Turkish Professor: Muslims Discovered Ame

          An attack on my thesis that Africans made contact with
          America before Columbus in two major pre-Christian
          periods (circa 1200 b.c. and circa 800 b.c.) in
          addition to the Mandingo contact period (1310/1311
          A.D.) has been circulated in advance to hundreds of
          subscribers to a journal, Current Anthropology. Copies
          of this attack by Bernard de Montellano, Warren Barbour
          and Gabriel Haslip-Viera were also sent out to
          African-American scholars, some of whom were cited in
          the attack, dishonestly titled "Van Sertima's
          Afrocentricity and the Olmecs." The title's emphasis is
          meant to suggest that all revisions of African history
          by so-called "Blacks" belong to a common school,
          radiate from a common brain, and are cast in the same
          "racialist" hue and mode. This circular, which precedes
          my new book, REPLY TO MY CRITICS (scheduled to appear
          in Sept), seeks to highlight the brazen and malicious
          lies, slanders and misrepresentations that characterize
          this attack. Let it be noted that I was invited to
          respond to this attack but was forced to withdraw. The
          editor, after verbally agreeing that I could reprint my
          commentary, after the issue of the Journal appeared,
          did a dramatic about-turn when pressed to sign a
          written agreement to back up his word. He wrote that I
          could only reprint my "commentary" (15 pages) if I also
          reprinted the attack on me (50 pages) since "they form
          a unit." To feel the full absurdity of this, just
          imagine the Jewish Defense League being forced to
          republish an extended Nazi-type attack on their
          positions in order to republish a brief response to
          such a slanderous attack.

          - LIE ONE: - "Van Sertima's expedition allegedly sailed
          or drifted westward to the Gulf of Mexico where it came
          in contact with inferior Olmecs. These individuals
          created Olmec civilization." - De Montellano, Barbour
          and Haslip-Viera.

          - THE TRUTH: As far back as 1976, I made my position on
          this matter very clear. I never said that Africans
          created or founded American civilization. I said they
          made contact and all significant contact between two
          peoples lead to influences. "I think it is necessary to
          make it clear - since partisan and ethnocentric
          scholarship seems to be the order of the day - that the
          emergence of the Negroid face, which the archeological
          and cultural data overwhelmingly confirm, in no way
          presupposes the lack of a native originality, the
          absence of other influences or the automatic eclipse of

          other faces"-p. 147 of "They Came Before Columbus." See
          also Journal of African Civilizations, Vol 8, No. 2,
          1986 "I cannot subscribe to the notion that
          civilization suddenly dropped onto the American earth
          from the Egyptian heaven."

          - LIE TWO: None of the early Egyptians and Nubians
          looked like Negroes. "They have long, narrow noses..."
          "Short, flat noses are confined to the West African
          ancestors of African-Americans." Again, "there is no
          evidence that ancient Nubians ever braided their hair.
          This style comes from colonial and modern Ethiopia."

          - THE TRUTH: Narrow noses have been found among
          millions of pure-blooded Africans. We can see this
          among the Elongated and Nilotic types. My critics know
          nothing about the variants of Africa, ancient or
          modern. All the six main variants of the African have
          been found in the Egyptian and Nubian graves. For
          examples of ancient braided Nubian hair, see Frank
          Snowden's "Before Color Prejudice," As for
          Egypto-Nubians only having narrow noses, see Egyptian
          pharaohs in Vol 10 and 12 of the JAC and major Nubian
          pharaohs in Peggy Bertram's essay (JAC, Vol.
          12)-Ushanaru, Plate 8, p 173; Taharka as the god Amun
          from Kawa Temples, Plate 9, p. 173; Shabaka, Plate 12,
          p. 176. Tanwetamani, Plate 16, p. 180. To say that
          these are narrow noses is to exhibit a colossal
          ignorance of African types in ancient Egypt and Nubia.
          The agenda behind this is to bolster their case that
          they could not have been models for any of the Olmec
          stone heads.

          - LIE THREE; Modern Egyptians look exactly as they did
          thousands of years ago. The composition of the Egyptian
          has not changed over the last 5000 years. Invasions by
          the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Arabs and Romans left
          them looking the same today as in the dawn of history.

          - THE TRUTH: This is a hasty misreading of the work of
          scholars like A.C. Berry, R. J. Berry and Ucko who
          point out that there is a remarkable degree of
          homogeneity in this area for 5000 years. What a
          superficial reading of this fails to note is that the
          period ends with the close of the native dynasties
          BEFORE the invasions of the Assyrian, Persian, Greek,
          Roman and Arab foreigners

          - LIE FOUR: Faced with the startingly Negroid features
          of some of the Olmec stone heads, my critics try 4 ways
          out: (a) They are "spitting images of the native;" (b)
          they appear dark because some of them were carved out
          of dark volcanic stone; (c) some were made of white
          basalt which turned dark over time; (d) ancient
          Egyptians and Nubians were remote in physiognomy from
          sub-Saharan Negroes and none of them could have been
          models for any of the "Negro-looking" heads. Having

          said all that, they then claim that "races are not
          linked to specific physiognomic traits."

          - THE TRUTH: No need to shoot them down on this. They
          turned the gun on themselves.

          - LIE FIVE: Nothing African has been found in any
          archeological excavation in the New World.

          - THE TRUTH: In the drier centers of the Olmec world -
          at Tlatilco, Cerro de las Mesas and Monte Alban - the
          Polish craniologist, Andrez Wiercinski, found
          indisputable evidence of an African presence. The many
          traits analyzed in these Olmec sites indicated
          individuals with Negroid traits predominating but with
          an admixture of other racial traits. This is what I
          have said. The work of A. Vargas Guadarrama is an
          important reinforcement of Wiercinski's study. He found
          that the skulls he examined at Tlatilco, which
          Wiercinski had classified as Negroid, were "radically
          different" from other skulls on the site, bearing
          indisputable similarities to skulls in West Africa and
          Egypt.

          - LIE SIX: Van Sertima presents no evidence that a New
          World cotton (gossypium hirsutum var. punctatum) was
          transferred from Guinea to the Cape Verde in 1462 by
          the Portuguese and there is no hard proof that West
          Africans made a round trip to America before Columbus.

          -THE TRUTH: I cited evidence in 12 categories to
          establish Mandingo voyages to the New World circa
          1310/1311 A.D. This included eyewitness reports from
          nearly a dozen Europeans, even Columbus himself,
          metallurgical, linguistic, botanical, navigational,
          oceanographic, skeletal, epigraphic, cartographic,
          oral, documented and iconographic evidence. With regard
          to New World cotton in Africa before 1462, Stephens
          spoke in two tongues to pacify isolationist colleagues.

          - LIE SEVEN: My critics claim that I said the bottle
          gourd came in with Old World voyagers.

          - THE TRUTH: I was at pains to point out that this is
          ONE PLANT THAT COULD DRIFT TO AMERICA WITHOUT THE LOSS
          OF SEED VIABILITY. "Bottle gourds got caught in the
          pull of currents from the African coast and drifted to
          America across the Atlantic. Thomas Whitaker and G.F.
          Carter showed that these gourds are capable of floating
          in seawater for 7 months without loss of seed
          viability" - "They Came Before Columbus," 204. They
          indulge in an even more vicious dishonesty with regard
          to cotton, claiming that I said "Old World cottons came
          into America with a fleet of Nubians circa 700 B.C." I
          never linked cotton transfer to Nubian contact.

          - LIE EIGHT: My critics admit "we cannot unequivocally
          date the heads" but they single out one which they say
          Ann Cyphers confidently dated about 1011 B.C. Note the
          date! This is 200 years AFTER the Egyptian contact

          period c. 1200 B.C. Yet they claim that the dating of
          this one head proves "Negro-looking heads" were being
          carved, mutilated, and buried prior to 1200 B.C.

          - THE TRUTH: The stone heads could not have been buried
          before they were carved.

          - LIE NINE: Egyptians stopped building pyramids
          "thousands of years" before 1200 B.C. No relationship
          whatever exists between Old World/New World pyramids.

          - THE TRUTH: Enormous obelisks, calling for the same
          complex engineering skills of the pyramid age were
          built at Karnak as late as 1295 B.C. A pyramid was also
          built as Dashur circa 1700 B.C. Bart Jordan, the
          mathematical child prodigy, to whom Einstein granted
          special audience, established startling coincidences
          between Old World and New World pyramids. He agrees
          with me that "The overwhelming incidence of coincidence
          argues overwhelmingly against a mere coincidence."

          - LIE TEN: My critics claim that I have trampled upon
          the self-respect and self-esteem of native Americans
          and they have come forward to champion their cause.

          - THE TRUTH: My people (for I am part Macusi and part
          African) would be horrified to have, as champions of
          our cause, De Montellano, Barbour, and Haslip-Viera,
          who disgrace us with the charge that "native Americans
          would have sacrificed and eaten the Africans if they
          came."