Dr. Ivan Van Sertima Obliterates the Columbus myth!! LACC/1986

serious questions in the course and that is how could a European discover something that somebody else already knew about you know and we're talking about North America Central America in South America and its really a mind-blower if you sit down and think about who wrote the hitch-pin book I try and share it with my students this morning that a peace treaty is something very interesting it is something that is written by the victor and signed by the loser history isn't that much different even the agreed upon table propaganda but when you look at in the final analysis the history that we have been taught in North America specifically in the United States it's propaganda and propaganda is not a bad word but particularly when you understand its purpose its purpose is to maintain and perpetuate European values but you see what we must do and when doctors then sternum is going to do is to show you that European values are fine but when we look at the Western Hemisphere we will become fully aware that there are some people here before your opinion way before your opinion and they left their calling cards you understand dependency and so hence when we start talking about the good old folks the Europeans and we begin to name them Columbus and Balboa and I called them the conquistadors which means that they were conquerors and beans we're gonna find out very very clearly that they just happened to get here trying to get somewhere else so I'm not gonna tell you what all dr. bansuri was gonna say because I'm sure he can say much better than I but I would like to give you some information about dr. Mann's tournament he's born in Guyana South America educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies London University and the Rutgers Graduate School and holds degrees in African Studies linguistics and anthropology he's a literary critic a linguist and anthropologists and has made a name for himself in all three fields as a critic he is the author of Caribbean writer a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel he's 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 fee by being asked by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976 to 1980 as linguists he has published essays on the dialect of the sea islands of the Georgia coast he's also the compiler of a Swahili dictionary of legal terms based on his fieldwork in Tanzania East Africa he is also the author of they came before Columbus the African presence in ancient America which is published by Random House in 1977 and is now in its tenth printing it was published in French in 1981 and in the same year was awarded the Clarence L hope prize a prize awarded every two years for a work of excellence in literature and humanities relating to the cultural heritage of African and the African Diaspora professor van Strummer is an associate professor of African Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey an editor of the Journal of African civilization he was also visiting professor at Princeton University from 1981 through 1983 please join me in giving professor van Surma a roar welcome when I had completed and published my major work they came before Columbus the African presence in ancient America when it came out it was wrongly attacked by the New York Times The New York Times spent three pages of his book review claiming that this work was a fraud and that I was a myth maker they have chosen the Walt Disney professor of archeology in Cambridge University in order to make this attack I learned earlier from sources in the New York Times that when the review was sent into the New York Times the New York Times was amazed by the fact that it had not a single argument against me they had to be turning to the critic and say apart from the vituperation could you make a point or two that shows that it is a myth and he made the point that I had mixed up step pyramids with true pyramids which in fact is not true because they have x-rayed the pyramids and they have found steps inside of the true pyramids in other words the step remains at the core of the structure but that is not what amazed me so much what amazed me is that a New York Times had gone over all the American reviewers people who had done serious work in American history people have done serious work in Africa to pick a man who had never done worked in either field a man who for the last ten years before he wrote this review was writing novels in the genre and Ellery Queen who will never visited these archaeological sites and was merely a Britisher attacking a colonial this is at the root of a great deal of things because the colonization of man in the miracles and in Africa does not stop with slavery or second-class citizenship we are not speaking of these bonds which we appear to have broken we're speaking of chains which we from which we are not yet free we are speaking of the colonization of the imagination and it became clear to me after looking at those attacks and after being involved in that controversy for many years it became clear to me how absolutely vital it was that we should have a new school of historians how vitally necessary it was that we should have a forum through which we could express through which we could reveal the facts of history we have that school today it is in its beginnings but it is making a tremendous impact here in the audience today we have Renault core a shity for example who co-edited with co-edited with me african presence in early asia he is part of that school we have begun something which will take us through this century into the other century and let me make it quite clear we are not just interested in excavating dead facts we are interested in bringing into the mainstream of American consciousness and the consciousness of the world things that revise that challenge that change it is substantial and revolutionary we the thinking and feelings of centuries it is only in that way that history becomes alive and significant history is not a dead thing it is not a mere accumulation of facts this is the creation of a different vision a different way of seeing thinking and feel people say why do we want to know what Africans did a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago it doesn't matter it matters because what happened ten thousand years ago or ten minutes ago occupies the same room in consciousness what happened in history or what we believe happened in history affects the Bailee think it affects of prejudices or reflexes our conceptions of ourselves the way people conceived of us the way we treat ourselves the way we are treated by others history therefore has a lot to do with the living present no man can be truly released from the past until he understands the past and no man can be released the full potential of man for work in the living presence that leads him into new future cannot be activated until he has this very alert alive and discriminating relationship and connection with the past that is why we speak of these things today I was particularly aware from the kinds of criticisms that fell upon me that we really very few birds have any idea of what Africans were involved with before slavery all of us know for example the familiar story of slavery and Americas but few of us know what an enormous trauma what a catastrophe struck Africa itself so that thousands and thousands of books have been written about Africa and Africans that gives us not a clue of the complexity the potential the capacity of Africans at the time they were struck down at the time their continent was split and partitioned and colonized it is only within the last few years that archeologists have given us the faintest glimpse of the lineaments of an African science its technology we discovered for example in 1978 two of our professors Schmidt and Avery of Brown University discovered Africans were smelting steel 1,500 to 2,000 years ago in that time there was the smelting of steel in the world but nobody no country no people on earth achieved the extraordinary technological complexity of the Africans the American team showed that the Africans were smelting steel the finest bloom of carbon steel in the world in an industrial site along the lakes in Tanzania East Africa that they were smelting it the temperatures of 1850 degrees centigrade no machines until the end of the 19th century ever achieved that temperature the highest ever achieved in the world before Africans was 1620 degrees centigrade in a second century Roman blast furnace and even man George Williams demands the German scientists discovered a process for smelting Steel's on a mass scale the European process in the mid nineteenth century was not as advanced of the African process at least fifteen hundred years earlier because the European process produce steel in too crude stages the Africans did it in a single stage through the crystallization of iron involving a semiconductor technology unknown until the twentieth century and they found further that the Africans were doing all their using less fuel we usually assume Africa is full of jungles great forests and woodlands exception and therefore they always had this forest reserve Africans were actually forced into fuel saving technology in this industrial site very early because Africa in fact and I will repeat this until it sinks into your head Africa has less jungle than any other continent comparable with its land base Africa has left jungle than any other continent comparable with its null space if you were to take to Europe's and put it in Africa which you can there is more woodland and forest in to Europe's than in Africa the comparable land space I grew up in the jungle I was born in the city of Georgetown but I spent 14 years in deep jungle and I'm not talking about little bush I'm talking about real jungle the jungle you see in Raiders of the Lost Ark in deep South American rainforest and I don't know if any African who has spent that much time in the jungle there is not a single Thai culture not a single civilization in Africa that grew up in the jungle whether it is the Ethiopian civilization or the classical Egyptian civilization or dartie sheet in North Africa or the acro Phoenician civilization of passage or Ghana Mali or some guy in West Africa or mono Matata the seat of an empire in southern Africa not one there are whole empires in Africa like medieval Mali for example which the Arabs said dwarfed the whole new Roman Empire which contained that much space as all the states of Western Europe put together there was not a single slice of jungle in that Empire the applicants they're traded with all the Africans in the jungle but they were not advanced into the jungle they were terrified of it the reason why we have so many thousands of books on African jungle apart from tourism the reason why we have so many books and Africans in the jungle or little primitives or rural tribesmen on scratching a living on the edge of periphery of civilization is because the core and center of African civilizations receded into shadow while it's broken bones were put on spectacular display therefore it is only within recent time that we find in the steel smelting machine only within recent time that we're finding that Africans are involved in complex astronomy before I speak about their astronomy their medicine their scripts their metallurgy and other aspects of their science let me say something about how this picture came about Africa literally disintegrative on the centuries of unsought from without not only America and what most of us have no idea of what America was then I was growing up as a boy I grew up among primitive Native Americans I had no idea then as I grew up amongst them that behind me lay the heights of Machu Picchu the city carved out the sheriff calling for technological ingenuity unparalleled in the world I have no idea of my cousin's than Mexico it was Cortes not Columbus who gave us some idea of the technological complexity of the heartland of America Columbus wondered among the primitives on the edge of America Columbus never once never once set his foot on the American continent on his third voyage on August the 7th 1498 three of his ships landed in South America he did not come off the ship he said he had arthritis did not come off the ship then the landing party aboard and a few days later when he got into the Caribbean he reported back on the mailboat the spin that South America was in Ireland just as the landmass it struck with an island and just as it reported earlier that Cuba was the continent just as a reported earlier that he was in India just as the reported area that the people are being called Caribs when in fact carried canceled carried which means foreigner they were calling the Spanish Kara even these clones who knew nothing about linguistics or geography or have no advanced science stumbled into the Caribbean looking for gold thinking they were in Asia Columbus never saw the complexity of the Americans it was quartet the first modern European of that Columbus era who reported on what he saw in the port and Heartland and center of American civilization and Cortes said and I quote if when I saw their parents and their palaces and their temples and their floating gardens the chinampas the most advanced agricultural technique then in the world no knowing in medieval Ghana and Mexico and their aqueducts and their reservoirs and there's Zeus and they're running baths they were very few running back then in Europe II said I have not seen its like anywhere what do we know what American engine the edge the periphery the savages the primitives I grew up I come to the city I see movies for the first time what do I see I see these strange half naked savages running about woohoo boo boo and there is John Wayne and Ronald Reagan ticking them off those are images in a defect the colonized people throughout the world because it's one thing till they and all people have invaded or been invaded this is another thing to wipe out the memory of their history until they themselves not only forget but begin to preach and propagate the same fictions about themselves that others have propagated and when you facts emerge and they're irrefutable you find not only the Eurocentric who will contest with you but even those people who should know better or at least attempt to know better because they should know better they part of this civilization they're part of it's falsehood that should at least attempt to revise their conceptions they become involved in it what lay at the center of African civilization before its disintegration is only now being discovered as I say two years ago one of our earth satellites spinning around this planet sent down radar beams into Africa 16 feet below the African art and from the traces of ancient rivers running from the Sahara toward the Nile Valley where the Africans retreated as the haris Sahara dried up people in Ethiopia and then Egypt I said that before the earth satellite I said that in my book seven years ago a few anthropologists added based on linguistic evidence the spread of linguistic networks coming out of the Sahara near on basis of agricultural techniques coming from the Saharan agriculture complex into the teutonic agricultural complex moving up from Nubia into Egypt on the basis of the movement of scripts the markings on the rocks etc how they were on the basis of skeletal material which showed back in the Scandinavian expedition to Sudanese Nubia showed the movement the migration of the people it was only in 1962 that we found the last critical link one of the most important discoveries and African civilizations in the last 300 years we found the last missing link that now establishes beyond the shadow of a doubt beyond the shadow of a doubt that classical Egyptian civilization and its science is fundamentally African we discovered a crystal in Nubia on the edge of the Sudan a kingdom in black monarchy preceding the Egyptian by at least 200 years and in that area at SETI in the Nile Valley which we now call the Middle East we found a black kingdom where 12 black Kings reign before the Africans pushed up further into Egypt they are already in Egypt before their kings pushed up in Egypt controlling the northern area and establishing the dynasty of meanings which is followed for about the thousand years by predominantly African types pyramid-building mummification the deities that were to build up the pantheon of gods of the Egyptians all the religious political and scientific traditions that were to make classical Egypt the beginning of the pharaonic thing is found in Nubia as cousteau 200 years before it even begins to take a shape and the big carrot poured into Egypt we have even found the hieroglyphs which we thought was Egyptian in origin it was merely refined further by the Africans as they moved up in Egypt we find the hieroglyphs at Kostal in nucleo one of the world's most significant writing system significant because it was the effect not only Africans it was to have an influence also on some of the European writing systems he is supposed to be the preliterate when I was going to London University the School of Oriental and African Studies they always report Africans as preliterate there's something missing in our brain we learn to write late no sir no sir Africans have at least half a dozen scripts before they were touched by Europe they built the hieroglyphics Crippen two oldest books in the world of which we still have fragments in spite of massive destruction and the long span of time the oldest medical texts and oldest mathematical texts in the world are African there is no doubt about it absolutely none this is not speculative romantic myth making these artifacts not only that they have the hieroglyphic script which we finally generated among the blacks prior to their movement up with it in Egypt they have found also the mera Witek script we have found 800 or something text in that it is not yet been deciphered we have the ActionScript both the drum script which is highly complex called Africans and only people who created drums that could mimic the human voice so they have bought a drum script and a con as well as a written script in hanka they have a factor script which I wrong people in stood in Nam in 1981 were writing letters to their girlfriends in the FACA script which they had brought with them to the Americas that was unusual because most Africans lost lost their scripts those who did have scripts lost them in the Middle Passage but they had made the mistake of bringing a whole tribe a whole body of people into pseudonym that's why they were able to be both it could kill many kids with each other whereas the normal practice with players is that you separate them so they could start fighting among each other or is not have any proper communication and also demanding script with Professor winters and how and Delacroix's have shown to be pre-european pre-colonial period manding running through the Sahara touching parts of the Ethiopian and even Egyptian world those are just a few and people say yes but if they had script why didn't they write books they wrote books the Library of Alexandria had it at this estimated at least half a million books it was systematically destroying the Moores had books not all of them were black but most of them especially in the Alma Ravi the namaha D dynasty the four Muslim dynasties in Europe they wrote books in 1492 the Year Columbus sailed when Cardinals imminent attacking Grenada ordered after they defeated branded a Cardinals lemonis ordered every book in Arabic to be burned at the time when most Africans and arson even the Jews in Spain and Portugal wrote in Arabic they burnt them on only a few fragments survived Timbuktu was razed to the ground Christ only recently the Arabs are from scraps and fragments coming from the University of Timbuktu so it's not a question of not writing books only a few people wrote evening Europe when the Muslims invaded Europe it is estimated that 99% of the Europeans were illiterate this is in 711 ad 99% the European Christians had two universities the Muslims introduced 17 in Europe 17 universities everything that was a value throughout the civilized world is Africa particularly in Egypt in Greece which had borrowed so heavily from Egyptians and Persia in China in India everything they could fight with their hands upon the Muslims had translated into Arabic and shared it with the Europeans it was not an invasion at all like invasion that struck Africa and decimated the population and disintegrated the national and familial networks the Moors did not attempt to destroy the culture of Europe they did not take away the towns of the Europeans they did not stop them having selecting their judges and their courts they did not interfere with their civil administration they did not tell them that they could not believe in Jesus because Jesus had been incorporated into the world as a profit just like Mohammed all they asked is that they should have a say in this election of Bishops it is in the heart of Europe at the time when it was in the twilight after the great strides of the Greeks and the Romans when Europe was in Twilight the attack from Africa and the Arab world brought about a composite of world science from India one two three four five six seven eight nine ten Europeans were not using sight of the numbers the Greeks and Romans used letters for numbers those numbers came from the Hindu brought by the Muslims by Bonacci in 1202 visited India brought in the numbers the Europeans would not accept that the church said their numbers are works of the devil that was the level of science the few European geniuses who struck out they were tortured and European genius have given clear testimony the African genius Isaac Newton the most important the greatest of all European scientists before Einstein Newton said there were three things that he could credit to the Africans in Egypt he said Africans were the first to develop an atomic theory they were speaking of atoms as Moana they hadn't reached the point which we have recently reached a photonic fission no that was far away in the future but they saw the atom as the building block of the universe that is no easy thing in those times because the atom is invisible he spoke of the hell he was sense exceed he said they had already seen that that they are already spoke of the planets spinning around the Sun they didn't know all the planets they knew but these five of the nine talk about today he said the new bar gravitation that the handing of the spirits Pythagoras stole from the Egyptians the Africans had worked out of the nudists peculiar attraction of objects to a spinning body in the sky and the rotation and orbit the fixed orbits of planets exception they don't work that out very very early then I spent some time at NASA NASA and for me not so you know and these people had nothing no axe to grind by telling me that they told me that the Africans are the first to attempt to work on an aeroplane that is earliest 300 BC the Africans that created the glider we have no idea that it had an engine it had some method of power that they thought a rudder was detached they attached part of the tail spin to the rather it had a reverse dihedral wing shape they were aware of the fact that it was heavier than air yet who could fly to the air a guide or 300 years before France the despondence of character they are aware of the mathematics people have said even though they're they're finding that as they go back into history it becomes blacker and blacker they say that the Egyptian arithmetics Egyptian geometry and so forth which they took because they have their own arithmetic they took geometry they had their own arithmetic but yet they found the Egyptian arithmetic more accurate it didn't come from people just sitting down and saying well an inches of it came from looking at the sky everything that they learn from that cosmos they put it into their work they were the first to create the 24 hour day they were the first the Africans in Egypt were the first to create the precise measurement of the year 365 and a quarter days but whereas when it was taken over we created a leap day every four years to be with that quarter the occupants created is to live here every 1416 years and where lies least take that leap year that neat day sorry and we take the five days at the end of the year and spread it out the Africans caught the year is the 360 days they made five festival days for the gods and they were the first to create December the 25th as a holiday for the Christ figure there was no Jesus then but Jesus the last the most remarkable of the Christ figures in the world his birthday was taken from John the sixth and put on the African birthday December the 25th they had the Phi festival days for the gods and they had 12 the size months of 30 days when the Greeks and Romans took that over they spread it out throughout the year as a result we have 28 de Montespan 290 months started a month 31-day month we need a rhyme in order to remember which is which these contributions are not acknowledged one is not attempting to say Africans were first in everything that is nonsense we are not attempting to say Europeans did not have genius that everything there did they borrowed from the Africans no sir I'm not saying that what I am saying is that we have been so colonized that the books we read the films we see the way we are taught is such that we have completely we felt we have developed an amnesia of all of Africa's contribution and only know about is what Europe did what it created what it invented here the people who invented nothing explored nothing we are the static primitives of the world and all I am saying is that is not true that is not true in which it stands today because the third world whether you ignore it or not whether you deny it or not whether you seek the crutches or not whether you seek this substance enslavement or not the world cannot progress beyond this present impasse its horror unless we begin to learn again what really happened in the world and to give credit where credit is due and to have a different conception of the human being regardless of the race or color of that unit that is why we go back that is why history is such a living thing that is why it does not stop at being a mere accumulation of the past what we are digging up now what we are revealing now what we are propagating now can help slowly but inevitably to correct the bias of the past a bias that has locked more than half of the human race in Chains that are not yet broken our young people are in frightening distress make no mistake about it some of them have a void where their brain should be they're not even making use of the fight all cells that it took a billion years to create they're walking about like zombies on the earth there are mere extensions of a culture that negates them we cannot ignore these things only history can correct that because it becomes for us almost like a religious Reformation it becomes a crusade it becomes something that can be deemed a people and a civilization and this time when we think of the things they have found one of the most astonishing things is African astronomy they found an African astronomical observatory 300 years before Christ in Kenya at a place called a more attuned on the basis of the - of the stones the data Observatory the Africans that created one of the most accurate Sofia storage calendar it was not their first as I say they were the first to create the most accurate calendar a stellar calendar there's from the soffit cycle the star Sirius whereas the Babylonians are the lunar calendar and was far less far less precise and scientific as Egyptian they've tried to show that Egyptian science is merely empirical that Egyptians the furling Africans Miriam rides on this by trial and error real science abstracts planet pure science begins with the Europeans degrees but they had a computer programmed in the United States in 1967 to test this TV you know what the computer phone and the computer was created 4000 years after the height of Egyptian civilization the computer found that of twenty two thousand two hundred and ninety five possible decompositions the Africans are chosen the forty six simplest and most elegant and that the computer would have made the same choice that is the level of theoretical science without that quality of science it would not be possible to create the pyramid that is no simple monument of stone to some death Pharaoh everything everything in that pyramid every step every passageway every ventilator shop every temple every room it's dimensions are determined by what the Africans had found in the cosmos they call these things sacred numbers they would take things down just as they put it in their mathematics the second of time was created by the african ii of inch was created by the african and many famous europeans were aware of that Galileo we talked a moment ago about Newton Galileo used the African water clock in his experience view the people without time then you call it people like to talk about all rather black people like to talk about colored people's time there's no such thing they made that up that's part of their slavery because the Africans had precise ways of dealing the time there is the person thing but it runs through Europe I lived among European peasants as well as African peasants I've lived among European urbanites as well as African urbanites I spent a year and hungry in the borders of chestnut back here I used to speak Hungarian not anymore but I went into villages in Europe where they have never seen a black man in all history people came out in crowds - may the poor Indians came and they saw Columbus and I found in some villages as many as 20 Europeans using one bathroom who writes about that that gives you no sense of European genius the Europeans have done remarkable things in the world no one denies that and since their conquest of America and Africa which enriched them a thousandfold they have been able to seize the technological initiative though not completely so we appear as people have done nothing but the wall street journal' using the same terms I have used people up the core the people at the periphery pointed out that while at the core you have the brilliant flash of Europe when you go to the periphery it semi-barbaric nobody writes about that why is it that way you deal with Europe you always see the core when you're dealing with Africans and American engines they bring their cameras and put it on the periphery so that we all look like a lost battered broken people who never did anything in the world so that when they found the doggone plotting an invisible star seven centuries before you will be an astronomers discovering of 50 year elliptical orbit and an orbit of one year on its own axis discovering a dwarf Nova which we only discovered from the Einstein orbiting satellites two years ago dancing the orbit right up to 1990 and we find that our the orbit they profit seven years ago our best machines plotted a few years ago there I then because you know what they said can it wretched MIT you know what he said the africans have no business knowing any of this I need bloody right the applicants as we have been needs to think they work have no business knowing anything but when we find that we cannot explain it we can't explain it because we have conceived these people in a certain way the Russians have pointed out that the Africans have had telescopes some years have gone determined the fourth 1975 I took up the op-ed page of the New York Times I don't think anybody was ever given three quarters of a page and the New York Times that was the first time that any black got that opportunity I had some friends then there was a bathroom confide they were there was a battle of five weeks as to whether they should publish my article it was sub hair it was Harriet archaeology discovery of an African presence in America the New York Times put this up here bad news for Columbus behind there was no perhaps about it it was just simply bad news that article attracted letters from all over the world of one of them came in from one of the Russian side cities in Southeast Asia academician sanderoff wrote me saying the Russians had done a lot of researches on Pacific migrations apart from the Bering Strait migrations which we all accept during the Ice Age and so forth we have evidences of Chinese and Japanese coming into America from the side the Pacific side I had mentioned the Japanese Jomon pottery valdivian period etc in Ecuador but the Russians said they had never thought of even dealing with Atlantic migrations because the Russians until recently have been very affected by Western propaganda though they did not at that they did not have to low near the mean they of colonized Eastern Europe but they did not have black Colonials so they knew nothing about Africa and then Bobby Locke the Russian botanist studied agricultural systems in the world left out Africa now we find that the Sudan akin Saharan agricultural systems are the earliest in the world but they can't started this dialogue it started with first with greatest struck the Russians are very careful they have to be careful the scientists have to be careful of their government their government have to be careful with people outside so he would write him big postcards okay and in the during the dialogue in which I shared my researches etc and there is now a negotiation for a Russian edition and they came before Columbus because it's time they learn about that too but during the dialogue I asked them to tell me anything that they had found that would be of great interest to me about early African civilizations because they were doing a lot of work in Egypt on the NASA so that kicked them out because archaeology sometimes used as a cover for spying but they said that one of their scientists policy moe discovered perfectly drums spherical crystal lenses in ancient Egypt indicating clearly that Africans could have built early telescopes galileo senses now we know because either the Dogon gotten some Egyptians or they developed their own it is true that Africans eye has a different shutter speed when I because of the intensities of light in those areas when I was a boy I can't do it now then I'm the boy I could see seven miles across the water two markings on the quarry rocks across an AC cable it is something that I become aware of and induct aware that people do not have ears and eyes and noses as I do for example I regret having a sharp ear because I have often heard people talking about me behind my back that ear was trained not to pick up things like that it was trained in order to tell the distinction between the breaking of a twig and the slithering of a snake if you can tell that from 6 feet away you will not be in the jungle very long I could tell for example by looking at the water on as I wrapped it down the river I could tell by looking at the water whether the current was too deep for me to dive in whether they were tiger fish below because if you can tell from the water what is going on below you jump off of your rock you may never rise again ok so all of those things are the primitive I appreciate I am NOT dismissing the primitive but I am saying that you cannot go to the primitive to learn about what is happening in the civilization that is the reason why we missed so many things take medicine that is one of the most awesome things about Africans and Africans did incredible things in medicine then he just stopped the Egyptians parts and then deal with Africans outside of Egypt the Egyptians were the first according to Herodotus to have specialists for every organ they were the first to have pharmacies because the song standardized doses they were the first to have a stitch medicine their doctors were paid by the state and we have fun 10 medical texts in spite of massive destruction 10 medical texts survived the EVAs papyrus and Edwin Smith papyrus 1500 BC 2600 BC and do you know one of them is in New York the actual manuscript written by Africans 1,500 years before Christ is in New York the School of Medicine and do you know what chapters they have in that manuscript chapters on helm in the axis of tal Maliki China policy China ecology pregnancy diagnosis treatment of absences and burns study of the punx diagnostic percussion notes on circulation the blood little things like fractures of the clavicle and dislocation in the manual which carotid which Hippocrates lifted and put in his book harmony of opposites all those things will work out there was only one chapter in magic and oviya famous for magic why don't we know of these things because when people study Africa they like the exotic all of my professors as I like to say at the School of Oriental and African Studies the one school in the world which I understand has more professors and students there were no world out far it isn't something one lost art isn't what I had such a profound reverence for my professors until I began to realize that to be a world authority in something if it is very small doesn't mean very much while authorities and booga booga dooga doo you could study the booga-booga until you're blue in the face you cannot arrive of any vision of possibility and potential you cannot arrive at any vision of complexity you get up extrapolate from one little primitive tribe what is happening in the sentient heartland of a civilization the Journal of African civilizations makes a serious departure because I take the primitive off center stage and put the brilliant African the quintessence into the center will he be long only by doing that can we have a balance achieved only by doing that can we have a new scientific objectivity only by doing that can be faced and challenged seriously the myth of biological inferiority because these myths still persist they persist because people could say what have you done you know car Patrick ox that involving some years ago what has the Negro ever done for civilization he hasn't the foggiest idea this so-called civilization it's not Europeans Western civilization the Greeks could not have gone where they'd gone has gone without the Gyptian every bite that rescued torches and Nazi meander enacting these Heraclitus played throughout its total all of them studies in Africa without the window numerical system without the Chinese compass Chinese gunpowder without Asiatic and African elements brought together by the Moors even the five six the so called guns which we think were invented in Europe most are the Russians the recently showed an Arabic - tip or the Muslims attacking the engines and the Muslim invasion of India the first guns being used which were brought in see even the lumbers and best to see were not European saying there were Arab Latin says I'm the nautical instruments the comfort and the afterlife which they were using to come here were not invented in Europe they put me who plot latitude and longitude Columbus struck off with the latitude of Japan hoping to land in India damn this was injured that's why we still calling the poor Americans Indians and we call in the Caribbean West Indies this is place is actually called India and you know the extent to which Columbus men went to establish he was in India he sent his no TD Fernando Perez the Loon among the ships and made every man sign a document that he was often off the continent of Asia and he threatened his men he said if any man related to say they hadn't come to injure if they were officers that would define 500 miles ladies talk several months salary and if there were common sailors they would be given 100 lashes and have their tongue cut out how many of us know that it's written down here you know it's in several languages john-boy fashioned 1903 printed a book three volumes 2114 pages I went through that thing with a fine-tooth comb seven languages drawn the diaries all the comments etc you know why Columbus went to that extent because Marco Polo had fired imagination of Europe the thoughts of all the gold and spices in the Indies and Columbus said since the world is wrong you could go to the west and end up in the East which is theoretically true but you need an aeroplane to do it not his little booth it is true that after there was a massive continuous movement down to the breed for gold Europe made advances in shipping that took her beyond other people's the halls sales etc but at that time they were using other people's stuff it is important to note that the people who made those early journeys were the Spanish and the Portuguese weird Africans and Arabs had built and brought things from the rest of the world since 711 EAD up to 1492 and is not just Industrial Revolution you take modern times I spent some time at NASA I'm one of the few blacks who was flown in a military aircraft the Cape Canaveral to witness the blast off the station shuttle not the last unfortunate one but the one that took Bluford up in August of 1983 I have been invited to witness the blast-off for the Space Shuttle because I was the first black to write an article on blacks and space science along with one of the administrators of the educational program at NASA when I I spent a daily for the blast-off meeting black scientists etc hearing them talk a whole day was devoted the black scientists and they spoke of incredible things I learned for example that we were getting 500 pages per second of information from outer space we do not have enough analysts to deal with that NASA said that we needed 15th immediately we needed 50 blocks with Amiens and physics and chemistry and so forth they wanted to employ them instantly to grab them in the program have got about three people placed at national students I've met across the country who have those requirements the black doesn't get to the top easily there was a joke going around NASA about a shipwreck in which four people were saved three white ones left the captain who not who was white said to the crew we only have enough Russians for three people to take us to shore and I want to be very fair I'm going to ask you three questions which man can't answer he goes overboard so he turned to the first white man and he said when did the Titanic sink guy said you know 999 1915 I think it was then he turned to the second white man he said how many people drawn he said 1500 then he turned to the black and said name them so you understand how difficult it is to get to the top and to stay there in spite of these difficulties in spite of these difficulties the man the boy who won there are two blacks who have won national prizes in the space science program one of them whom I met Anthony something I forget his name now over my met he's from New Jersey too he sent the first ant colony into space this boy is about 16 one who won the best prize the national award for the best project sent up in a space shuttle he's a black boy he was not yet entered college do you know what he did he sent up an experiment dealing with the de-icing of the wings of aeroplanes he has solved the problem that led to the air Florida jet crashing in the bottom and do you know anything about that do you know that the leading black that NASA major Gilliam the fourth is the man who coordinated the work of all of our scientists in order to produce the world's first space shuttle do you know that the leading technical astronaut in our space Amyas a black man Colonel Frederick Bradley the first black to pilot the space shuttle do you know how many things he's responsible for how many inventions he's invented alternate power controller which cuts pilot fatigue in half with one hand you could control the whole aircraft leaving the other hand free do you know that he invented the micro instrumentation landing system which locks a computer which locks the airplane from the Gong and brings it down safely whether the pilots are dead blind and drunk we don't know anything about this do you know that the leading researcher at NASA the head of the hypersonic research team is a black woman dr. Christine Darden that she is solved a sonic boom factor which troubles us tremendously and as a consequence of hard work we will be able to fly several times the speed of song at the whisper do you know that one of the leading engineers the one who love as many hours as any spaceman in weightlessness is a black engineer Bob shurni who goes up quite frequently in the kc-130 9kt one 3509 aircraft which flying a parabolic bollock carve achieves the state of weightlessness for 30 seconds as only aircraft we have that does that it's known as the Vomit Comet because when you spin in that circle you better know what you're doing because all your breakfast comes on he has tested many things he sent up into space do you know that the leading medical researchers of our space team space Medical Research is a Hispanic woman dr. Patricia Collins and a black doctor long and that currents has invented a machine that they say quantifies yoga man is involuntary muscular nervous system can be now controlled in Western physical science we get very involved with the surface thing but when you go into space you can't go jogging in the morning it's not like Starship Enterprise it's a little box so you have to learn to exercise sitting down and that's exactly what this does you can learn within six weeks the lower your heart rate or carry it up the lower blood pressure or take it up something our spin-off so critical so critically to hypertension problems on earth but I mean us talk about please let me talk about African medicine do you know they have discovered the Africans pioneer in several surgical operations I cataract surgery unknown in European Arab world was pioneered in Africa Jenny in the city of Mali in the 13th century Arabs reported that do you know the Africans pioneer and brain surgery they were cutting circle of holes in the skull relieving pressure from the brain because 85% success lots of bone grew back do you know the Africans invented the vaccine they came upon the vaccine by puncturing holes in the skin for identification and beautification markings and he came upon the vaccine so that in an epidemic they would scratch the germ they would take the germ from someone who is sick and put a little of it into all the people in the tribe so that they could develop an immunity to it do you know the Africans were using aspirin long before us the Bantu were using Salix capensis machines salicylic acid the active ingredient in aspirin do you know they were using tetracycline an antibiotic 14 centuries ago they found a yellow green flash of tetracycline in bones of Nubia in Nubia and violence a fear in their brain bins indicating they had come upon it perhaps initially as an accident they were using it and conscious measured doses because where it was found there was the lowest incidence of infectious disease in an Indian population do you know that they had done the most advanced cesarean sections when dr. packing and his team and by the way before I leaped after psyching you 14 centuries ago among the Africans you know where we began using tetracycline in this population in the 1950s the cesarean section was observed the cesarean operation was absorbed by of team from Britain not on the dr. Falcon he noticed with amazement that Africans were using the cautery iron with tremendous skill causing very minor tissue damage they had a way of closing the wound stopping bleeding cutting the belly open without causing major tissue damage stitching the even took pictures of the stitching collapsing the abdominal wall stood do you know that not a single woman in Europe and operating theatres of Europe survived the cesarean in the 1870s among the Africans they noticed the woman came out hail and hearty in four days of the hospital they know that the applicants were using at the time when Lister had only introduced antiseptics in Europe two years earlier they were doing this with routine skill indicating that perform that operation for a long time do you know the Africans are the first pioneering using drugs to treat hypertension and psychotic disorder one of their drugs we Serpine is used in the Western one we don't know anything about this when you study African medicine you both in witch doctor that's exotic people want that for their film they want that with a little anthropological study and the reason why I'm supportive just get involved in I'm not saying it wasn't valuable some tribes who are vanishing it was good to get a record put to seek to extrapolate from something so small data that was to be considered as freaking data to cover all of Africa and African genius this is one of the greatest greatest pieces of misinformation because a partial truth is worse than a lie I must close now and let me close because there is so much the same let me close by saying something about the Moors the Moors introduce air conditioning into Europe for the first time and their air conditioning had something even about ours they were passing it over bounces perfume flowers so you not only got fresh air but perfumed air they were the first to pave the streets in Europe the first to have radiant sidewalks you could walk four miles to certain cities where the Moors were in Spain by the flash of lamps something unknown the lighted streets of Paris were to come hundreds of years later I have a picture in that book African presence in Europe of two black noblemen Moorish noblemen playing chess in 12 century Spain do you know of the impact on industry the silk the dates the lemons the ginger them anything the fruits brought into Spain the wise an animal husbandry and agriculture that was brought into Spain the first people to leave net fights from the mountains and bring water into the houses hot and cold what up were the Moors and when we go back they translated everything they could find into Arabic and brought it into the heartland of Europe when we go back there we begin to realize how it was that the Spanish and the Portuguese made the movement in the Americas how it was that out of a lot out of a kind of dark Ange European genius was to come alive and the Industrial Revolution was possible we neglect our scientists here who knows that this light which part Edison pioneered and truth Edison fine and left it like we're not denying him his genius but it was Lewis laugh about a black scientist who invented the carbon filament that made life practical and universal everything could burn it for a day lock him up and burn it for a year let's drew it on these things because there are so many the shoe lasting machine the first machine to mass-produce shoes a black the first machine with a cup to lubricate itself so critical to the mechanical industries in black the first refrigerate the trucks transforming the food transport industry in this country in black the first introduced telegraphy in the Train a black the first to transform the whaling industry in the world by the introduction of the toggle harpoon in black the first to transform King juice into sugar crystal to create sugar crystals in the world which was defect the economies of England and France is in black there were 1000 inventions by black loved in 1913 alone 1000 at a time when in eighteen middle of the 18th century Jeremiah black the Attorney General of the United States ruled that slaves could not patent inventions because a patent was an agreement between the government and a citizen and black slaves were not citizens and in spite of all these disadvantages the African genius the black genius emerging let us go with this let us be aware that we are not starting from scratch are not just Chicken George we have more significant roots in the civilizations of the world in Asia as the city has shown us in America as my work has done in Europe that the works of Scooby and others have done we are aware of the African influence throughout the world we have to become aware of this in a recess all of us black white Hispanic whatever because the history man is the history of one family we have been separated for centuries by myths and falsehoods which makes us think of inferior races and superior races inferior peoples and superior people we can no longer think like that we are on the threshold to a new age beyond the threshold of a new consciousness let us walk out of the small sellin room created by Columbus the 500 year old room into the larger and more liberating House of history thank you very much before you go there's a couple things I'd like to say first of all if you're interested in this subject and I know you are professor bad tournament brought some of his work here

Channel: Knowledge Power

Views: 213,385

Rating: 4.8861523 out of 5

Keywords: DE, Dr, Van, Sertima

Id: rWI4vCvR3Sw

Length: 70min 48sec (4248 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2011