got bored and decided to read They Came Before Columbus, its actually been a pretty good read so far.

And what you will find when you finish is that van sertima never made the wild claims others make.
1.he never said the olmecs were Africans ... he said Africans were among the olmecs(subtle but strong difference)
2.he never said there were no native americans involved...he said that Africans and Asians were among olmecs as traders(possibly advisors)
3.he never said the Olmec heads were depictions of olmecs... he said the Olmec heads were depictions of Africans(subtle but strong difference)


I repeat...

The problem isn't some rogue "afrocentric", it's an inability to properly acquire, categorize, & process information . Before you can even begin to talk about someone's politics we have to talk about can they differentiate between simple concepts like truth, fact, interpretation, and presentation.(each of which are not equal in weight)
.
Without going too deep the problem is rarely with facts. The problem is usually with (mis)interpreting facts. Ascribing that problem to a boogieman term like "afrocentric" lets their intellectual missteps off the hook, validates those missteps by ascribing them as a philosophical view, and piles unnecessary baggage on an as stated "...rather "by the book", mundane, and conservative notion..."

-Me

RandomAfricanAm: And what you will find when you finish is that van sertima never made the wild claims others make.
1.he never said the olmecs were Africans ... he said Africans were among the olmecs(subtle but strong difference)
2.he never said there were no native americans involved...he said that Africans and Asians were among olmecs as traders(possibly advisors)
3.he never said the Olmec heads were depictions of olmecs... he said the Olmec heads were depictions of Africans(subtle but strong difference)


I repeat...



-Me

OMG!!! How did I ever miss this post Thank you!!

KidStranglehold:

OMG!!! How did I ever miss this post Thank you!!

where have u been

u left us

onila: where have u been

u left us

Hey Onila.

Glad to know I've been missed on here. Been busy with college and work.

Kid! How is the book coming?

*Kails*:
Kid! How is the book coming?

Hey Kails. Still taking my time with it due to being busy all the time.

KidStranglehold:

Hey Kails. Still taking my time with it due to being busy all the time.

Oh ok.. Dear thats whats up.
Please keep in touch. I dont come to this side of the forum often so hit me up from time to time and let me know youre ok

*Kails*:


Oh ok.. Dear thats whats up.
Please keep in touch. I dont come to this side of the forum often so hit me up from time to time and let me know youre ok

Let me guess...That bigfrancis guy? Because he became mod?

And yeah I will definitely keep in touch.

Looool nah kid we wont go there
Its just thread topic have become redundant and the section as a whole is not as educational as it once was, (randomAA was right). topics get derailed, ppl attention seeking, drama etc. fula is trying his best tho. I will give him that.

But enough of that. Take u care bro.

*Kails*:
Looool nah kid we wont go there
Its just thread topic have become redundant and the section as a whole is not as educational as it once was, (randomAA was right). topics get derailed, ppl attention seeking, drama etc. fula is trying his best tho. I will give him that.

But enough of that. Take u care bro.

Yeah this section is kinda whack now.

Also take care.

*Kails*:
Looool nah kid we wont go there
Its just thread topic have become redundant and the section as a whole is not as educational as it once was, (randomAA was right). topics get derailed, ppl attention seeking, drama etc. fula is trying his best tho. I will give him that.

But enough of that. Take u care bro.

KidStranglehold:

OMG!!! How did I ever miss this post Thank you!!

Aww shucks. Thanks peoples ... hmm, just for that I'll put on my quality cap for a post.

Reply to My Critics
by Ivan Van Sertima

An attack on my thesis that Africans made contact with America before Columbus in two major pre-Christian periods (circa 1200 b.c. and circa 800 b.c.) in addition to the Mandingo contact period (1310/1311 A.D.) has been circulated in advance to hundreds of subscribers to a journal, Current Anthropology. Copies of this attack by Bernard de Montellano, Warren Barbour and Gabriel Haslip-Viera were also sent out to African-American scholars, some of whom were cited in the attack, dishonestly titled "Van Sertima’s Afrocentricity and the Olmecs." The title’s emphasis is meant to suggest that all revisions of African history by so-called "Blacks" belong to a common school, radiate from a common brain, and are cast in the same "racialist" hue and mode. This circular, which precedes my new book, REPLY TO MY CRITICS (scheduled to appear in Sept), seeks to highlight the brazen and malicious lies, slanders and misrepresentations that characterize this attack. Let it be noted that I was invited to respond to this attack but was forced to withdraw. The editor, after verbally agreeing that I could reprint my commentary, after the issue of the Journal appeared, did a dramatic about-turn when pressed to sign a written agreement to back up his word. He wrote that I could only reprint my "commentary" (15 pages) if I also reprinted the attack on me (50 pages) since "they form a unit." To feel the full absurdity of this, just imagine the Jewish Defense League being forced to republish an extended Nazi-type attack on their positions in order to republish a brief response to such a slanderous attack.

LIE ONE: - "Van Sertima’s expedition allegedly sailed or drifted westward to the Gulf of Mexico where it came in contact with inferior Olmecs. These individuals created Olmec civilization." - De Montellano, Barbour and Haslip-Viera.

THE TRUTH: As far back as 1976, I made my position on this matter very clear. I never said that Africans created or founded American civilization. I said they made contact and all significant contact between two peoples lead to influences. "I think it is necessary to make it clear - since partisan and ethnocentric scholarship seems to be the order of the day - that the emergence of the Negroid face, which the archeological and cultural data overwhelmingly confirm, in no way presupposes the lack of a native originality, the absence of other influences or the automatic eclipse of other faces"-p. 147 of "They Came Before Columbus." See also Journal of African Civilizations, Vol 8, No. 2, 1986 "I cannot subscribe to the notion that civilization suddenly dropped onto the American earth from the Egyptian heaven."

LIE TWO: None of the early Egyptians and Nubians looked like Negroes. "They have long, narrow noses..." "Short, flat noses are confined to the West African ancestors of African-Americans." Again, "there is no evidence that ancient Nubians ever braided their hair. This style comes from colonial and modern Ethiopia."

THE TRUTH: Narrow noses have been found among millions of pure-blooded Africans. We can see this among the Elongated and Nilotic types. My critics know nothing about the variants of Africa, ancient or modern. All the six main variants of the African have been found in the Egyptian and Nubian graves. For examples of ancient braided Nubian hair, see Frank Snowden’s "Before Color Prejudice, " As for Egypto-Nubians only having narrow noses, see Egyptian pharaohs in Vol 10 and 12 of the JAC and major Nubian pharaohs in Peggy Bertram’s essay (JAC, Vol.12) -Ushanaru, Plate 8, p 173; Taharka as the god Amun from Kawa Temples, Plate 9, p. 173; Shabaka, Plate 12, p. 176. Tanwetamani, Plate 16, p. 180. To say that these are narrow noses is to exhibit a colossal ignorance of African types in ancient Egypt and Nubia. The agenda behind this is to bolster their case that they could not have been models for any of the Olmec stone heads.

LIE THREE; Modern Egyptians look exactly as they did thousands of years ago. The composition of the Egyptian has not changed over the last 5000 years. Invasions by the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Arabs and Romans left them looking the same today as in the dawn of history.

THE TRUTH: This is a hasty misreading of the work of scholars like A.C. Berry, R. J. Berry and Ucko who point out that there is a remarkable degree of homogeneity in this area for 5000 years. What a superficial reading of this fails to note is that the period ends with the close of the native dynasties BEFORE the invasions of the Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Arab foreigners

LIE FOUR: Faced with the startlingly Negroid features of some of the Olmec stone heads, my critics try 4 ways out: (a) They are "spitting images of the native;" (b) they appear dark because some of them were carved out of dark volcanic stone; (c) some were made of white basalt which turned dark over time; (d) ancient Egyptians and Nubians were remote in physiognomy from sub-Saharan Negroes and none of them could have been models for any of the "Negro-looking" heads. Having said all that, they then claim that "races are not linked to specific physiognomic traits."

THE TRUTH: No need to shoot them down on this. They turned the gun on themselves.

LIE FIVE: Nothing African has been found in any archeological excavation in the New World.

THE TRUTH: In the drier centers of the Olmec world - at Tlatilco, Cerro de las Mesas and Monte Alban - the Polish craniologist, Andrez Wiercinski, found indisputable evidence of an African presence. The many traits analyzed in these Olmec sites indicated individuals with Negroid traits predominating but with an admixture of other racial traits. This is what I have said. The work of A. Vargas Guadarrama is an important reinforcement of Wiercinski’s study. He found that the skulls he examined at Tlatilco, which Wiercinski had classified as Negroid, were "radically different" from other skulls on the site, bearing indisputable similarities to skulls in West Africa and Egypt.

LIE SIX: Van Sertima presents no evidence that a New World cotton (gossypium hirsutum var. punctatum) was transferred from Guinea to the Cape Verde in 1462 by the Portuguese and there is no hard proof that West Africans made a round trip to America before Columbus.

THE TRUTH: I cited evidence in 12 categories to establish Mandingo voyages to the New World circa1310/1311 A.D. This included eyewitness reports from nearly a dozen Europeans, even Columbus himself, metallurgical, linguistic, botanical, navigational, oceanographic, skeletal, epigraphic, cartographic, oral, documented and iconographic evidence. With regard to New World cotton in Africa before 1462, Stephens spoke in two tongues to pacify isolationist colleagues.

LIE SEVEN: My critics claim that I said the bottle gourd came in with Old World voyagers.

THE TRUTH: I was at pains to point out that this is ONE PLANT THAT COULD DRIFT TO AMERICA WITHOUT THE LOSS OF SEED VIABILITY. "Bottle gourds got caught in the pull of currents from the African coast and drifted to America across the Atlantic. Thomas Whitaker and G.F. Carter showed that these gourds are capable of floating in seawater for 7 months without loss of seed viability" - "They Came Before Columbus, " 204. They indulge in an even more vicious dishonesty with regard to cotton, claiming that I said "Old World cottons came into America with a fleet of Nubians circa 700 B.C." I never linked cotton transfer to Nubian contact.

LIE EIGHT: My critics admit "we cannot unequivocally date the heads" but they single out one which they say Ann Cyphers confidently dated about 1011 B.C. Note the date! This is 200 years AFTER the Egyptian contact period c. 1200 B.C. Yet they claim that the dating of this one head proves "Negro-looking heads" were being carved, mutilated, and buried prior to 1200 B.C.

THE TRUTH: The stone heads could not have been buried before they were carved.

LIE NINE: Egyptians stopped building pyramids "thousands of years" before 1200 B.C. No relationship whatever exists between Old World/New World pyramids.

THE TRUTH: Enormous obelisks, calling for the same complex engineering skills of the pyramid age were built at Karnak as late as 1295 B.C. A pyramid was also built as Dashur circa 1700 B.C. Bart Jordan, the mathematical child prodigy, to whom Einstein granted special audience, established startling coincidences between Old World and New World pyramids. He agrees with me that "The overwhelming incidence of coincidence argues overwhelmingly against a mere coincidence."

LIE TEN: My critics claim that I have trampled upon the self-respect and self-esteem of native Americans and they have come forward to champion their cause.

THE TRUTH: My people (for I am part Macusi and part African) would be horrified to have, as champions of our cause, De Montellano, Barbour, and Haslip-Viera, who disgrace us with the charge that "native Americans would have sacrificed and eaten the Africans if they came."

-Early America Revisited
by Ivan Van Sertima, 1998

Cranial study of skulls found among/around Olmec sites.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/anthropological-study-on-the-origin-of-olmecs/oclc/15160532

Copy of select materialmake of it what you will)
http://olmec98.net/wercinski.pdf

---

I repeat...

The problem isn't some rogue "afrocentric", it's an inability to properly acquire, categorize, & process information . Before you can even begin to talk about someone's politics we have to talk about can they differentiate between simple concepts like truth, fact, interpretation, and presentation.(each of which are not equal in weight)
.
Without going too deep the problem is rarely with facts. The problem is usually with (mis)interpreting facts. Ascribing that problem to a boogieman term like "afrocentric" lets their intellectual missteps off the hook, validates those missteps by ascribing them as a philosophical view, and piles unnecessary baggage on an as stated "...rather "by the book", mundane, and conservative notion..."

Prime Example: WTF is this

Introduction

The foUowing booklet is a brief attempt to present
and explain the godhood of the Black man for
contemporary readers. I have made significant effort to
limit the technical vocabulary, so as to ease the pace of
reading, and to avoid clogging the passages with overly
technical details and footnotes. The foUowing arguments
are summaries, and not meant to cover the immense body
of knowledge and wisdom available on these topics.
Although some references are provided, the reader is
encouraged to seek further information on their own. Good
questions produce good answers. To be fair, I have also
included a few of the common counter-arguments I have
heard, as well as brief responses. The reader is encouraged,
above all, to read with an open mind.

The Black Man is the Original Man

It is important that we first establish that the
Black man is the first man, or the original man. Several
major anthropological studies have documented this
widely accepted faet. All peoples descend from him,
either naturally or unnaturally. Europeans have even
created fake fossils like the Piltdown man to try to
discredit and distort the origins of humanity and place the
first man in Europe. The earliest fossils of man have been
found in South Africa and East Africa. Further information
can be found in The African Origin of Civilization by
Cheikh Anta Diop. Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden
History ofthe Human Race by Michael Cremo contains a
wealth of evidence detailing the earliest existence of
highly-advanced humans throughout the world, far
predating even the earliest accepted date of three million
years ago.

Original means the origin of all that follows. In
stating that the Black man is the original man, many of the
references that appear in the foUowing pages, referring to
"man," can be understood to refer to the archetype of man
himself, the Black man. Some authors have advocated that
the true human is the hue-man, or man of color, and that
mankind refers to the "kind of man" that followed.

The Black Man is the Father of Civilization

Blacks developed the first civilizations.
Throughout the ancient and prehistoric world, Blacks have
been the founders of all known civilizations. Examples
include:

• the first dynasties of ancient China,

• the pre-Hellenic Minoan and Mycenean civilizations
which birthed ancient Greece and Rome,

• the ancient Egyptians of course.




• the pre-Semitic Chaldeans, Babylonians, Sumerians,
and their other middle Eastern neighbors,

• the Kushites and other obviously Black civilizations in
the continent known as Africa,

• the Olmecs, the early Mayans and other Black pre-
Columbian civilizations of the Americas (including
the Black Indians Columbus met upon his initial
voyages here),

• the ancient Black civilizations of the Indus river valley
in India,

• and the Black
civilizations of ancient
Europe.

Evidence of these
claims can be found in,
African Presence in Early
Asia edited by Runoko
Rashidi, African Presence
in Early Europe, African
Presence in Early America,
and They Came Before
Columbus by Ivan Van
Sertima, and The African
Origin of Civilization by

Cheikh Anta Diop. Further evidence can be found on
numerous articles, available on the internet, authored by
Clyde Ahmad Winters or Runoko Rashidi. Much of this
information, and more, should also be available online at
the Global African Presence website at
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html

The Black Man is the Source of the World's Learning

Until the contemporary attempts by Europeans to
discredit the capabilities of Blacks, the Black man has
been regarded as surpassing all people and nations in his
wisdom and intellect. Visitors from far-off lands studied
among the Black teachers of Ancient Egypt in the Mystery
Schools. Socrates and other Greeks regarded as the fathers
of European philosophy were trained at these schools by
Blacks. Plato, Socrates' student, challenged the Greek
concept of God, which was in faet a Europeanized version
of the Black gods of Egypt. Plato, not having met the true
and living Gods himself, appeared disgruntled with the
human flaws of the otherwise supreme Greek gods.

The Greeks were, until the era of Plato, still
praising and worshipping the Black men of Egypt. These
facts are documented in George G. M. James' Stolen
Legacy and Martin Bernal's Black Athena. Examples
include Zeus and Hercules, who were modeled after Osiris
and Horus, and the Black god Imhotep, who is revered in
the primary creed of medicine, the Hippocratic Oath.

-Excerpt from "The Black God: An Anthology of Truth"
http://archive.org/stream/BlackGodAntholgy/black-god-anthology_djvu.txt

The claim of "Afrocentrism" is a scape goat for people unable to articulate the real problems. And to drive it home one last time...

Without going too deep the problem is rarely with facts. The problem is usually with (mis)interpreting facts. Ascribing that problem to a boogieman term like "afrocentric" lets their intellectual missteps off the hook, validates those missteps by ascribing them as a philosophical view, and piles unnecessary baggage on an as stated "...rather "by the book", mundane, and conservative notion..."

i was thinking, if west Africans did reach the Americas, wouldn't they have brought Metalworking with them?

PAPA AFRICA: i was thinking, if west Africans did reach the Americas, wouldn't they have brought Metalworking with them?

Read the OP again. And remember its not talking about Africans colonizing/settling the Americas but if they reached it.

KidStranglehold:

Read the OP again. And remember its not talking about Africans colonizing/settling the Americas but if they reached it.

so you mean getting onto the shores and doing nothing or? because if Abu Bakr II got there with the Malian fleet wouldn't they trade with the native population there, things like metal goods would be something traded leading to the sharing of metal working technology maybe?

PAPA AFRICA: i was thinking, if west Africans did reach the Americas, wouldn't they have brought Metalworking with them?

don't forget old world diseases.

Are there actually people arguing that is is not an African?

Some people are really sick in this world.

ROSSIKE: Are there actually people arguing that is is not an African?

Some people are really sick in this world.

where did the black people go?