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.

By

Jeffrey Carey
This review is from: They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America (Hardcover)

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. W.E.B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois W.E.B. Du Bois said, on the launch of his groundbreaking 1903 treatise The Souls of Black Folk, “ for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”—a prescient statement. Setting out to show to the reader “the strange meaning of being black here in t he dawning of the Twentieth Century,” Du Bois explains the meaning of the emancipation, and its effect, and his views on the role of the leaders of his race.