Did Africans visit the Americas before Columbus?

[Cheese Sandwich]

Guyanese born Dr. Ivan Van Sertima (January 26, 1935 to May 25, 2009) is a literary critic, linguist, anthropologist, and writer. In 1977 he wrote They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, now in its sixteenth printing, for which he won the Clarence L. Holte Prize for excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa. He is the editor of the Journal of African Civilizations, and has edited numerous recent books including African Presence in Early America, Great African Thinkers, and Great Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern.

[jamzrockz]

1. Whatever happened to the creative

speculation section on DU? its a shame that it is not longer around

But to your question, the answer is lively a big NO. There is no evidence whatsoever that would suggest such a voyeur by any African civilization

[Cheese Sandwich]

2. Well actually there is evidence. Some of it is in that video so if you watch it you can refute it.

[jamzrockz]

5. 1st of all

there are no African civilizations that had the capability of building ships that can sail across the Atlantic ocean. Any similarity he sees with things like spears or statue or whatever just came about as a matter of shear coincidence. Evidence of such shipping building technology is not something you can easily hide. If there was any truth to it, we all would have know it by now

Mind, I think it would be totally awesome if I was true.

I will continue listening to the video but so far I doubt he would be able to convince me of his theory.

[Cheese Sandwich]

6. There's a reason I added the question mark. It's probably not true, but there's enough to question

without it being a wild conspiracy theory.


It's not enough to just say it's obvious Africans could obviously never have done it. You wouldn't need a very big boat.

You wouldn't need any boat. There's even evidence of animals having floating across on rafts of vegetation like a big gob of vines.

[jamzrockz]

8. Actually I can tell from the few viewing mins that the presenter is full of it

He talked about the winds that can take you non stop to the Americans but has failed to mention how they came back. We know for sure that they did not stay. So what happened to the ones that came to the Americas?

Just about everything I've heard his talk about can be attributed to coincidence.

[cab67]

10. To be honest -

- and please don't take this the wrong way - it really is a wild conspiracy theory. Pretty much every line of evidence in that video has been debunked.

There were several highly sophisticated African societies in antiquity. They were highly accomplished. They just didn't accomplish a trans-Atlantic crossing.

[Cheese Sandwich]

13. I'm keeping an open mind about it. A lot of history has been lost.

[cab67]

16. So am I.

I just don't want my brains to slurp through my ears.

Seriously - it dishonors actual scholarship to adhere to something based on nonsense, just as it dishonors the people of Africa to ignore the actual accomplishments they made in antiquity.

[Cheese Sandwich]

17. It is possible that people from ancient Africa traveled to America

Guy in the video is a scholar and presents his case with certain evidence. You and anybody are free to refute it with other evidence. Nobody is dishonored by considering unorthodox ideas.

[Sanity Claws]

3. I wonder if they ran into St. Brendan

[MisterP]

4. to store their wheat!

[NaturalHigh]

7. I keep a cool article about this in my reading folder.

Occasionally I'll go back and look at it when I'm on night shift.

[MisterFred]

9. The answer is probably yes, but using the Olmec heads as "proof" is wrong.

Africans probably did come to the new world before Columbus. (Sorry, Jamzrockz, you're wrong.) Under direction of Abu Bakar II, Emperor of Mali, a fleet was constructed, sailed west, and probably a ship or two came back after the fleet met disaster. They probably sighted or landed along the Brazilian coast. This is not a certainty, but it is quite likely. Not the least because of the large ship-building industry historically attested to in what is now the Senegal region. (The kind of evidence Jamzrockz correctly asked for.)

But because of the large loss of life, no other attempt was made. This is was also WELL after the construction of the Olmec heads featured in the video & in the splash image for the YouTube video. Which is more or less based on conspiracy-theory guesses & wishes.

And yes, Cheese Sandwich is right, you don't need much of a boat to make the journey. Thor Heyderdahl proved it could be done with ancient Egyptian technology. And we know the Phoenicians or Greeks could have done so with far superior ship-building technology. But they didn't. And we have no historical record they did. Unlike, say, the Vikings (the first after the Siberians who became Native Americans), Malians (the second), or Columbus. And there were probably a few Japanese shipwrecks (currents, modern analogues) in there somewhere.

But using the Olmec heads & racial stereotypes immediately sends things into stop-being-offensively-obtuse. Those are just original Meso-American art that probably look that way because a fat face looks rich (can afford to eat a lot and not work too hard). Since their discovery they've been used as "proof" that thousands of years ago Chinese explorers arrived in the new world & taught the natives civilization (the eyes & nose). A little less popular, that African explorers did the same thousands of years before Abu Bakar II (the nose & lips).

It's all nonsense predicated on the old belief by Europeans that Native Americans couldn't have learned civilization on their own (especially English-speaking Europeans). The same idea brought about the concept that Native American cities & relics (see Cahokia) must have been the result of ancient Hebrew emigration. And we all know how that turned out...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

14. Welcome to DU, MisterFred...

And thank you for your thoughtful, intelligent post!

I hope we'll see much more from you at this level. We can always use incisive thinkers.

Again, Welcome!

[MisterFred]

20. Thank you. NT

[Cheese Sandwich]

15. Hi and welcome.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. If they did I'm sure the headhunters were thrilled.

[Jester Messiah]

12. Nordics certainly did.

And they didn't even enslave anybody or steal their crap!

[OxQQme]

18. Explain away elephants in MesoAmerica

http://philosophiesofmen.blogspot.com/2011/03/elephants-in-america.html

http://www.richardcassaro.com/tag/elephant-deities-india

[jamzrockz]

19. So its not just that they sailed on small boats

Now you are saying that they carried baby elephants with them?