They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On Saturday evening, March 9, 1493, a week after Columbus had been driven by a storm into Lisbon, following his first voyage to the Indies,..." (more)
Key Phrases: oral smoking, mummy packs, purple industry, New York, West Africa, South America (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This controversial book by Ivan Van Sertima, the Guyanese historian, linguist, and anthropologist, claims that Africans had been to the New World centuries before Columbus arrived there in 1492. Citing--among other things--the huge Negroid-looking Olmec heads of Central Mexico and the similarities between the Aztec and Egyptian calendars and pyramid structures, Van Sertima pieces together a hidden history of pre-Columbian contact between Africans and Native Americans. He also puts forth the possibility that Columbus may have already known about a route to the Americas from his years in Africa as a trader in Guinea. The ideas in this book have been debated and discussed since its first publication in 1976; even those who choose not to believe Van Sertima's theories should take his argument seriously. --Eugene Holley, Jr.

Review

?Fascinating.?
?The Atlantic Monthly

?An immensely impressive book . . . well-written and clear.?
?Essence

?I can?t praise this book enough! I kept shaking my head over its power.?
?Ishmael Reed

?Comprehensive and convincing . . . a big boost to black cultural history.?
?Publishers Weekly
-- Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (November 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394402456
• ISBN-13: 978-0394402451
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #303,309 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars He builds on credible evidence, July 28, 2000

By A Customer

Sertima has presented a thoery that is not "wild afrocentric babble." Its very plausible for the following reasons:

Most everyone is familiar with the time period of the Dark Ages, which lasted from the fall of the Roman Empire until about the 1200 or 1300's. It was a time when people were intellectually non-progressive, when the average peasent/serf never traveled 20 miles from the place of his birth. What people do forget is that the Dark Age was only a Western European phenomenon. The rest of Asia and Africa were steadily advancing.

One reviewer said that Africans had no ocean trade routes with other peoples. In fact, the East African coast was dotted with powerful city states that traded all over the Indian Ocean, including China. And on the West Coast, Africans did not need trade routes per se, because half of Europe was already under their complete domination through the Islamic Empire (black Moors).

Is it a coincidence that Spain and Italy were the first two European countries to climb out of the Dark Ages? No. Italy's trade routes with Africa long brought it into contact with Moslem and Chinese advances. And Spain; Spain was part of Islam! On the streets of Cardoba, Spain you would have seen Africans, Moslems, and a bunch of other races. By the way, the Moslems invented the magnetic compass and the astrolabe. This same Moslem learning flourished at the world first university; in Timbaktu. Timbaktu was in Mali, West Africa. In this climate how could West Africans not have known about sailing and trade routes?

Incidently, where was Columbus originaly from? Italy. Which country did he go to and got financing for his trip? Spain. Strangly, the same countries we just mentioned as having had close contact with Africa for centuries.

With this background, now you can look at Sertima's book with an open mind. Anyone who thinks that this book is "Afrocentric babble" is either unfamiliar with history or afraid of the truth.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a shockingly convincing well researched thesis, September 24, 2004

By	Jeffrey Carey (willingboro, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first time I heard Dr. Ivan Van Sertima speak was at Lincoln University a small historically black college in Pennslyvania. Dr. Van Sertima gave a powerful lecture about the African Presence in America before Columbus, a topic I never heard of before and honestly doubted it's validity.I thought I would leave the lecture only convienced that Van Sertima was a crank and his thesis was a fraud, but in fact the opposite happened. His speech was so articulate and his lecture so well researched and amazingly documented I decided I had to read his book and research the topic on my own. if skeptics think this book is solely for Afrocentrist they are wrong this book is very scholarly it gives botanical,cartographical,linguistic,artistic, and historical evidience in order to make a strong case for the African presence in America. Van Sertima shows us african cotton found in America.He shows the written accounts of the conquistadors themselves, Columbus and Balboa record the presence of Africans already arriving in America, in fact Balboa eyewitnessed Africans in Central America fighting among the "Indian" population..He highlights the mysterious Piri Reis map that shows Antartica mapped before it was covered with ice,when was the only time this could happen? 4,000 B.C.,the point is ancient man had the nautical skill to travel the world at a very early date. He touches on the journeys of Thor Heyerdahl and his ship the Ra successfully crossing the Atlantic, proving that ancient man could travel the high seas. I personally researched on my own the parallels between the Egyptian god(Osiris)and American god(Queztatcoatl)both are virgin born both are ressurection gods, it is amazing.Another enigma would be the cocaine found in the stomach of RamesesII and in many other Egyptian mummies how is it that a New World crop is found in Africa if contact was not made...scholars answer this evidience with silence.One of course can not leave out the colossal Olmec heads with clearly African features with braided hair, and of course the parallel of pyramids found in both cultures Africa and the Americas.Some say that the Olmec heads could be Pacific Islanders or people from South East Asia, but that does not explain all the other pieces of evidience Van Sertima shows, like for instance the identical reed boats used on the Nile by Nubians and on the Amazon or the hieroglyphs and the sun worship.The parallels are almost to the point of exhausting.This book is hard to explain away, and I advise all serious researches and historians to read it....challenge yourself.

35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More work is needed in this area, October 31, 2001

By	Ed Gibbon www.congocookbook.com (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

Ivan Van Sertima's "They Came Before Columbus" focuses on the idea that ancient Africans sailed to the Americas before 1492. It is a fascinating introduction to the idea of African-American diffusionism. Van Sertima casts a very wide net, cataloging the possibility of voyages to the Americas by Phoenicians and Egyptians in ancient times, and West Africans in the centuries before Columbus.

The evidence (similarity of American and Egyptian pyramids, European encounters with dark-skinned people in the Americas before trans-Atlantic slavery, Native American and West African folktales and oral history, New World crops in the Old World and vice-versa prior to 1492, linguistic similarities between West Africans and Native Americans, ancient American statues with Negroid features, Columbus's contact with African sailors, etc.) presented in this book is continually interesting, and is enough to convince someone who wants to believe it, but it is never quite conclusive enough to convince a skeptic.

At some points, the book is not as well organized as one would wish, and it sometimes jumps from topic to topic without adequate transition and introduction. Also, I did not care for the way some of the information was presented in historical novel form. But overall, there is much food for thought here. Thor Heyerdahl has proved that ancient peoples had the technology to cross vast oceans; there is absolutely no reason why Africans couldn't have sailed to the Americas (especially since the Gulf Stream makes it possible to get between Africa and America almost without trying). Whether they did so by accident or design, and when and how often, are questions historians and archeologists still have to answer. Much more work is needed in this area. Given that this book was first published in 1976, one can hope that another substantial work in this area may come soon.