Book – They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima

Introduction

This is an emancipatory book conveying fragments of lost/suppressed realities with civilizational implications for humanity particularly Africans. Its fertile contents, provoking arguments and resonating hypothesis are refreshed by contemporary dynamics on Africa/Africans while it throws in sharp relief the incompleteness of ‘accepted’ wisdom supporting most anti-African conclusions. Nevertheless it opened many illustrious doors about Africa/Africans towards closing the ever-hungry gaps for understanding, truth, goodness, beauty and love. Only from truth is genuine liberation, elevation of consciousness and collective healing effected for reversing intergenerational transmission of ignorance. This is one goal of the author, Ivan van Sertima, a Guyanese intellectual of African descent who invested his linguistic, anthropological and historical expertise to retrieve lived experiences of our venerable ancestors from remote antiquity.  

He boldly but rebelliously concluded that, “the image of the negro-African as a backward, slow and uninventive being is still with us. Not only his manhood and his freedom but even the memory of his culture and technological achievements before the day of his humiliation seem to have been erased from the consciousness of history.”

Summary

The summary is divided into 3 parts for expanded insights into complex arguments, multidisciplinary tensions and resilient facts. First of all, his hypothesis is located in the main question – Where Africans in the Americas before 1492/Christopher Columbus? Uncritical but popular Eurocentric colonial narratives imposed the view that Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas. A resonating implication is the deliberate eclipsing of indigenous American peoples’ historical accounts of themselves and the purposive deletion of evidence of contacts prior to 1492. Given humankind’s age, this 'discovery' is an insult both to collective human intelligence and evergreen fertility of history. Van Sertima set out to unravel this insult which we first situate in its geographical context.

Testimony of Geography

The reader must engage this text with maps and non-judgemental imagination. There is no need for knowledge in spherical geometry or cartography except for specialists. Ever since the continents got ‘fixed’ in their relative positions, human interactions and connectivity within and between them continued apace across oceans, deserts, forests and swamps. The earth is spherical, a geoid precisely. There is no part of the earth that is recorded to be totally remote or isolated from since humankind arrived. Earth’s rotations on its axis and revolutions around the sun imposed forces including Coriolis Effect on the winds and ocean currents actively facilitating transoceanic transportation between continents. The oceans became natural highways which the ancients studied (with astronomy), analysed, understood (named), mastered and mapped. They also developed relevant technologies and built appropriate vessels to cross the oceans.

As a result in the northern hemisphere, ancient maritime projects timely launched southbound vessels on the north western African seaboard propelled by Canary current to join North Equatorial current taking few weeks later to cross the Atlantic reaching the northern part of South America near modern Venezuela, Colombia and Panama. Van Sertima argued in favour of Malian Emperor Abubakar II's (1307 – 1311) voyage taking this route. From the Gulf of Mexico the Gulfstream current extend the northbound journey completing the circular motion of northern currents. 

In the southern hemisphere, a similar system support movements on the south western African seaboard buoyed by northbound Benguela current, connecting with South Equatorial Current which finally joins the Brazil current to reach the eastern shores of South America. Historical records validated how ancient mariners including but unlimited to the Phoenicians sailed these routes under the currents. He cited Portuguese records rich with maps, records and information from Africa of such voyages. Piri 1513 Reis map is the most impressive evidence despite its recent provenance. Thor Heyerdahl’s current-only assisted expeditions with vessels (Ra 1 & Ra 2) of ancient African design successfully reached the Caribbean from Morocco in 1969. Only a fuller history adds flesh to maritime sophistication.

Testimony of History

The author unveiled and synthesised valuable accounts from archival records, archaeological evidence, publications and private art collections to re-summon suppressed facts supporting pre-Columbian presence of Africans in Mexico, Central America, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. Indigenous American accounts reported dark-skinned peoples coming from the East in big ships, and free African traders/artisans living in settled places intermarrying with the locals and even engaging in wars. Cartegena Colombia, Darian Gap Panama, Zapotec and Oaxaca Mexico, and Titicaca Bolivia are select places with prominent pre-Columbian African footprint. He showed evidence supporting Africa – Americas interaction both in antiquity and prior to 1492. Records point to Mali Empire sea voyages to the Americas in the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th centuries. Pottery, terracotta, gold (guanines) and other metals dug up in the Americas confirmed and validated by experts to originate in West Africa.

Van Sertima echoed a 1513 Portuguese scribe’s first sighting of Africans in the Americas who noted that, “Inside the shadow of Quarequa, they came upon an Indian settlement where, to their astonishment, they found a number of war captives who were plainly and unmistakenly African. These where tall black men of military bearing who were waging war with the natives from some settlement in the neighbourhood. Balboa asked the Indians whence they got them, but they could not tell, nor did they know more than this, that men of this color were living nearby, and they were constantly waging war with them.” This is the first record of Europeans' sighting of Africans in the Americas.

However an older historical evidence found premium for the author. The enduring presence of 11 40-ton black basalt Olmec heads with negroid features (thick lip, fleshy face, broad nose) on the south eastern Mexico (Vera Cruz) is unforgettable. They are dated to 800 BC – 700 BC. The people behind them must have lived in the area for over a millennium prior. What seems like their helmets were connected to a priestly head gear worn by ancient Nubian religious officials. Further impact is discerned by a sample of collective lived experience.

Testimony of Spirituality

The author drew important conclusions from lived experiences of peoples based on connection of evidence between the Americas and ancient Egypt, pre-dynastic Sahara, and Sahara desert-induced migrations. He noted a Aztec – Mandingo link. Similarities were captured in religious rituals for both Quetzalcoatl and Dasiri deities especially in rain-making, chastisement, penance, bloodletting symbolising raindrops etc. On Maya – Bambara link, he found the prominence of black colour of deities, priest’s copilla cap, bearded priests, sacred trees and 13 zodiac signs. Other similarities include calendar calculations, length of days/weeks/month/year, stepped pyramids, dogs, agriculture, mummification, brain surgery, umbrella, litter, weaving and megalith masonry. He argued that such similarity cannot be relegated to historical accidents or dismissed as inconsequential outliers of imagination. Rather they are strong indications of sharing, interactions and exchanges between distant peoples afforded by human ingenuity and strategic horizon scanning enabled by transoceanic transportation from remote antiquity.

This section ends with van Sertima’s echo of Thor Heyerdahl’s long insight which stress that, “a single culture element found to appear at both ends of a natural sea route may very well be the result of coincidence or independent evolution along parallel lines. To become a reasonable indicator of contact a whole array of identities or similarities of extraordinary nature must be concentrated in the two areas linked by a landbridge or marine conveyor belt. What confronts us on both sides of the Atlantic are arrays of cultural parallels and when these are dealt with as complexes, we are faced by amazing statistical indications…When the whole list of Mediterranean-American parallels are considered together as an entity then the probability of diffusion rather than independent development does not increase arithmetically but exponentially; for instance, a cluster of twelve parallels grouped together, say in Mesopotamia and Mexico does not weight twelve times heavier in the discussion than a single parallel, but rather, according to the laws of probability, has increased its significance by a truly astronomical amount... Among other things, this means that the Isolationist’s technique of negating these parallels one by one by labelling them ‘coincidence’ is mathematically invalid.” A beautiful indictment!

Conclusion

Van Sertima marshalled a plethora of evidence to support the hypothesis that Africans crossed the Atlantic several times in ocean-ongoing vessels aided by well-understood currents to reach the Americas millennia before Christopher Columbus. Moreover he asserted with evidence the sophistication and advancement of indigenous American peoples on their merit and in their openness to foreign cultures and ideas. The insight, intelligence, data and information the author invoked and reinterpreted have been available for generations to be misinterpreted by those who made careers by their deliberate denials and suppression.  

The main thrust of this text is that truth (of civilization), genuine liberation and authentic emancipation doesn't come on a platter. Genuine independence and true sovereignty are obtained with struggle. Most of the accounts are disembodied and preserved in characters, shaped, paints and texts. Effort is required by genuine seekers (as a collective) of their history, their heritage and their civilizations to invest intentions and commitment to find, restore, absorb and preserve them. This book shows that dignity, freedom, integrity, solidarity and hope are undeniable and priceless.

This book is highly recommended.

Life is beautiful!