I too would love to hear how Africans got to America before Columbus. Are you referring to such thins as the Olmec heads that appear to have Negroid features? You’ll need a bit more than that to go on – after all, some carvings show what looks like astronauts as well. Or is this just the sort of Afrocentrism that insists Cleopatra was black and that Jesus probably was too?

And you’re jumping the gun with “next 8-years” – he may not have a second term. It really depends on how well he does once in office.

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the easiest proof is left to nature: there are three currents no less than 100 miles off the coast of Africa that will take ANYthing caught in them to the Gulf of Mexico. It was true then and it is true now. this fact has been put to the test a couple of times in my lifetime. a reed boat like the one used by the egyptians and a dugout crossed the atlantic. no steering needed, the currents took the boat to the americas.

on his second voyage to india, i mean america, columbus wrote in his journal that the “indians” told him of the dark people that came in large boats and traded gold tip spears (which Columbus took back to Spain for testing). it was determined that the tips were from africa guinea.

don’t forget that one of columbus’ navigators was a moor (black) that knew the routes used by “those” departing from africa. you can read columbus’ journal and see where “he” documents the strength of the sun, the nasty currents and heat that Europeans “were not use to,” and other things that another” authoritative figure,” the portuguese, wrote of the time.

back to nature, “certain” experts had a hard time explaining why cotton from the caribbean and south america was found growing in cape verde. it just did not make sense to them. this is also called, “i don’t want face the fact the “someone” must of visited a land (india a.k.a. america) prior to the “advanced” civilization.”

i don’t follow the school of thought of the lovers of all things egypt. afrocentrism is a bad word to some that may strictly follow eurocentrism and its view of the world. these views were presented in my “American” or “World” history classes when I attended elementary and jhs. students of eurocentrism and their views on “my” history typically starts with slavery somehow bypassing centuries of the history and technology of africa.

i follow HISstory, science, math and language to conduct my research. i love to analyze and reanalyze “facts” to find fiction. the history of the world is not written and has a different view to those looking through a different lens. i tend to look at history and try to put things into focus. with things so fuzzy in the world now, the last thing that i want to do is give my students a bad view.

in order to keep this thread focused on jero and his thoughts on obama, i can move this discussion offline or onto black tokyo.

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Just one quick comment, as I don’t really have time to get into a long discussion, nor do I have that many materials at hand: it is very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff in looking at the question of Africans in the Americas pre-Columbus, as so many blatantly Afrocentrist people (and Muslim-centrist) claim this. You appear to be basing your ideas on Van Sertima, but his ideas are very controversial, to say the least. Things like currents and modern boat trips are also subject to error: Thor Heyerdal in the Kon Tiki was wrong about Easter Island, for example, and that and Ra II merely show it was physically possible (especially if you knew exactly where you were going), not that it happened. Van Sertima’s work has also been criticised for loose connections between facts and theories, quotations out of context, and just plain errors. Actual authentic artififacts are needed, not mere similarities and speculation – the Norse presence in pre-Columbian America was only accepted after an actual archeaological site was found and verified, for example.

Incidentally, it’s not really surprising that history in a country founded by and based on European civilisation is Eurocentric. No doubt Kenyan history is more Afrocentric in the same way Japanese history is Japocentric (is that a word? It is now) or at least Asiacentric.

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not so much basing my findings mainly on Van Sertima per se but on the easiest items to research. I can add other archeological, linguistic, scientific (agricultural for instance) and other things into the mix but taking the “most current” research and allowing for minor degrees of error or uncertainty, it is still most probable than not that the hypothesis introduced would conclude that there “had” to be “dark (using the term of the times)” people in the americas prior to columbus.

if you discount columbus’ own record of his trips abroad and look at artifacts,carvings, religious practices, linguistic similarities, and genealogical findings, there is still a strong probability that people from the continent of africa were in the land now called the americas prior to columbus.

the norse in the americas prior to columbus is a current proven known to some that actually “read” or bother to learn while dumping the previous garbage taught. one difference is that it is more “acceptable” in academia to credit without much “doubt” that a lighter race can accomplish feats as compared to the so-called or so-deemed dark backwards people from the continent of africa.

i do not have a problem with a country preaching things that are comfortable to the masses. the difference in america is that the country is multiethnic, multilingual, multi____ and it is only right that a better attempt to educate all, be made.

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the norse in the americas prior to columbus is a current proven known to some that actually “read” or bother to learn while dumping the previous garbage taught. one difference is that it is more “acceptable” in academia to credit without much “doubt” that a lighter race can accomplish feats as compared to the so-called or so-deemed dark backwards people from the continent of africa.

The first sentence doesn’t seem to mean much. I don’t follow you at all. Do you mean that people who realise Columbus might not have been the first will realise this? However your second statement is nothing more than a racially-based polemic. It does indeed suggest Afrocentrist ideology at work here, and reads similar to other polemics by, say, the religious right (the sequel to Ben Stein’s movie is “Expelled: No Africans Allowed”?).

Actually I would discount Columbus’s record of people trading with “black” people in the Americas. What did “black” mean to the Indians 500 years ago? We cannot assume that “black people” meant then what it does now. As you admit, we have to use the terms of the times. And if, as Heyerdal thought, it was Egyptians who went over, they would not be ‘black’ anyway, but Semetic.

“genealogical findings” – do you mean “genetic findings”?

There was, for what it matters, a great deal of doubt and scepticism about the Norse. When it comes down to it, the problem with the African theory is that there isn’t any hard evidence: an artifact from Africa that was brought by humans to the Americas and can be positively dated to having been there before Columbus. That is the smoking gun that archaeologists need – and that they found for the Norse.

Anyway, I’m not supposed to be dragging this out….

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aargh! haven’t you figured out that i do not or cannot write short posts?!

“Do you mean that people who realise Columbus might not have been the first will realise this?”

no, i mean that people who read or give a hoot will realize this.

“genealogical findings” – do you mean “genetic findings”?

no, genealogical (oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis). we all share some genetic trait out of africa, don’t we?

“your second statement is nothing more than a racially-based polemic.”

not really, if i keep it close to home (america), the things not taught or glossed over in schools is criminal. most people in the usa have no idea of the achievements that blacks have made in america. things such as the traffic light, refrigeration or the technology that allows us to ride a subway or train (the easiest to learn about) for example. this type of knowledge inspires kids (black and other) into believing that people like them can and have create something great. you should see the sparkle in their eyes.

for example, if you ask the average person why slaves were brought from africa, what answer would you receive? would it be: “new technology (e.g., agriculture, architecture) AND cheap labor. of course slaves were imported from africa to build america.” but do i stop at using their knowledge of construction and agriculture?

when in washington, would one see or think about the connection between the lincoln monument and ramses, the washington tekhen (or obelisk, a greek term) monument [which was raised by Ramses II in egypt]? only a person deemed afrocentric would not gloss over these items, right? not learning, teaching and disputing so-called “facts” leaves that young black (my focus in this discussion) kid believing that his/herStory in america started with a voyage in the belly of Jesus (the name of a slave ship).

is knowing the name of the first black presidential appointee, architect of washington, d.c., maker of the first large clock in america or challenger to language in the declaration of independence (argued that blacks should also be afforded the same rights and opportunities afforded to whites) important? how about the truth about thanksgiving, discovering the new world, the bigger holocaust (comparing the number of bodies dumped during the middle passage to those in nazi concentration camps. both incidents are horrific but what is talked about? is there a difference of value placed on the victim? if so, what is the value of the africans and other people of color that were put to death in hitler’s concentration camps).

when i attended school, i called b.s. on many of the common topics much to the displeasure of many of my instructors. i challenged them at every step. is my view polemic? or am i teaching or debating those searching for a better understanding of what is the truth? for me it is pretty straight forward, stop the lies and tell the whole truth. i hate selective reasoning.

do not take my points as racially biased but points of survival and moving towards the light. erase my/your history and you erase me, my, our people. it is important to present or acknowledge the past contributions of all without uplifting or holding superior one race (and i am not suggesting that you are). this is one of the reasons why i believe so many young kids are f’d up since they not only lack knowledge and visible role models (parents included) but lack a positive and inspiring history to fall back on. thinking and believing that “others” are superiors does not bode well for the ego. not being able to think critically and conduct research will slowly kill the soul. i strive to challenge certain facts WITHOUT massaging the “truth” to prove a hypothesis that fits my agenda.

” What did “black” mean to the Indians 500 years ago?” “And if, as Heyerdal thought, it was Egyptians who went over, they would not be ‘black’ anyway, but Semetic.”

i did not write “black,” i wrote” dark.” egypt (kemit) as you know is in africa and was a northern colony of (cush) ethiopia, no matter how some current historians try to place egypt in the the middle east, the egyptians are africans, period. i did not refer to arabs or the all encompassing “semitic” people.

the hard facts (language, culture, genetics, genealogy, carbon dating, other) are available. the problem is that people want to hold on to things that they are comfortable with in order to maintain the status quo. just look at the 2008 presidential election. many experts walk around with their eyes wide shut. i know, i work with some. maybe that explains how i received tenure in less than a year. LOL

actually, heyerdal also used the nubian/kemetic explorers when examining who went to the americas. they outdate columbus by centuries.

In heyerdal’s words: “What Europeans took to America in the age of discovery was only what we ourselves had inherited through diffusion from the Middle East at a time when the greatest of the Afro-Asiatic civilizations had long since flourished, declined, and vanished.”

in the words of President Truman: “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.”

hit me up on BT or offline to continue. i need to slow down on this topic and get back to things japan and things pertaining to my book.

my apologies to the moderator for going left on my write.

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Okay, we’ll leave it here, as this is getting into how Americans are taught history, which, ot being an American, I am not remotely qualified to talk about. However I cannot ignore this:

“the egyptians are africans, period”
No one ever suggested they weren’t. With the possible exception of the Ptolemys, who were Macedonian Greeks originally. But Egypt is definitely in Africa. Any map will tell you that.

And in one final word I would like to mention, in light of your comment on the “bigger holocaust”, readers may be interested in “Amistad,” which clearly and brutally depicts the conditions of slavers, including a scene where live slaves are chained together and tossed overboard. This was Speilberg’s second “holocaust” movie after Schindler’s List, but is not nearly as famous. Blame what you like for that – I don’t find either of them a diverting Sunday afternoon passtime myself.

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OT: the part re: “egyptians are africans” is in response to researchers that separates egypt from africa, not aimed at you.

okini for the conversation and feedback.

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Overthinker beat me to it.

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“but a second term is not a given unless progress, or the potential for progress, is presented.”

Or a convenient war in a remote area of the world….

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“Don’t get me wrong, I hope Obama takes us through 8 wonderful years of rejuvenation and prosperity, but a second term is not a given unless progress, or the potential for progress, is presented.”

i am giving president-elect obama the benefit of the doubt that he will excel and exceed the accomplishments of the current POTUS.

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