African Presence In america thousands of years before columbus was even born?

Question

Other indications of their presence were remnants they left behind from the items they brought to the Americas with them from Africa. From civilizations like Mali, Song hay, and Egypt, came the principal American food plants, the Mayan Calendar, linguistic evidence, and the art of pyramid building. The first indications were the plants that were transplanted from Africa to the Americas. The cotton seeds, banana plants, bottle gourd, jack bean and the West African yam all have African origin, and they suddenly appeared in the Americas without and explanation. They do not appear to have followed any natural course of migration. It is believed that these plants were transferred, which would require effective contact between the two civilizations. The next indication was the calendar the Mayan people used based on the lunar and solar calendar. This calendar was quite accurate and very similar to the egyptian calendar. Professor Wiener believe Mayan mathematics corresponded with the number system of the Bambaras of Guinea. Another indication was a writing system used in the Americas called Micmac Hieroglyphs. When comparing this style of writing to the simpler cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphic, called heiratic, over half were found to be similar. Closer examination revealed the meanings assigned to these signs matched. It is evident that the West African languages and South American languages are similar. These similarities can be traced to common root words. These differences are too close and occur too frequently to be a coincidence.

A very important indication is the knowledge of pyramid building. Pyramid building is a specialized form of construction. In Egypt they progressed from the stepped pyramid of Djosser, to the finished product at Giza. At La Venta, which was the location of the first pyramid in the Americas, was a fully finished pyramid. There was no sign of progressive learning. The base of these pyramids are the same measurement as in Egypt and they are placed on a north-south axis. These pyramids also served the same dual purpose, tomb and temple. The four indications of outside influence, American food plants, Mayan calendar, linguistic evidence, and pyramid building are just a few. There are more, such as religion, tobacco, astronomy, and African animals that appeared in the Americas.

These outside influences controlled the development of civilizations in the New World. The Olmec civilization was the first of these civilizations flourishing between 1200 and 400 BC. The first great Olmec Civil-Ceremonial Center was developed at San Lorenzo by 1200 BC. About 900 BC, Olmec and the Mayan civilization set the foundation for other civilizations, to include the Aztecs and the Incas. These civilizations received sufficient transmission to enable them to rise to greatness. The African people have been great travelers, culture carriers, and culture collectors among the people of the world. During all this traveling the African explores never launched a destructive war on the people they met. The two people joined and created a separate culture with its own distinctness, the Olmec civilization. Some of these supporting facts were recent discoveries. All of them are accurate, although some are hard to prove, because of the destruction of documents by European explores. I have presented you with the facts. Now it is up to you to decide. Was there African presence in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus? If you answered yes then it is obvious to you that Africans played an intricate part in the development of the Olmec Empire, the first civilization in the Americas.


Thoughts yes this article is long but its worth reading

Answer 1

Its possible....

ancient maps show the Americas were once attached to Africa before the contentinal shift...


who's to say thta people weren't already around when theat happened and they floated away with the new land formations?




g-day!

Answer 2

Some facts:
1. North America was settled by people over the Bering Street 20,000 years ago. This people came originally from the east coast of Africa and had left there 40,000 years ago, traceable by DNA tracers.
2. The African and American Continents, where at one time a super continent, before they drifted apart, which they still. Many plants and animals where common between the continents.
3. I don't believe, that there have ever been peaceful humans, or humans more peaceful then others, as you indicate. Humans are by their very nature very aggressive, but some developed more successful tools for war then others.
4. A study of DNA tracers could reveal, if their ever have been contact around 1200 B.C., so far it has not. this does not exclude a contact.
5. How little influence a small group can have, shows the 100 years of settlement of Vikings in Nova Scotia. Even Jamestown was doomed, from the first 6000 settlers, 200 barely survived. Only the environmental destruction of new species they introduced and the Malaria, which killed Millions of natives, changed America forever.

There may or may not have been contact. There are currents, which could bring accidentially rafts from Africa to South America. But no real trade. Cultural similarities can be explained several ways. The Phoenizians had a very advanced maritime technology, I would almost make a bet, one or two vessels made it to South America, 1200 B.C., maybe even Vikings around 700 A.D. But I doubt, they made it ever back alive.
Keep the ideas coming, its always good to rattle common conceptions.

Answer 3

Yeah. the article is quite overly political and has an incredible dearth of rationalized accuracy.

First about the pyramids... I can give a bunch of drunk dumbasses 3 empty beer cans and tell them to make a structure... what kind of structure will they make? That's right... a pyramid. Because it is the most structurally stable building that people with limited building tools can construct.

And the whole african civilizations not warring against any contact civilizations is also entirely incorrect. The out-of-africa migration chronicles a story of anatomically modern humans migrating northward into middle-eastern areas where AMH-neanderthal contact was made and the entire species of neanderthals was wiped out, most likely by way of extreme violence.

Calendars and such were going to be very similar because they both had to demonstrate the exact same information with a very high level of accuracy. All civilizations were sky-watchers by necessity. Their livlihoods depended in it as soon as they became sedentary agriculturalists or horticulturalists..

I just realized how much I've been talking about this, and the article is all a bunch of crap.

later.

Craig

Answer 4

Blood type variation and distribution across the planet disputes this 'evidence'. I couldn't find the specific anthropology site that shows the distribution, however, the theory that you presented is based on a belief that life originated in one place and then branched out.

It is also logical that life that existed on two continents and evolved separately and with parallels of development.

Or, we could view this as two people on different ends of a continent coming into a patent office with two very similar ideas.

The fossil record also presents a problem here. The earliest human remain to date on the South American continent were in Tierra del Fuego.

In linguistics, the challenge is that the languages native to the South American continent have no association to primitive or tribal African languages.

Futher, in linguistics and sociolinguistics, the South American picto-languages are quite different from the African continent.

The greater challenge is in the migration of early humans. The earliest pre-Columbian societies originate in Peru. If we accept that theory of drifting continents and Pangea, there isn't a rational way to explain how Africans could have travelled to Peru (West side of the continent) give the amount of drift that would have happened. If we look at a map of what Pangea was then, the South Americans are more likely related to the Austrailian tribes and the South Pacific. The early fossil record of Tierra del Fuego places the oldest South American humans in the very southern tip of the that continent. On Pangea, they would have been Asian or Polynesian, not African.

Answer 5

Whoever awarded the author of this cavalcade of nonsense a professorship should be sent back to driving a cab.

Every early culture, whether Egyptian, Celtic, Olmec, Mayan, Chinese, Great Zimbabwean, or Mound Builder of the Mississippi Valley, focuses on astronomy and calendar devising, because knowing exactly when to plant crops is crucial to the survival of any agriculture-based society. (Too early, and they die, frozen or drowned, and you lose a year's crops; too late and they never fully mature before catastrophic freezing or rain.) Burying people in pyramids, or building them, is equally obvious to an early stage people who have only stone to build with. (Just try to build any OTHER shape, without wood which rots in a wet climate or is scarce in a dry one. If you start by making square bricks, or stone blocks, which is necessary for stable building, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to decide to build a square building. Aiming the sides north-south? See above on astronomy.)

If it were true that Africans and early Americans shared food plants, why do we not see corn (maize), by far THE principal American food plant, anywhere outside the New World before Columbus? Or peanuts or potatoes, both of which have become crucial calorie sources throughout the world, including Africa, after Columbus? I wouldn't be surprised if the Polynesians, who are thought to have landed from time to time in Peru (though not been able to return westward to their homes,) brought some food plants with them, just as they brought them to Easter Island and Hawaii, but that's not exactly the same as cultural trade back and forth, nor is there much evidence of African influence in Polynesia. (Where are the pyramids, or heiratic writing, of Tahiti?)

It's just tooooo easy to claim that words are similar, especially given that Africans were brought to the New World before fleets of qualified lexicographers arrived to examine the pristine languages already present.

The author kind of had me wondering if he knew something I didn't until I got to that part where he asserts that 'the African explores (sic) never launched a destructive war on the people they met.' He knows enough to say this categorically how? About a period from which there is almost no written evidence, and what there is isn't fully deciphered? This is no scholar, this is a polemicist, twisting or inventing evidence from nothing, probably for reasons of psychological self justification.

Answer 6

One has to realize that the plants mentioned could have also been indigenous to this area, as it was part of a one-continent pre-5 mil. yrs. ago.
There is no specific archaeological proof of most of these suppositions. In fact, the Olmec could possibly have been from the South Pacific according to some of the archaeological discoveries now being made along the western part of Mexico and Baja Cal.
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Answer 7

Indeed it is interesting. I have read several other articles on the subject. But I must say that it is not accepted by the large majority of historians. It may be in the future when more scholarship is completed.

There are similar claims re the Irish and Chinese. But again not much scholarship has turned up solid evidence.

I know historians, many of them, and many would pursue this subject if their was more evidence to justify their interest. Historians are rather brutal in the pursuit of history.

Answer 8

I would only ask one thing, where did you get all your facts from, proof please.

You can babble about anything you like but, where's the proof?

As far as I have ever learned and I was a history major at the University of Minnesota, the Africans in these years you talk about, didn't even know the Americas were here, let alone all the things you've claimed.

Answer 9

Everyone came from Africa...we all have the same Gene...
dont confuse it with the alcholic drink.

Answer 10

Somewhat interesting, but based on false assumptions.