Professor Ivan van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, A review by Femi Akomolafe, 19 January 1995
“History, as taught in the Western and Western-dominated world, gives the impression that the first Africans to reach the Americas were brought as slaves, in shackles on slaves-ships. So total is the Euro-Americans onslaught on black people that all military, missionary, scholarship, academic forces are mobilized to paint the picture of the African as an eternal slave of the white man.……
….Happily, one by one, these edifices of distortions, constructed by white-supremacists posing as scholars, historians, anthropologists, even scientists, are being knocked down.
In his They Came Before Columbus, Professor Ivan Van Sertima of Rutgers University assembled an impressive array of evidence to challenge one of the most persistent of these historical distortions. His argument are so compelling that very many high-calibre scholars, who have maintained the prejudiced line of history, are bound to fall flat from their pedestal. The style of the book is very engaging, almost novel-like—this makes a very good reading.
The first evidence of a black presence in the America was given to Columbus by the Indians themselves: they gave concrete proof to the Spanish that they were trading with black people. “The Indians of this Espanola said there had come to Espanola a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they called gua-nin, of which he [Columbus] had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper. The origin of the word guanin may be tracked down in the Mande languages of West Africa, through Mandigo, Kabunga, Toronka, Kankanka, Banbara, Mande and Vei. In Vei, we have the form of the word ka-ni which, transliterated into native phonetics, would give us gua-nin.” p.11. This was just one of the numerous instances, cited by Professor [van] Sertima, where the names, cultures and rituals of the Mandigos confluenced with those of the ancient Americans.
Thus we have the Bambara werewolf cult whose head is known as amantigi (heads of faith) appeared in Mexican rituals as amanteca. The ceremonies accompanying these rituals are too identical to have been independently evolved among peoples who have had no previous encounter. Talking devil is called Hore in Mandigo, and Haure in Carib. In the American language of Nahuatl a waistcloth is called maxtli, in Malinke it’s masiti. The female loincloth is nagua in Mexico, it is nagba in Mande.
Why would the Indians claimed to have traded with black people if they haven’t? Why would their faith and language have so much infusion of West African influence if these people haven’t had any contact? These might not be sufficient, in themselves, to justify the claims that Africans have been visiting the Americas in pre-Colombian times. But there are witnesses. In 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa, another Spanish usurper came upon a group of African war captives in an Indian settlement. He was told that the blacks lived nearby and were constantly waging wars. A priest, Fray Gregoria Garcia wrote an account of another encounter in a book that was silenced by the inquisition: “Here we found slaves of the lord – Negroes- who were the first our people saw in the Indies.” p.22. (It should be noted that in pre-European slavery, slaves are what we called ‘Prisoners of wars’ today. Thus, the Yorubas have the same name, ERU, for both slaves and POWs.)
Aside from these confirmed sightings, there are also an abundance archeological evidence of an Africa presence in pre-Colombian times. These were in the form of realistic portraitures of Negro-Africans in clay, gold, and stone unearthed in pre-Colombian strata in Central and South America.- pp.23-24. Moved by these overwhelming evidence, the Society of American Archeology at a conference in 1968, Professor [van] Sertima reported, concluded: “Surely there cannot now be any question but that there were visitors to the New World from the Old in historic or even prehistoric time before 1492.”
Then there is the oral history of the two peoples. The Griots—traditional historians and masters of orature—‘Oral Literature’ in Mali, have stories about their King, Abubakari the second, grandson of Sundiata, the founder of the Mali Empire (larger than the Holy Roman Empire), who set out on a great expedition of large boats in 1311. None of the boats returned to Mali, but curiously around this time evidence of contact between West Africans and Mexicans appear in strata in America in an overwhelming combination of artifacts and cultural parallels. A black-haired, black-bearded figure in white robes, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, modeled on a dark-skinned outsider, appears in paintings in the valley of Mexico… while the Aztecs begin to worship a Negroid figure mistaken for their god Tezcatlipoca because he had the right ceremonial color. Negroid skeletons are found in this time stratum in the Caribbean... ‘A notable tale is recorded in the Peruvian traditions … of how black men coming from the east had been able to penetrate the Andes Mountains.’ p.26
