2008-05-22 Well researched and well written account of little known African achievements in history

This book sets out to present a comprehensive account, based on all known facts, of the links between Africa and America in pre-Columbian times. It draws its facts from archaeological, geographical, cultural and historical sources and succeeds in summarising its conclusions in a simple, readable fashion.

It opens with the account of how Columbus set off to "discover" America on the evidence of a pre-existing route linking Africa with another continent across the Atlantic. Columbus' subsequent discovery of handkerchiefs in the "New World", similar in style and use to those found in Sierra Leone, constitutes one of the earliest documented traces of a preceding African presence in America.

Sertima goes on to examine in detail a littany of other visible proofs that Africans got to America long before Columbus did. These include the accounts of early Spanish explorers who discovered settled black communities in Colombia and Darian (both in South America) in the early sixteenth century and several archaelogical findings of Negroid heads all over America which date to as early as 700 B.C. Sertima comments on the extensiveness of these finds as follows: "Africans move through all their [native Americans'] major periods, from the time of the Olmec culture around 800 B.C when they arrive in massive stone heads, through the medieval Mexico of the Mayas, when they appear not only in terracotta potraits but on golden pectorals and on pipes, down to the late post-Classic period, time of the [European] conquest, when they begin to disappear..."

He analyzes a plethora of cultural clues; the existence of Negoid gods among native Americans, similarities in language, totemic symbols, religious rites; sudden appearances of African animal and plant species in America before Columbus; even the sudden appearance, seemingly out of nowhere, of a pyramid-building culture in Mexico at just the time when the Sudanese Pharoahs of Egypt's 25th dynasty were leading an Egyptian cultural renaissance and taking to the seas in search of iron to fend off the expanionist drive of the Assyrain empire.

Oral traditions are also examined e.g the common belief among some native American tribes that the oldest inhabitants of Mexico were Negroes and giants, and the Malian tale of a mariner-prince, Abubakari the second, who set off from Mali to explore the Atlantic in 1311. Sertima explains the existence of strong evidence of ancient African boating and sea faring traditions. He also explains the nature of Africa-Atlantic sea currents that make it easy even for the most rudimentary of boats to make the Atlantic passage.

This is a well written, well researched and suprisingly easy to read account of one of the ways in which anient African civilizations have contributed to enriching world history. It ends with an ironic observation that, contrary to popular belief, what the evidence shows is that the African began his career in America as a master, and not a slave.

This is a fascinating read.