Black History Thread #10: "Did You Know?" (Africans Discovered America)

[Hissyspit]

Every day for the rest of February, I am posting some form of interesting information regarding African American history.

Africans "Discovered" America

There is convincing evidence that, in pre-Columbian times, Africans found or made contact with America or called it home.

"When Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa landed in Panama in 1513, he found a community of (black-skinned) people already living there." Archaeologists, uncovering pre-Columbian sculptures and pottery "that bore faces with distinctly African features,"including the famed Olmec heads, have added even more intriguing evidence to the theories that Africans may have been in the Americas for many centuries as explorers or traders.

The leading contemporary researcher on this subject is Ivan Van Sertima, "who has written several books on the subject. A professor at Rutgers University, he delivered a lecture to the Smithsonian Institute in 1991, as part of the symposium 'Race': Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View of 1942. An entertaining and thought-provoking read of his can be found here, a reply by Van Sertima to critics of his ideas that "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.)"

"This line of thinking is not new. In 1920, a (Harvard grad) Leo Weiner wrote Africa and the Discovery of America (and is) thought to be the originator of the idea even though he did not have all of the recently discovered facts necessary to support his theory. Later in 1962, Harold G. Lawrence wrote African Explorers of the New World. He believed that Mandigos from the Mali and Songhay Empires carried on trade with the natives of the Americas."

"In 1939, Dr. Matthew Sterling led a joint team from the National Geographic Society into the Gulf of Mexico to spearhead a major digging operation in Vera Cruz to unearth the monolith heads. Sterling concluded: 'The features are bold and amazingly Negroid in character.' In Monte' Alban, 140 Negroid type figures have been discovered. Upon archaeological research, there is no logical denying of the 'negroidness' found in the art of ancient America."

Who were the Olmecs? One website posits that: The Olmecs came from Nubia in Central Africa and they migrated to America in which they named in their Cushite language, 'Utla', which means, "vacate." When the Olmecs discovered that there was actually a North Utla and a South Utla, the word 'Utla' became plural which became 'Atlan', which is where the word 'Atlantis' came from. The Olmecs were of a tribe in Africa called 'Dogon' in Mali. When the Dogons migrated to America they also imported the rubber tree which is only indigenous to Africa. The Dogons used the sap from the tree to make shoes, coats, capes, and they were the first to introduce the soles on shoes to the New World. The name 'Olmec' means 'Rubber People.'

Two male skeletons described as "Negroid" were found in February 1975 by a Smithsonian Institution team in the U.S. Virgin Islands in a grave that was used and abandoned long before Columbus arrived; soil dated to 1250 AD (Post-Classic). "The teeth showed, 'dental mutilation characteristic of early African cultures,'" wrote Dr. Andrzej Wiecinski. Other "Negroid" skeletons have been unearthed in pre-Columbian layers in the Pecos River valley.

Stone head from Veracruz, Mexico, Classic period, c. A.D. 900; American Museum of Natural History, New York




One of the massive Olmec stone heads in Mexico displaying features that suggest the presence of Africans in the Americas as early as 1200 BC; source unknown




A fate of forcibly resettled (mostly west) Africans post-Columbian: depiction of slaves being used to power mills in the West Indies; Library of Congress

SOURCES:
http://members.tripod.com/pointingbird/lostfeatherintl/id7.htm
http://members.aol.com/carltred/AfricanPresence.htm
http://www.africawithin.com/vansertima/reply_critics.htm
Jeffrey C. Stewart. 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History. New York: Doubleday, 1996; reprint, New York: Gramercy, Random House, 2006.

Yesterday's Black History Month Thread #9: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=515930&mesg_id=515930