Ivan Van Sertima
Ivan Van Sertima
Ivan Van Sertima
Ivan van Sertima was a world renown public intellectual. Author of fifteen books, he was a
major force in scholarship of the African Diaspora and of South American history. They Came
Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, published by Random House
(1977) now in its twenty-first printing (published in French in 1981 and in the same year was
awarded the Clarence L. Hotle Prize, a prize awarded every two years "for a work excellence in
literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African Diaspora")
was his most well-known book.
He was born in Guyana, South America (1935), educated at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (London University) and the Rutgers Graduate School, held degrees in African Studies
and Anthropology, and received an honorary D.H.L. from The City University of New York via
Medgar Evers College in 2003. From 1957-1959 he served as a press and broadcasting officer in
the Guyana Information Services; and during the decade of the 1960's he hosted broadcast
weekly from Britain to Africa and the Caribbean. As a literary critic, he was the author of
Caribbean Writers, a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel, and also the author of
several major literary reviews published in Denmark, India, Britain and the United States. He
was honored for his work in this field by being asked by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish
Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976-1980; he had also
been honored as an historian of world repute by being asked to join UNESCO's International
Commission for Rewriting the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind.
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Dr. Van Sertima was also a professor of African Studies at Rutgers University, and a visiting
professor at Princeton University. He had lectured at more than 100 universities in the U.S., and
also lectured in Canada, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. He defended his highly
controversial thesis on the African presence in pre-Colombian America before the Smithsonian,
which published his address in 1995, and he also appeared before a Congressional Committee on
July 7, 1987 to challenge the Columbus myth.
And notwithstanding, Van Sertima was also the founder (1979) and editor of The Journal of
African Civilizations, which published several major anthologies that help change the way
African history and culture is taught and studied. Thus, he informed us (via
www.journalofafricancivilizations.com) that the journal “is the only historical journal in the
English-speaking world which focuses on the heartland rather than on the periphery of African
civilizations” and “… therefore, removes the “primitive” from the center stage it has occupied in
Eurocentric histories and anthropologies of the African”. These anthologies include Blacks in
Science: Ancient and Modern; Black Women in Antiquity; Egypt Revisited; Egypt: Child of
Africa; Nile Valley Civilizations; African Presence in the Art of the Americas; African Presence
in Early Asia; African Presence in Early Europe; African Presence in Early America; Great
African Thinkers; Great Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern, and the Golden Age of the Moor.
Thus, Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern (1983) showed that Africa had an impressive
scientific tradition in certain centers and historical periods with a particular focus on African
American inventions, especially in the fields of telecommunications, space, and nuclear science;
African Presence in Early Europe (1985) places into perspective the role of the African in world
civilization, in particular the little-known contributions to the advancement of Europe with a
major essay on the evolution of the Caucasoid discusses scientific discoveries of the African
origins of humankind and the shift towards albinism (dropping of pigmentation) by the Grimaldi
African during an ice age in Europe. Second, the debt owed to African and Arab Moors for
certain inventions, usually credited to the Renaissance, is discussed, as well as the much earlier
Egyptian influence on Greek science and philosophy; African Presence in Early Asia (1985,
1988) co-edited with Runoko Rashidi, is divided into five sections. The first discusses the
peopling of Asia from Africa and identifies African people with Asia's first hominid, as well as
modern populations. The second section demonstrates the African elements underlying major
early civilizations in Asia, an overview that includes India, Iraq and Iran, Phoenicia, Palestine,
the Arabian peninsula, China, Japan and Cambodia. The third section discusses the African
origin of the great religions of Asia--Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The fourth
section focuses on the historical and anthropological relationship between African people and
Asia's Indo-European, Mongoloid and Semitic populations.
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In short, the Journal of African Civilizations, set a new African centered standard of excellence
and innovation in the publishing of academic journals devoted to African historical research as it
was published via Transaction Publishers in book size editions. And next to his They Came
Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, the Journal of African Civilizations
had become closely associated with his legacy as a scholar focused on extracting truth from
history to announce the strength and vitality of the African presence throughout the world. JPAS
editor Itibari M. Zulu (and others) had an opportunity to meet and talk to Dr. Van Sertima in
1999 at the African Marketplace & Cultural Faire in Los Angeles, California.
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