The following is based on the “Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley”, chapter nine of Cheikh Anta Diop’s “The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality” (1974):
Diop, based on what was known in the 1950s, says that most people in Africa came from the Nile Valley, particularly in and near the country of Sudan.
Today we use genetic studies to work out ancient migrations. In Diop’s day that was not possible.
Diop based his ideas on two things:
- The old stories that people in Africa told about where they came from
- The names of peoples and gods that keep reappearing across Africa
Most of the old stories follow this pattern:
- They start out at the Great Water.
- Cross through a land of short men.
- Point back towards a region in or near Sudan as their starting point.
The Egyptians and Nubians say they came from the south, the West Africans from the east and the Bantus say they came from the north.
So the Great Water appears to be the Nile, not the ocean. And the short men are apparently the Pygmies, who still live in the middle of Africa and who were more widespread thousands of years ago.
The pattern of names shows the same. For example:
- There is a tribe that calls itself the Nyoro in Sudan and also one by that name far to the west in Mali.
- The names Goula, Goule, Goulaye and Gilaye appear both along the Nile and again in West Africa.
- There are people who call themselves Serer, Sere or Sara in Senegal, Central Africa and Chad. In those same places there are stone monuments that look like big penises. There are more such monuments to the east in a line that goes all the way to Ethiopia.
Diop believes the Serer built the megaliths as they slowly moved west across Africa.
One scholar, Dr Joseph Maes, disagrees:
Anyone familiar with Black psychology can state almost categorically that these works which require a considerable amount of effort, without any immediate apparent usefulness, without any relationship to the natural functions of eating and copulating which alone interest the black man, have not been executed by the black race.
This leads to Diop making an important point for his book as a whole:
This attitude, typical of the Western world when we are concerned, shows how absolutely necessary it is for us to dig out our own past, a task that no one people can do for another, because of passions, national pride, and racial prejudice resulting from an education distorted from the ground up.
Although Maes got most of his facts right, his racism affected how he made sense of them. Diop concludes:
The magnitude of the doctor’s errors … indicates how necessary it is for us to interpret our own culture, instead of persisting in seeing it only through Western eyes.
See also:
Brava!!!!
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There it is. The two quotes by Diop at the end say EVERYTHING. Thank you Abagond for your wonderful blog and for bringing books like this to light.
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I completely agree with Diop’s quotes at the end.
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I love it – Diop’s quotes speak volumes. Excellent post.
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I was just thinking, Ethiopia also had been detached from Africa and its civilization has been continuous for thousands of years. It may be older than Egypt’s. It is not known for technological advances, but that is not what determines civilization.
African history and anthropology is divided when taught. I took a course titled ” Cultures of Africa” you would think it would cover all of Africa, but it covered only sub-Saharan Africa.
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@hathor: This is something which I wonder very often. The emphasis is so much in Egypt that it becomes ist own separate issue from the rest of Africa, and Ethiopia, perhaps because it has been christian since the beginning of that religion, has been treated like a colony of martians in Africa.
I think that the whole division is not true and not natural. Looking from the african point, it makes no sense. Trade routes, travels, exchange of ideas and cultural influences cover the whole continent easily.
Also what we think as Sahara, did not exist few thousand years ago. Last saharan hippo was shot and killed ( by a white hunter) in 1860’s and there are numerous rock paintings depicting all the fauna of the savannah in Sahara.
Even though I do not think that Diops theory of populatin Africa from the Nile valley, I really do think that africans should and must research, study and find out the history of the continent. It is theirs, the history included.
Sometimes white american “experts” of african history should do a little brain play: what if the black africans would come to USA and tell americans that they do not know a diddy about their history but the black africans have figured it out? Same goes with european experts on others too.
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Until a modern Black nation or African power emerges as a force on the global scene, the west–or the east for that matter–won’t listen to these types of arguments.
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I don’t believe historians pay more attention to Egypt because they want to detach it from the rest of the African continent. Historians, in general, tend to put more of a focus on societies they consider to be more complex. This is why you see American history books devote so many pages to China and not the rest of Asia.
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@ Hey Now
What does the emergence of a “modern” African state in this century have to do with the history of Africa?
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King,
The idea that there could have been advanced African civilizations in the past is dismissed because of myths of Black inferiority rooted in the degraded condition of Africa for hundreds of years now.
The fact that eastern countries are now catching up with the west, along with some latin American countries, reinforces the idea that Blacks are always the laggards.
Until a modern Black nation emerges as a power, I believe, these notions of Black inferiority will continue to gain credence.
People more readily believe all kinds of unsubstantiated myths about early European cultures because of all that Europeans have accomplished in the past one hundred years. It’s easier to believe than the idea of Blacks creating a flourishing civilization when no such civilization exists today or anytime in history since the ancient period.
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That should read “in the past few hundred years.”
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@Hey Now,
There is a strong resistance to even considering the idea of a Black “nation”, let alone admitting that good ones existed. There are examples of flourishing black empires and kingdoms, as well as examples of black monarchs (namely in Egypt or Kush, Ethiopia, Nubia, Timbuktu pre-Moroccan occupation). You would honestly have to view Africa as one monolithic group to really ignore those examples.
Also, to use the logic that people believe stories about European advancement due to their “achievements” is also slightly flawed, because many of those achievements were things that they were only able to work on once they were introduced to the subjects by foreigners. Most of Europe was very poorly educated, unhygienic, and violent. Also, there was a major cultural resistance to anything that would eventually become science (like medicine without astrology, working beyond humors and blood letting, chemistry) but people seem to be willing to ignore this in order to promote some idealistic version of European history. Additionally since Europe was never monolithic, they seem to ignore the Norsemen and Celtic people (as well as nations surrounding Russia as having been technologically and “culturally behind” due to isolation) when they talk about this sudden unanimous “advancement”. It was common to portray Eastern nations as backwards and in need of “uplift” too. You really shouldn’t trust the perspective of someone who’s goal was to justify invading and colonizing the continent in question. The results will always be biased and history will always be erased.
There is also tendency to ignore actual modern, average black nations that do not conform to the stereotype. The tendency is to assume all African nations are poor, war torn and undeveloped. Hence that is why I still hear angry African immigrants in school with me complaining about how everything assumes their from a nation heaped in societal ills. Although it isn’t the same conversation, it still sort of comes from the same place.
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@ Hey Now,
Sorry posted too soon 😦
I was gonna finish with:
So the whole “until Africa shows otherwise everyone will believe in black inferiority” excuse they might have is not only very uninformed, but also has troubling connotations.
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@heynow: Well, South Africa is not a push over by any means. And it is african state.
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So what Hey Now is clearly saying that until white people accept certain modern events, they won’t accept certain historical facts about a specific group. Sounds like they keep conveniently adding to the list of “Black Acceptance Requirements”. A checklist they’ve never really been willing to uphold and go down anyway, as it keeps growing.
Typical…
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Whites respond to power. It’s that simple. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise. They are never going to accept Blacks, so it’s pointless to seek acceptance.
The only real option is to build Black Power at home and abroad. Look at China and Japan. They are a model for how once dispossessed peoples overcame colonialism and neo-colonialism and built their own power bases.
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Yes…Tulsa, OK was a clear testament to a white’s acceptance of Black Power and stability.
I’ll let someone else have a turn at dismantling the same white parroted, cliched, “Look at the Asians!”, response. It’s been used numerous times on this site, and it’s been dismantled everytime as to why that’s a faulty comparison.
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Oh, and that makes them sound like nothing more than simple minded, childish, barbarians. No matter how you slice it.
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Hey Now is really just stating the obvious. It relates bc ppl often attempt to use Egypt is a way to find white acceptance through an example of Black high civilization.
@Franklin
Most people respond to power, not just whites. Also, Tulsa was a different, more racist time. Things have changed a bit since then.
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The Cynic clarified my comment. It is not just whites that respond to power.
I am not attempting to validate the “look at the Asians” excuse, which the Asians themselves often use by the way. I was merely stating how it is viewed by whites. Power concedes only to power–not power yesterday, but power today.
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@ The Cynic
Alright fine, if that’s the route you’re goin down, then look at how “black anything” is received by modern day whites. On one hand whites will get in their typical, paternalistic, mode and bemoan blacks for not standing on their own two feet and “relying on whitey”. Then the moment blacks do, by starting their own businesses, organizations, universities, programs, products, etc… whites instantly (not to mention predictably) flip-flop and start calling it “Reverse Racism”, “PC-Gone Wild”, “Anti-White”, and other slogans to lasso blacks back into the status quo. By demonizing everything they do, so they are viewed as the “Anathema of American Progress”.
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