Some Problems with They Came Before Columbus
They Came Before Columbus is easily Ivan Van Sertima’s best known work. It’s also his most controversial. I previously wrote an article on Medium which explored some of the flaws with Van Sertima’s work. Before I go into some of the problems with Van Sertima’s work, I want to mention here that there is a detailed chapter on this topic in my book Eshu, Legba, and the Devil.
The main problem with They Came Before Columbus comes down to lack of historical references or sources. Van Sertima argues that Africans from the 25th dynasty of Egypt sailed to the Americas, but he offered no historical evidence to support this claim. The ahistorical nature of this argument is so apparent that Van Sertima was forced to change his timeline when he wrote Early America Revisited. In that book, Van Sertima places the Egyptian arrival in the Americas at 1200 B.C. Early America Revisited is not as popular as They Came Before Columbus, but in some ways it is more significant because it shows that Van Sertima was forced to revise a lot of his claims to fit with new timelines regarding the development of the Olmec civilization.
There are other problems which I raised in my book as well. For example, Van Sertima stated that the navigator of the voyage was a Phoenician and that there was “probably a Hittite or two” in the crew. How could Van Sertima know this? There is a lot of speculative information thrown out by Van Sertima which is not supported by any historical documentation or research.
Van Sertima’s argument that Abubakari II sailed to the America is just as flawed. Here he at least stands on firmer ground in that we do know that Abubakari did attempt a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean — this is documented by both a written account and the oral tradition of Mali. We also know that Abubakari never returned home, so his fate is unknown. Van Sertima argues, on the basis of no evidence, that Abubakari successfully arrived in Central America, in present day Mexico. A point which I also noted in my book is that among those who argue that Abubakari successfully arrived in the Americas, there is disagreement about where he landed. The historian Gaoussou Diawara claimed that Abubakari landed in Brazil, rather than in Mexico. The confusion is based on the fact that we simply do not know what happened to Abubakari II. It’s also speculative.
As I pointed out in my book, I am not opposed to the idea that Africans could have arrived in the Americas at some point. Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated that sailing to the Americas from West Africa in the type of boats which Africans had was possible, but West African civilizations at the time were generally not seafaring civilizations. I did give the example of the Bijago people who were skilled at navigating the ocean, but Van Sertima does not even mention them, which is curious since a stronger case could perhaps be made that a society which is noted for its seafaring capabilities would be more likely to make a voyage to the Americas.
In my book I conclude that Van Sertima’s argument was a daring one which challenged certain assumptions about African history at the time. The book is very flawed, however, and should not be viewed as a serious historical study. The problem is that this is precisely how many have viewed Van Sertima’s book.
One of the reasons why I remain critical of They Came Before Columbus is not only because of its flawed arguments, but it has become the basis for an entire pseudo-historical movement based on this notion that African Americans were already in America before the slave trade. This is not a claim which Van Sertima was making at all, but unfortunately this idea of a black presence prior to Columbus has led to a number of these pseudo-historical claims. Lord Jamar — a member of Brand Nubian who once rapped about going back to Africa — claimed that he looks more Mayan than African.
Hidden Colors is a documentary filled with historical errors. One of the most glaring examples of this was its discussion of the African voyage in the Americas. The documentary features Kaba Kamene claiming that the 18th dynasty of Egypt could be tracked to the Mississippi River in America. There is no evidence of this. This wasn’t even an argument which Van Sertima made. Umar Johnson is also featured claiming that Africans were traveling back and forth to the Americas long before Columbus. There is no evidence of this either. This is why why Walter Rodney pointed out in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that “if any African canoes reached the Americas (as is sometimes maintained) they did not establish two-way links.”
The ultimate problem with They Came Before Columbus is that it helped to popularize a feel-good approach to pseudo-history in which African people create ahistorical narratives of our history which help us to either escape from our African identity or help us cope with the trauma of slavery. It feels better for some to think that their ancestors were already in America than to deal with the reality of the Middle Passage. This feel good approach also requires little work or historical research. I am certainly not suggesting that this was Van Sertima’s intent, but it has been the unfortunate product of his most famous work.
