their most brilliant minds to AFRICA (present day Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan) to study. The study of Philosophy, in fact, comes from ancient Egypt/Ethiopia. The Greeks who studied in what is today called 'Africa' wrote back in their correspeondance, free of racism, of what they learned.

So, to the racists and Eurocentricists who simply MUST deny any good coming out of Africa, please understand that knowledge and ignorance is in ALL people and comes from ALL lands. If you don't understand this, then continue to live in ignorance.

For many reviewers who lack an essential knowledge of their perceived history....The acclaimedd and respected anthropologist Sertimas assertions are wild and untethered..In truth All of which he has laid down gives serious weight the standard policy of colonialisic powers re-writing history..(It was done with the Indians, Hawaiians, Aborigines etc) The policy of re-education to the established order is basic and can be expected. Dis-information agents working forf the governemnt are out at full swing, seeking to discredit the truth that Africa the continent, the human birthplace gave birth to Also civilization, invention and human thought as we know it.. To know that Rome hated the British and controlled the Anglo society for over 400-700 years bringing in Africans, coupled with the fact the Europe is only 15-20 miles from Africa (not to mention the fact that between 1440 -1773 hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Guineas were imported into Europe with no hint of these people today which were mulatooed into the populace) brings further the conclusion that there is no pure race of white..Einstein said that humans are a conglomeration of so many admixtures that no pure race remains... .Shopenhauer said there is no such thing as a white race...just a bleached one... DNA proves inexorably that we are ALL Africans out of exile!! All achievement and invention is African....Period!!

African/Black people are the original humans. Everyone else are the children of African people no matter what your physical being is. It is what it is.

This is a great book. I am so happy that people of African descent are beginning to expose the truth.

In fact, Europe was the last place to be peopled by the Africans.

I've read this book along with Ancient and Modern Britions, and I think the brother did a great job. The last reviewer doesn't know what he is talking about and he needs to do his homework. Any true historian, which he is not, would know that Africans were in Europe for a long period of time before slavery. Remember, it was Africans(Black people)who were the original BLACK KNIGHTS of Europe!

This book and its various companion volumes are edited by Ivan van Sertima, a particularly extreme Afro-centrist. Now, I'm not against historians unearthing early (or late) African presences in Europe. Such a book could indeed be very illuminating. If no such books exist, Black scholars should write them. Or White scholars, for that matter.

But the books by Van Sertima are, I'm afraid to say, utter nonsense. Sorry, Ivan! The author is an extreme hyper-diffusionist, who believes that civilization started in Africa, and that Africans then spread it all over the world. Apparently, everyone was Black African: Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, the builders of Angkor Wat, even the Olmecs in Central America. Come again? This is presumably the Black nationalist alternative to White supremacist hyper-diffusionism, where everyone is White instead: from Quetzalcoatl to the ancient Chinese, even the Zulu (I kid you not). However, it is a very bad alternative, simply reversing Euro-centrism.

"African presence in Early Europe" is very disconcerting. One example is its discussion of Herodotus, who claimed that Pharao Sesostris conquered "Europe" and "Asia". From this, one contributor draws the conclusion, that Sesostris actually did conquer what we today call Europe and Asia, including northern Europe with Scandinavia! This is rather like suggesting, that since Dubya is "American" president, he's in charge of everything from Greenland to Patagonia. (Well, maybe he thinks he is?) Of course, Herodotus was refering to Asia Minor and the European Black Sea region.

Further, the book claims that Pygmies lived in Scandinavia in ancient times. The proof? Legends about trolls! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that statement. Frankly, it would make any Scandinavian laugh. The authors also believe that some Norsemen must have been African, since one of them was nicknamed "the Black". But other Norsemen were nicknamed "the Red", for instance the discoverer of Greenland, Erik the Red, or the Swedish king Hakan the Red. Yet, nobody claims they were American Indians.

This book may be interesting to those who study extreme forms of "alternative history", being essentialy a Black version of it, a sort of Black "Da Vinci Code". But those seriously interested in whatever impact Blacks might have had on Europe, should look eleswhere.

No book can have such an impact as this one. The truth about ancient civilizations wgo entered the inferior areas of western-europe