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 enlarge | Author: Ivan Van Sertima
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.45
You Save: $6.50 (41%)
New (38) Used (12) from $9.11
Avg. Customer Rating:  72 reviews
Sales Rank: 34287
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0812968174
Dewey Decimal Number: 970.019
EAN: 9780812968170
ASIN: 0812968174
Publication Date: September 23, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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| Customer Reviews:
 Historical nit-picking aside April 10, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Historical cultural nit-picking aside, this book did an excellent job of blowing away my own blind spots regarding the likelihood of multiple pre-columbian voyages to (and from) the Americas. The author provides historical, archeological, and linguistic evidence and indications of African voyages to the Americas, including written accounts by early European explorers. The author also writes well-crafted 're-enactments' based on valid sources that make the past come alive in the mind's eye of the reader. While this makes for great reading, it may be outside the norm of Euro-American academic culture, weakening the credibility of his thesis in those circles. Each chapter comes with an extensive bibliography. Having read modern accounts of individuals and groups surviving trans-oceanic voyages on small disabled craft, all of his accounts are plausible, most are convincing, none seem far-fetched. The only thing that's really shocking is the lack of published follow-up research and books since Ivan's book was published more than thirty years ago. A great read.
His-Story is slowly being unravelved February 26, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
One of the most enduring myths in the Americas is that Columbus discovered America in 1692. In fact Columbus did not discover diggly. He was actually very late on the scene. The Africans "discovered" the Americas hundreds of years before. The population was already there. They just wanted to know what was on the other side of the big water, and thought they would go and visit. Some of the Africans came by accident, pushed by the trade winds. Others like Abubakari the Second came to the Americas in 1310 by way of a planned expedition, with hundreds of people, provisions, boats, etc.
However, Columbus was very important. With his coming, came the slaughter of native people and the theft of their lands, and the beginning of the degradation of the African in the Americas.
This book is very academic. But it is an excellent read, if you can get through it. There is much information, and will surely broaden your body of knowledge.
A must have January 4, 2007
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
All interested in the true history of Africans, African Americans, and the Americas must read this book.
The Real History That Was Buried Under Myths & Lies December 23, 2006
18 out of 24 found this review helpful
I remember it as if it was yesterday; my eighth grade history teacher began to talk about Christopher Columbus when I raised my hand and asked how he could have discovered something when people were watching him from the shore. My question was shot down then, but I found the answers years later in They Came Before Columbus.
Ivan Van Sertima is a Guyanese historian, linguist and anthropologist whose impeccable research clearly demonstrates that great African mariners visited the Americas and had major influences - with reciprococity - in Native American cultures through trade and religious practices.
Through a strong current named Siro Kuwo, even small boats could cross the Atlantic Ocean from the Equator and travel to the Americas. Columbus learned about the route to the Americas during his years as a trader in Equatorial Guinea.
Van Sertima cites linguistic similarities of West African and Native Americans, "Old World" plants in the Americas - bananas, yams, beans and gourds - that predate Columbus (and vice versa) and the similarities between Aztec/Egyptian calendars & pyramid structures and the "Olmec heartland" in the Americas, where 11 giant heads - one which appears on the cover of the book - were constructed in honor of the African explorers.
Native Americans gave Columbus (as if he didn't know already) evidence of the past trading, explaining how the top of the mariners' spears were made of a metal "gua-nin." The word's origin is from the Mande language of West Africa. The Bambara werewolf cult - whose head was known as amantigi (heads of faith) - appeared in a Mexican ritual as amanteca.
The history built upon the racist myths and lies are destroyed by the facts that Van Sertima meticulously presents. And it is a celebration of mariners who traveled not as imperialists looking to subjugate people, destroy their history and steal their lands, but explorers who learned from, traded with and were respected by those they met on the shores of the Americas.
 No, my friend, they didnt October 19, 2006
36 out of 85 found this review helpful
Had I been hyper-sensitive and 110% politically correct, I would have filed a complaint against this book at some suitable community college, since I happen to have some American Indian ancestry. First, "we" were forced to endure claims that the Whites built the pyramids in Central America, now "we" are forced to endure claims that the Chinese or the Africans built them instead. Hyper-diffusionism is multi-culturalist these days! They only forgot the cultures that actually built the pyramids in Central America: the American Indians, First Nations, Native Americans, whatever short-hand you prefer.
But I wont file a complaint against Ivan. I just think it's tiresome that these ideas keep popping up again and again, first in an Ivory version, and now in Jade or Ebony versions.
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of large-scale Old World colonization of the New World before Columbus. The Norsemen established a few colonies in North America, but they were soon abondoned. That Olmec heads "look African" doesn't prove very much. To Ivan Van Sertima, they look Black. But to others they look Chinese or alien (that's space alien). Some even say they look Mexican. This kind of "evidence" is purely subjective. Besides, Olmec art might not have been naturalistic at all. Not even Egyptian art was completely naturalistic, unless you believe all Egyptians had their heads turned one way and their shoulders the other way.
No, my friend, Africans didn't come before Columbus. Why can't Black nationalists concentrate on writing about the very real African high cultures instead of constantly trying to hi-jack the cultures of others? Seriously.
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