Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (26 January 1935 – 25 May 2009) was a Guyanese-born British associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States.
[8] In 1970 Van Sertima immigrated to the United States, where he entered Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for graduate work.
[9] Published by Random House rather than an academic press, They Came Before Columbus was a best-seller[10] and achieved widespread attention within the African-American community for his claims of prehistoric African contact and diffusion of culture in Central and South America.
His article "The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview" (1983) discusses early African advances in metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, engineering, agriculture, navigation, medicine and writing.
On 7 July 1987, Van Sertima testified before a United States Congressional committee to oppose recognition of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas.
"[13] In this book, Ivan Van Sertima explores his theory that Africans made landfall and had significant influence on the native peoples of Mesoamerica, primarily the Olmec civilization.
Van Sertima reached larger audiences through chapters narrated by figures of the past, including Christopher Columbus and the Mali king Abu Bakr II.
In doing this, primary source anecdotes are often the evidence cited by Van Sertima combined with inference and exaggeration, though he implies to his readers that the narrative is based in fact.
In Chapter 5, called "Among the Quetzalcoatls", Van Sertima narrates the arrival of Abu Bakr II to an Aztec civilization in Mexico in 1311, describing the Mali king as "a true child of the sun burned dark by its rays" in direct and explicit comparison to the Aztec "sun god" Quetzalcoatl, as Van Sertima writes.
However, some of the biggest resting points of his theory attribute Mesoamerican pyramids, mummification, symbolism, mythology, calendar technology, and much of the art to African influence and guidance.
Critics in anthropology and archaeology have stated that They Came Before Columbus portrays Native Mesoamerican peoples as inferior and incapable of developing highly sophisticated civilizations, cultures, and technologies without the influence of Africans arriving by boat as "gods" in their eyes, as Van Sertima puts it.
Van Sertima's work on Olmec civilization has been criticised by Mesoamerican academics,[16] who describe his claims to be ill-founded and false.
[4] They further called "fallacious" his claims that Africans had diffused the practices of pyramid building and mummification, and noted the independent rise of these in the Americas.
Additionally, they wrote that Van Sertima "diminishe[d] the real achievements of Native American culture" by his claims of African origin for them.
"[19][n 2] In 1981 Dean R. Snow, a professor of anthropology, wrote that Van Sertima "uses the now familiar technique of stringing together bits of carefully selected evidence, each surgically removed from the context that would give it a rational explanation".