Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Important, July 15, 2002
"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.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Breathtaking Revelations in Need of an Update, March 21, 2007
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.
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22 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How Racists Never Want to Admit Africa Was Diverse, October 19, 2005
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.
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