Notes on Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus — EMERGE Interview (1993)

Vessel Types and Atlantic Voyages

• Long and sturdy as Viking ships; double canoes connected in catamaran fashion, like those of the Polynesians; lateen-rigged dhows like those used by Arab and African maritime traders on the Indian Ocean; and rope-sewn plank vessels with cooking facilities in the hold.
• Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic in 1969 in a papyrus boat like those built by Africans before the time of Christ.
• Hannes Lindemann crossed the Atlantic in an African dugout in $12$ days less time than it took Amerigo Vespucci or Columbus to cross.
• Three currents can carry Africans to the Americas: off the Cape Verde Islands, off the Senegambia coast, and off the southern coast of Africa. It is at the end of these currents that we have found Africans in America before Columbus.

CARTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

• In $1513$, in the sacked library of Alexandria in Egypt, lavish it led to the devaluation of gold in the known world for $twelve$ years. He talked about his brother who fitted out a fleet and disappeared. Two Arab books also mention this expedition.

SKELETAL AND SCRIPT EVIDENCE

• In the mid-$1970s$ the Smithsonian Institution found two African skeletons in Hull Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• These skeletons were found in pre-Columbian strata, in a deep grave that could be dated to $A.D. 1250$.
• In St. John's in the Reef Bay valley; at the foot of a waterfall, a dot-and-crescent formation was found by Van Sertima and identified by authorities as an African script. It is known as the Tifinagh branch of the Libyan script and had been used by southern Libyans and a medieval people in Mali, and also by the Tamahaq Berbers of North Africa.
• Sever instances of this script have been found in the Americas.

EMERGE INTERVIEW

• African: Africans must have taken it home before that time of Columbus.
• Another plant which Africans brought in before Columbus is the banana. The banana is Asian in origin, but a certain type of banana was brought from Asia to Africa in the $12th$ century. It is a small white banana, and the African name for it runs through many South American languages. Bakoko is the African word for this banana. In South American languages we have baccu, ccu, bacome, pacoba, pacowa, baho and bacoeng.

OCEANOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

• Because we thought that ancient Africans had only simple canoes, we were not looking at the possibility that they could have crossed the Atlantic. The boats with which we are familiar are mere templates for extension and expansion techniques.
• Africans had many other types of boats. They had a $3000$-year history of shipping on the Nile. And there was a considerable range of water craft on the Niger: this was a marine highway, $2600$ miles long trafficked by reedboats with sails like those of ancient Egyptian, lashed log rafts; enormous dugouts.
• Fragments of an ancient map were discovered that shows the Atrata River in Colombia mapped accurately for $300$ miles. It also shows parts of the Amazon River mapped for hundreds of miles.
• Whoever drew this map was adept at plotting latitude and longitude. Renaissance maps of the Europeans are off by $8''$, whereas the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates between the African and American Atlantic coasts were off only $2^{\circ}$ from the most accurate 20th century maps.

ORAL EVIDENCE

• In the court tradition of Mali there is a story of an African king, Abuba Kari II, who sent an expedition to the Western Ocean. One of his captains turned back when he encountered a violent "river in the middle of the seas" (one of the Atlantic currents). Abuba Kari outfitted a new expedition, and set sail himself in $1312$. He would never return. In $1324$ his brother, Mansa Musa, led a famous pilgrimage to Mecca that attracted world attention because the gifts brought by these wealthy Africans were so plentiful.

Page 3: INTERVIEW WITH IVAN VAN SERTIMA (Overview)

• An upcoming sequel to They Came Before Columbus; Van Sertima, an anthropologist and literary critic, argues for overwhelming evidence of Africans in the Americas in the 4th to the 15th centuries, at least $200$ years before Christopher Columbus.
• In a conversation with EMERGE editor-at-large Nolly Moses, Van Sertima outlined the following categories of evidence.

EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE

• Twelve Europeans reported having seen blacks or heard of Africans among the indigenous Americans.
• Columbus said that in Haiti the natives told him that black-skinned people had come from the south and southeast, trading in gold-tipped metal spears.
• Columbus's son, Ferdinand, said his father told him that he had seen black people north of what is now Honduras.
• In $1513$ the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa said he had seen two tall black men, distinct in both color and features, among the local people in a place then called Quarequa near Panama.
• Peter Martyr, one of the first historians of the Americas, said that these were shipwrecked Africans who had taken refuge in the mountains.
• López de Gomara said the black men sighted in Pariama were identical with the Negroes in Guinea.
• Alonzo Ponce reported that when he came to Campeche in Mexico, the natives told him they had been terrorized by black people who had landed off Campeche before the Spaniards came.
• A French sea captain, Kerhallet, had actually mapped independent black communities along the South American coast and in the Caribbean.

LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE

• Ramon Pane, a priest traveling in that area, speaks of the black Guanini (gold merchants).
• Columbus said the spears brought back by the black people were called Guanin; others used similar words.
• West African languages have Kane, Kani, Kanine, Ghanin, etc. These sounds were found among the native Americans and transliterated by Europeans into Goana, Caona, Guani, Guanin and Guanini. The sounds are roughly the same words for the gold-tipped spears.

BOTANICAL EVIDENCE

• The Portuguese found cotton growing plentifully on the Guinea Coast and assumed it was a West African variety.
• In $1462$ they took some of this cotton to the Cape Verde Islands. When botanists examined the cotton, they found it to be Gossypium hirsutum var punctatum, a special strain of American cotton. It has never been found anywhere but in the Caribbean and South America. It is not NOT RED 1995 ECORE EO (note: archival artifact in thetext; ignore for content relevance).

Notes on Methodology and Implications

• The compilation uses a cross-disciplinary approach: maritime archaeology, cartography, skeletal remains, script analysis, linguistic correlations, botanical studies, and oral traditions.
• Central claim: Africans were present in the Americas centuries before Columbus, supported by a mosaic of independent lines of evidence.
• Significance: Challenges conventional narratives of the discovery of the Americas; emphasizes long-range contacts across oceans; reinforces African diasporic historical agency.
• Cautions and ethical considerations:
  • Many items are contested or controversial within mainstream archaeology and history; correlations do not always imply direct causation.
  • Risk of over-interpreting ambiguous artifacts (e.g., scripts, maps, or oral testimonies) without robust peer-reviewed corroboration.
  • Importance of avoiding presentist or essentialist readings of ancient interactions; need for careful dating, context, and replication.
  • Potential political and cultural implications for identity, education, and international historical discourse.

Key Dates and Figures to Remember

• $1312$: Abuba Kari II’s expedition; later expedition led by his successor; never returned.
• $1324$: Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca; noted for vast gifts.
• $1250$: Date attributed to pre-Columbian African skeletons in Hull Bay, U.S. Virgin Islands.
• $1462$: Portuguese transfer of cotton to the Cape Verde Islands; later identified as Gossypium hirsutum var punctatum.
• $1513$: Balboa report of black men near Panama; Columbus accounts of natives referencing Africans.
• $1969$: Heyerdahl’s trans-Atlantic crossing in a papyrus boat.
• $1969$ and $1970s$: Additional exploration and scholarship contributing to the discourse around pre-Columbian transatlantic contact.

Terminology and Key Concepts

• Tifinagh: A Libyan script associated with southern Libyans, Mali, and Tamahaq Berbers; cited as a bone fide script found in the Americas.
• Guanini/Guanin: Terms used for gold-tipped spears; linguistic connections drawn between West African languages and terms found among indigenous peoples.
• Atrata River map fragment: A purported map fragment showing the Atrata River in Colombia and parts of the Amazon, alleged to show advanced plotting of latitude and longitude.
• Gossypium hirsutum var punctatum: A cotton cultivar identified in the Cape Verde Islands as a strain of American cotton, suggesting long-distance botanical exchange or movement.

Connections to Foundations and Real-World Relevance

• The material aligns with broader debates about transoceanic contact and the historical agency of African civilizations in the Atlantic world.
• It intersects with discussions on cultural exchange, migration, and the globalization of technologies (shipbuilding, navigation, agriculture).
• Implications for education and public history: encourages re-examination of canonical timelines and promotes inclusive narratives of early global interactions.

Summary Takeaways

• A multi-evidence framework is presented for African presence in the Americas before Columbus, spanning maritime technology, cartography, archaeology, scriptology, linguistics, botany, and oral histories.
• While provocative, many items require further validation and critical review within the scholarly community; the compilation is intended to stimulate inquiry and discussion about ancient transatlantic contact.