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Summary: Historical nit-picking aside
Comment: Historical cultural nit-picking aside, this book did an excellent job of blowing away my own blind
spots regarding the likelihood of multiple pre-columbian voyages to (and from) the Americas. The
author provides historical, archeological, and linguistic evidence and indications of African
voyages to the Americas, including written accounts by early European explorers. The author also
writes well-crafted 're-enactments' based on valid sources that make the past come alive in the
mind's eye of the reader. While this makes for great reading, it may be outside the norm of
Euro-American academic culture, weakening the credibility of his thesis in those circles. Each
chapter comes with an extensive bibliography. Having read modern accounts of individuals and groups
surviving trans-oceanic voyages on small disabled craft, all of his accounts are plausible, most are
convincing, none seem far-fetched. The only thing that's really shocking is the lack of published
follow-up research and books since Ivan's book was published more than thirty years ago. A great
read.

Customer Rating:

Summary: His-Story is slowly being unravelved
Comment: One of the most enduring myths in the Americas is that Columbus discovered America in 1692. In fact
Columbus did not discover diggly. He was actually very late on the scene. The Africans
"discovered" the Americas hundreds of years before. The population was already there. They just
wanted to know what was on the other side of the big water, and thought they would go and visit.
Some of the Africans came by accident, pushed by the trade winds. Others like Abubakari the Second
came to the Americas in 1310 by way of a planned expedition, with hundreds of people, provisions,
boats, etc.

However, Columbus was very important. With his coming, came the slaughter
of native people and the theft of their lands, and the beginning of the degradation of the African
in the Americas.

This book is very academic. But it is an excellent read, if you can
get through it. There is much information, and will surely broaden your body of knowledge.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A must have
Comment: All interested in the true history of Africans, African Americans, and the Americas must read this
book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Real History That Was Buried Under Myths & Lies
Comment: I remember it as if it was yesterday; my eighth grade history teacher began to talk about
Christopher Columbus when I raised my hand and asked how he could have discovered something when
people were watching him from the shore. My question was shot down then, but I found the answers
years later in They Came Before Columbus.

Ivan Van Sertima is a Guyanese historian,
linguist and anthropologist whose impeccable research clearly demonstrates that great African
mariners visited the Americas and had major influences - with reciprococity - in Native American
cultures through trade and religious practices.

Through a strong current named Siro
Kuwo, even small boats could cross the Atlantic Ocean from the Equator and travel to the Americas.
Columbus learned about the route to the Americas during his years as a trader in Equatorial
Guinea.

Van Sertima cites linguistic similarities of West African and Native Americans,
"Old World" plants in the Americas - bananas, yams, beans and gourds - that predate Columbus (and
vice versa) and the similarities between Aztec/Egyptian calendars & pyramid structures and the
"Olmec heartland" in the Americas, where 11 giant heads - one which appears on the cover of the book
- were constructed in honor of the African explorers.

Native Americans gave Columbus
(as if he didn't know already) evidence of the past trading, explaining how the top of the mariners'
spears were made of a metal "gua-nin." The word's origin is from the Mande language of West Africa.
The Bambara werewolf cult - whose head was known as amantigi (heads of faith) - appeared in a
Mexican ritual as amanteca.

The history built upon the racist myths and lies are
destroyed by the facts that Van Sertima meticulously presents. And it is a celebration of mariners
who traveled not as imperialists looking to subjugate people, destroy their history and steal their
lands, but explorers who learned from, traded with and were respected by those they met on the
shores of the Americas.

Customer Rating:

Summary: More than Olmec Heads
Comment: Ivan Van Sertima's argument cannot be reduced to the apparent negroid features of the Olmec heads,
and to even suggest it is to deny the thoroughness of the work, the overwhelming presence of
references and notes, and is clearly based on an instinctive contempt for any attempt to show that
africans have contributed to world history outside of slavery and colonization.
If anything,
Van Sertima's argument revolves around the existence of the Siro Kuwo, a strong current in the
proximity of the Canary Islands, going accross the atlantic and ending in the Gulf of Mexico, where
Monte Alban's step pyramids and most of the Olmecs heads were found.
Thor Heyerdahl's travels
have proven that such travels were possible with primitive boats made out of papyrus; Van Sertima
considered that possibility, and backed with evidences, argues that it did happened.
I find
it disturbing that everytime africans are not depicted as slaves or savages, every time a scholar
tries to bring any part of African history to light, it is never their arguments that is attacked,
but their intentions and motives.
The evidence is there, there's enough footnotes in this
book to dispel any attempt to undermine Van Sertima's meticulousness.
This work is not an
afrocentric discursive attempt at ennobling Africans by robing Native Americans of their own
contributions to world civilization, this is the work of a scholar, done with great accuracy and
methodology, dealing with the multiple non-violent encounters between Africans and Native Americans,
way before Columbus tried to have his cake and eat it too.

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