"The African presence in ancient America"--Jacket subtitle.

They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.

This book places into perspective the role of the African in world civilization, in particular his little known contributions to the advancement of Europe. A major essay on the evolution of the Caucasoid discusses recent scientific discoveries of the African fatherhood of man and the shift towards albinism (dropping of pigmentation) by the Grimaldi African during an ice age (the Wurm Interstadial) in Europe. The debt owed to African and Arab Moors for certain inventions usually credited to the Renaissance is discussed, as well as the much earlier Afro-Egyptian influence on Greek science and philosophy. The book is divided into six parts: The First Europeans: African Presence in the Ancient Mediterranean Isles and Mainland Greece; Africans in the European Religious Hierarchy (madonnas, saints and popes); African Presence in Western Europe; African Presence in Northern Europe; African Presence in Eastern Europe.

With the skill of a novelist, Ivan Van Sertima reveals to readers compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Black Africans in ancient America. It is the marriage of twin crafts--the artist's and the scholar's--in a book that makes it possible to see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of Black Africans in Pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilization they found here.

This book grew out of a series of articles which were published originally in Ebony magazine. The book, like the series, deals with the trials and triumphs of a group of Americans whose roots in the American soil are deeper than those of the Puritans who arrived on the celebrated “Mayflower” a year after a “Dutch man of war” deposited twenty Negroes at Jamestown. This is a history of “the other Americans” and how they came to North America and what happened to them when they got here. The story begins in Africa with the great empires of the Sudan and Nile Valley and ends with the Second Reconstruction which Martin Luther King, Jr., and the “sit-in” generation are fashioning in the North and South. The story deals with the rise and growth of slavery and segregation and the continuing efforts of Negro Americans to answer the question of the Jewish poet of captivity: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” This history is founded on the work of scholars and specialists and is designed for the average reader. It is not, strictly speaking, a book for scholars; but it is as scholarly as fourteen months of research could make it. Readers who would like to follow the story in greater detail are urged to read each chapter in connection with the outline of Negro history in the appendix.

This unique volume provides an overview of the black queens, madonnas, and goddesses who dominated the history and imagination of ancient times. The authors have concentrated on Ethiopia and Egypt because the documents of the Nile Valley are voluminous compared to the sketchier records in other parts of Africa, but also because the imagination of the world, not just that of Africa, was haunted by these women. They are just as prominent a feature of European mythology as of African reality. The book is divided into three parts: Ethiopia and Egyptian Queens and Goddesses; Black Women in Ancient Art; and Conquerors and Courtesans. This second edition contains two new chapters, one on Hypatia and women's rights in ancient Egypt, and the other on the diffusion into Europe of Isis, the African goddess of Nile Valley civilizations.

Early America Revisited is a vigorous defense and amplification of Ivan Van Sertima's classic work, They Came Before Columbus. The book makes a carefully balanced case for an African presence in America before Columbus' voyages. At the same time, the work in no way denies the importance of the Columbus voyages for opening up the New World to Europe, and hence changing the economic and political map of the world for all time. Van Sertima's critical cutting edge is that there is an anthropological and ethnographic dimension to the process of discovery, one in which black Africans of non-European origins played a central role. He marshals literary and pictorial evidence and shows its authenticity to be beyond question. The impact of these early discoveries is of far more than historical interest. They serve as a basis to examine anew the study of culture contacts between civilizations, and in so doing, offer a serious base to a multifaceted re-examination of earlier hypotheses of influences in both directions. Early America Revisited provides anthropological evidence about the physical presence of Africans in pre-Columbian America. It is also the study of how two peoples and cultures can lead to cross-fertilization. The borrowing of artifacts and ideas does not mean that the outsider is superior to the native, or that indigenous cultures are insignificant. Van Sertima contends that such relationships can be unpleasant as well as pleasant, conflictual as well as consensual. But, whatever the character of the interaction, its very existence merits awareness. This book is likely to engender disputes and disagreements. But there is no question that it will enrich the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and result in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy. It should be of wide interest to social scientists, historians, and all those for whom the question of race and culture is a central facet of their own work and lives. Jacqueline L. Patten Van Sertima, who is responsible for the photographic materials in this volume, has had her work exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, the National Urban League, Columbia University, and many galleries across the country. Her publications include The Black Photographers Annual and Black Photographers.