Afrocentrism

Abstract: Aspects of Afrocentrism have great similarity to cult archaeology and scientific creationism as described previously in this volume. This chapter will briefly describe some Afrocentric claims and discuss why they are erroneous. It will also describe the similarity of the authors’ techniques, methods, and motivations to those of “scientific” creationists and cult archaeologists and propose some reasons for why these claims persist and spread.

The message of the book is sensational and revolutionary: “The Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the Black people of North Africa, the Egyptians”

All there many “ways of knowing”? Are magic and religon superior to science?

Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 16, No. 2, Winter 1992, pp 162-166 Reproduced with permission Afrocentric beliefs

Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 16, No. 1, Fall 1991, pp 46-50 Reproduced with permission There is

Abstract: In 1976, Ivan Van Sertima proposed that New World civilizations were strongly influenced by diffusion from Africa. The first and most important contact, he argued, was between Nubians and Olmecs in 700 B.C., and it was followed by other contacts from Mali in A.D. 1300. This theory has spread widely in the African-American community, both lay and scholarly, but it has never been evaluated at length by Mesoamericanists. This article shows the proposal to be devoid of any foundation. First, no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World. The presence of African-origin plants such as the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) or of African genes in New World cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) shows that there was contact between the Old World and the New, but this contact occurred too long ago to have involved any human agency and is irrelevant to Egyptian-Olmec contact. The colossal Olmec heads, which resemble a stereotypical “Negroid,” were carved hundreds of years before the arrival of the presumed models. Additionally, Nubians, who come from a desert environment and have long, high noses, do not resemble their supposed “portraits.” Claims for the diffusion of pyramid building and mummification are also fallacious.