Rating: 
Summary: Discredited in his field and others
Review: Van Sertima's claims have been discredited as pseudoscience in the fields of Anthropology and History although some departments of African Studies and African American Studies still find his conclusions valid. Historians are critical of his scholaship due his reliance on secondary sources, many outdated and refuted.Anthropologists are more harsh in their criticism. They assert he is wrong on nearly every count. Take mummies for instance. How could Egyptian Nubians be responsible for bringing this techinique to the New World when the oldest mummy found in the Old Kingdom dates to 2686-2182 B.C.E. while oldest mummy in South America is dated 5050 +/- 135 B.C.E.? That's a difference of two and a half thousand years! According to Van Sertima the Egyptian Nubians brought the skill of pyrmamid building to the New World. This is not supported by the archaeological evidence. As Haslip-Vierra, Ortiz de Monetllano, and Barbour note: "Large pyramids were not being built in Egypt or Nubia at the end of the 13th century B.C. The great age of pyramid building had ended much earlier. The last step pyramid was built in 2680 B.C. and the last regular pyramid was Khenjefer's (ca. 1777 B.C.) In 1200 B.C., the Egyptians either buried their dead in secret, as was the case with all the pharaohs of this period, or constructed small tombs that might incorporate small pointed pyramids into their overall design." None of these pyramids was over 20ft. Far smaller than the large structures constructed by the Olmec. By far, most attention is payed to the great Olmec Heads found in modern day Mexico. The features are routinely described as "black" with broad noses, thick lips, chubby cheeks, and so on. But, as desert dwellers, the residents of Egypt/Nubia do not display these physical traits. On the contrary, their noses are thinner and longer, have less full lips, etc. The faces do resemble the inhabitants of this region of Mexico i.e. Mayans and Tzotzils, among others. The quote by Haslip-Vierra, Ortiz de Monetllano, and Barbour above comes from the article "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs." Published in Current Anthropology, Volume 38, No. 3, June 1997. In the Comments section at the end of the article every scholar (African American, Mexican, and Europran American) agrees that Van Sertima is wrong. Van Sertima was given an opportunity to reply but refused. Another article by the authors is "They were NOT Here before Columbus: Afrocentric Hyperdiffusionism in the 1990s," Ethnohistory 44:2 (Spring 1997). Abstract: This essay responds to a theory that has been aggressively promoted as fact by an influential group of Afrocentrists in recent years -- that New World civilizations were created or were influenced by African visitors at key points in the centuries that preceded the European discovery of the Americas. As discussed in this essay, the theory is shown to have no support in the evidence that has been analyzed by specialists in various fields. The essay focuses on the methodological approaches employed by the Afrocentrists in their study of linguistics, terracotta figurines, technological development, and monumental sculpture. A concluding section briefly discusses the repercussions of this theory on ethnic relations in schools, on college campuses, and in North American society as a whole. From the conclusion: "It is quite clear from the foregoing that claims of an African presence in pre-Columbian America are purely speculative, rigidly diffusionist, and have no foundation in the artifactual, physical, and historical evidence. Nevertheless, the Afrocentric position is routinely articulated in a very forceful manner with few if any caveats. Van Sertima makes reference to the "ample," "overwhelming," "remarkable" and "indisputable" evidence, or he uses phrases such as "there is no doubt" or "there is no question whatever" to support claims (1976:23; 1992a: 24;1992b: 34,43; 1991c [1983]:61)." Van Sertima reminds me of another 1970s author who made the ridiculous claim that the Meso Americans learned how to build pyrmaids from space aliens. Or, the Eurocentric scholars who, upon "discovering" the ruins of Great Zimbabwe claimed that the Romans must have built the structures as the Africans were too primitive to make something so complex. I realize he would be loathe to be included in either group but the arguments he makes are similar. In Coe's words, "The claim by Van Sertima and others that Africans created the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica belongs in the same historical dustbin as previous claims that the high cultures of the New World resulted from the migration of white peoples from Europe." I could not agree more. Unfortunately, to make such claims nearly guarantees one will be labeled an agent of the white male establishment or worse, racist. Nonetheless, it is the responsibilty of serious scholars to refute claims that cannot stand up to peer review. This is certainly the case with Van Sertima.
Rating: 
Summary: Some weak points of the book
Review: I should start by saying I am not a fan of Columbus and I think we should not have a holiday in his honor. I also found more evidence supporting van Sertima's thesis in the book than I expected. However, I am not convinced. Here are some weak points which the 37 previous reviewers have not mentioned. Concerning the huge "negroid" stone heads created by the Olmecs as evidence that the Olmecs had African rulers, which is the strongest point made in the book: the heads look much more like the heads of people afflicted with dwarfism than the heads of Africans, except for the curly hair. The Olmecs may have looked upon dwarfs as a kind of extraterrestrials, with special connections to the supernatural. Let us recall that the people of Salem, who were enlightened by the Bible, thought that even ordinary people who were old and ugly could invoke supernatural powers. To cite the American pyramids as evidence of African influence is a stretch. They were built 2,000 years after the last pyramids were built in Egypt, when no one knew any more how it had been done. The construction of the American pyramids -- earth instead of stone blocks -- was in any case different and so was their use. Plate 1. A map showing the "Tordesillas line" of 1493, drawn by the Pope to allocate the western part of the unexplored world to Spain and the eastern part to Portugal. The line was a meridian, about 49 W in present-day coordinates. The map shows parts of the Americas which had not yet been reached by Europeans in 1493. This is supposed to prove that in 1493 Europeans knew about America from earlier African explorers. But the fact that this particular map shows the Tordesillas line of 1493 does not mean it was drawn in 1493. It was drawn later. Plate 13. Artists representation of the author's idea of a vessel in which Africans might have traveled from present-day Venezuela to Puerto Rico in 2 days. It is a long flat open boat with a score of oarsmen on each side. (The oarsmen seem to be facing forward.) Such a vessel would flood and break in the open ocean. One who thinks people could cross 500 miles of ocean at 20 mph in a rowboat like that is not qualified to discuss sea voyages. Plate 14, "semitic figure", is supposed to be evidence of pre-columbian visitors from the Old World. This figure is reminiscent of caricatures of Jews in Nazi publications. The plausible interpretation: it is just one of the grossly distorted representations of the human figure which abound in ancient American art. p. 55, l. 11-9 from bottom. We are told the use of longitude as a coordinate to specify the location of a point on the globe was not known to Europeans. In fact this was known since before Christ and never forgotten. What was not known to anyone until John Harrison made highly accurate clocks for ships around 1760 was how to determine one's longitude, and hence one's location, at sea.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally Some Truth In A Of World Historical Fluff
Review: Unbelievebly, this goth dude told me about this book my freshman year of college way back in...let's not go there but since I've read some of the book, I've been fascinated by it. Old Ivan is not accepted by other prominent historians I gather and not mentioned at all in polite conversations at grant award parties or community college faculty lounges but he's got theories that are at least worth exploring, I mean the History Channel rarely shows anything about black history that doesn't involve Dr. King Jr. or the Klan, I mean come on folks, black history didn't start with American slavery and didn't end with the Civil Rights Movement but isn't it ever so comforting to think so? Ivan, Diop, and many others have sacrificed their reputations trying to show that dark skinned peoples have a rich history that spans the globe a thousand times over before the West was considered the homestead of civilization. The truth is out there and believe it or not a scrawy white goth friend lead me to it.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth is Indeed Refreshing
Review: This is a foundational book for those seeking the truth about African history. In no other venue have I seen such blatant lies and obfuscations than those by so-called 'Eurocentric' authors about the ancient past. This book practically stands alone in providing a rational explantion for the existance of the huge African Olmec heads in Central America. While the aforementioned 'scholars' employ negative 'spin' and deceit, Van Sertima tells the truth. It may not be a popular notion that Africans arrived on the American shores, as rulers, roughly 3,000 years before Columbus but its the truth. It's veracity can be viewed by simply looking at one of the huge stone heads that were quarried many miles away from where they were ultimately found. Van Sertima doesn't focus on just the stone heads but corroborates his thesis with example after example of how intimate contact over a long period of time must have occurred between African and the American continents. His examples include religious ceremonies common to both and plants that were indigenous to one locale and found in the other. After completing the book, one cannot help but feel that Van Sertima raises many questions (and answers them) that 'traditional' historians have run away from for hundreds of years. The numbers of ridiculous theories that I have read regarding only the stone heads boggles my mind. I laughed out loud when someone postulated that the heads depicted Asians, not Africans. Even better, an 'esteemed' historian stated that the reason the heads looked African is because the carvers lacked instruments that would have allowed them to draw angular (caucasian) features. This is the depths to which this discouse have fallen. Read this book and become enlightened.
Rating: 
Summary: More work is needed in this area
Review: Ivan Van Sertima's "They Came Before Columbus" focuses on the idea that ancient Africans sailed to the Americas before 1492. It is a fascinating introduction to the idea of African-American diffusionism. Van Sertima casts a very wide net, cataloging the possibility of voyages to the Americas by Phoenicians and Egyptians in ancient times, and West Africans in the centuries before Columbus. The evidence (similarity of American and Egyptian pyramids, European encounters with dark-skinned people in the Americas before trans-Atlantic slavery, Native American and West African folktales and oral history, New World crops in the Old World and vice-versa prior to 1492, linguistic similarities between West Africans and Native Americans, ancient American statues with Negroid features, Columbus's contact with African sailors, etc.) presented in this book is continually interesting, and is enough to convince someone who wants to believe it, but it is never quite conclusive enough to convince a skeptic. At some points, the book is not as well organized as one would wish, and it sometimes jumps from topic to topic without adequate transition and introduction. Also, I did not care for the way some of the information was presented in historical novel form. But overall, there is much food for thought here. Thor Heyerdahl has proved that ancient peoples had the technology to cross vast oceans; there is absolutely no reason why Africans couldn't have sailed to the Americas (especially since the Gulf Stream makes it possible to get between Africa and America almost without trying). Whether they did so by accident or design, and when and how often, are questions historians and archeologists still have to answer. Much more work is needed in this area. Given that this book was first published in 1976, one can hope that another substantial work in this area may come soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Short and sweet
Review: Hello I`ll get right to the point.
We all no that this books important
for the simple fact blacks are victims
of a powerful domanating race that wants
to control the world example when christ
walked the earth he was the best thing that
every happend in the history of man kind
but he was looked down on mistreated stoned
spit at called names and denied. So its the same
way with the blacks because the good and the children of
the kingdom of heaven will suffer much pain before
entering the gates of heaven.
Rating:
Summary: diffusionism
Review: To the reviewer who wonders how the people of New Guinea got to look like Africans: human beings originally evolved in Africa, whence they migrated around the world. Presumably early homo sapiens had more or less the racial characteristics of today's Africans. Features such as light skin, straight hair and eye folds were later mutations that never made it as far as Australasia.
Van Sertima's book is an example of diffusionism - the idea that the inhabitants of a place could never have come up with cultural innovations by themselves, so they must have been brought by migrants from afar. There have been many examples, from the Book of Mormon (American Indians are the lost tribes of Israel) to Kon-Tiki (Polynesians came from South America and ultimately from Europe.) Africans have been the victims of this way of thinking: for instance, European archaeologists took a long time to admit that Africans could have built the Great Zimbabwe.
Most diffusionist theories have been discredited, though some have proved true in a limited way. For instance, Vikings really did leave remains in Newfoundland, though their influence on American Indian culture is imperceptible.
Diffusionism is a kind of cultural imperialism. Do Africans really want to claim it for themselves?
Rating:
Summary: Credible Body of Work
Review: An historian should be judged by his body of work, not a single book. Van Sertima's body of work speaks for itself. He combines visual examination of the now infamous Olmec heads with other data sources including linguistics, agriculture, and yes, some educated speculation. The result is a credible work on a possible African influence in the Americas. Doubters should note that other works have corroborated African trade with the Indian subcontinent for hundreds of years before the Portuguese disrupted the trade routes. Likewise, seagoing vessels link Africoid peoples throughout the Pacific rim. Van Sertima simply combines meticulously gathered facts and educated guesses in an easily read book. He uses narrative styles to present data in an manner more accessible to lay persons. His work, though controversial, is more credile than some other sources such as JA Rogers. Buy the book if you are open-minded, and generally curious. Buy it if you've read, and appreciate Chancellor Williams or Chiek Diop. Then buy Van Sertima's other works. Don't buy it if your depth of African culture stops with Tarzan movies.
Rating:
Summary: Authenic Reference & Resource
Review: Any reader who has given this work a negative review, is do to the fact they do not know history and anthropology, and their foundation has been based off of some of the pioneers and scholars who have been culturally biased against Black people and Ancient Black civilizations. Also for the American Indian criticizers, I am one of you, if you would only check the records of the older tribes such as the Washitaw, Jamassi/Yamasse, Mawshahk, Lenape, and even the records of the Creek, Shoshoni, and Seminole and Iriqous and many others. The records have the history on the Black Mound Builders(Eagle Mounds etc.), and how the ancestors were Black, including the Mayan and Zu-Aztec coming from the Toltecs or Olmecs. In fact in 1996 the year of the indigenous people the Washitaw nation was recognized as the oldest indigenous people in America and they are Black people with wooly hair who link themselves back to the Olmecs only supporting what Sertima has said. Their United Nations number has the prefix 215, go and check it out. People do not want to admit that Blacks were the original people on the planet and has been the root for many of these civilizations regardless of how many artifacts and facts anthropologist and archeologist uncover. Well, guess what? Now science supports everything they have been saying. Biochemist have proven that Black people were here first with the Mitochondria DNA/RNA, go look it up, it is in a case study called Mitochondria Eve. Also read National Geographic while you are at it. Only about 10%-15% of the slaves came from Africa, where do you think the rest came from? They came from the tribes already here. Due to misinformation and racism most people don't know this, all they have to do is check the records of the tribes that were here first instead of creating false theories or relying on miseducated natives and euro-americans. We as American Indians were also victims of "tying the vine" and white washing just like many other minorities in this country. Back to the book, anyone who wants to email me on the previous feel free at faruki@hotmail.com, the book is excellent. It is accompanied with pictures of the monolithic Olmec statues found in Lower America. A picture is a thousand words. Then his accounts telling of the sea routes Africans or Malian Moors were able to use to sail over here prior to Columbus is supported by the engravings found in the Cockaponset forest by John Gallager (Archeologist & Professor from Fordham University)and correlates with the inscription found on the Haj Mimoun Rock in East Morocco and deciphered by Barry Fell, which records Moors (Blacks) being here a thousand years before Columbus. Also in the book "Ancient And Modern Britons" it says that "In 1676 the native races of New England were spoken of indifferently as "Indians" and "Moors";, and our British "Indians" [aboriginals] are also remembered as "Moors"". That is from European sources recognizing that there were Black people over here that were considered Indians. I could go on and on, but Sertima's book speaks for itself, not only is he an Archeologist, he is also a linguist; he knows what he is talking about. He doesn't have a PHD in these studies for nothing. He hasn't spoken at the most prestigious universities simply because he is making up things. Nuff said, this book is a five star resource, anyone that has an interest in history and ancient cultures, specifically Black peoples of Meso-America should pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Please Debunk the Olmec Heads and Explain New Guinea
Review: This is a work of excellence and just goes to prove that oppressed people are never represented fairly in so-called scholarly research. As the old saying goes "tales of the hunted.....". As for the negative reviews, not one single reviewer has presented any rebuttal to the most starkly sound evidence in the entire book which is the existence of the extremely Africoid Olmec heads. One reviewer said that there are also heads that are non-Africoid in appearance. However, the existence of multiple statues displaying multiple ethnicities by no means excludes one over the other. It simply implies that the statues were built in the likeness of people of more than one ethnicity. Second point: Many negative reviewers state that Africans were non-sea going. If that is the case, please explain the existence of the inhabitants of New Guinea, the inhabitants of Fiji, the inhabitants of Sulawesi in Indonesia. All of these people (along with others who reside on islands in the South Pacific) are Africoid people, complete with 'woolly' hair. The negative reviewers clearly exhibit the pompous European egocentricity that plagues all of Western Academia. As I read each negative review, I could only picture a red faced toddler, having a temper tantrum because someone has told him that Santa Claus doesn't exist. All the while he is proclaiming with tears flowing "Yes He Does! Yes He Does! My mommy told me so!" Or better yet, an elementary school boy (again red faced) whining to his schoolyard playmate, "My dad is stronger than your dad and my dad can beat your's up!" And the playmate replies calmly, "No he can't." And the red faced school boy goes wild and jumps up and down while screaming, "Yes he can! Yes he can! Yes he can!" You get the picture.............
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