From Antiquity and Beyond

Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by admin in Global News

By Shanita Bigelow and Lisette Livingston

Black history is inextricably tied to world history. The first man was African and the first civilizations African, says Cheikh Anta Diop, historian, anthropologist, physicist and politician who studied the human race’s origins and pre-colonial African culture. The oldest hominid or human-like remains—among them a 6 million year-old skull—have been found in Kenya, Chad and Ethiopia.

When you think about Black History, you can’t ignore the Black origin of life and the legacies which started there, including the skeletal remains of “Lucy” dating back to 3.2 million years ago, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

Lucy’s discovery has been eclipsed by the discovery of Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), the 4.4 million year-old remains, fully unearthed just this past year. These are pieces to the puzzle of Black existence, and clearly portray Africa as the birthplace of humanity.

“Classical African civilizations started in the Nile Valley well over 5,000 years ago,” said Prof. Josef Ben Levi, an expert on the history of classical African civilizations and philosophy. Levi is also an instructor at Northeastern Illinois University. These civilizations started in what is now called Sudan, an Arabic word meaning “Black,” he said. These civilizations moved north to what is now called Egypt. The word “Egypt” is Greek in origin. Yet early “Egyptians” would have called their home Kemet, which means “Black community or town,” Levi said.

But historians have often denied Egypt its African origins when in fact early civilizations like Nubia, a land of great natural wealth, of gold mines, ebony, ivory and incense were Black. Nubia, prized by her neighbors, has a history that can be traced from 5000 B.C. through Nubian monuments and artifacts as well as through written records from Egypt and from Rome. Ancient Egyptian portraits depict the Nubians as having very dark skin, and they were often shown with golden hooped earrings and with braided or extended hair. In antiquity, Nubia was first mentioned in Old Kingdom Egyptian accounts of trade missions.

And then there were the Black Pharaohs. National Geographic noted the wonders of these Black kings in a piece focusing on great Black rulers of yesteryear. “Scholars and historians have repeatedly failed to acknowledge the impact

made by the group of kings who traveled from deep in Africa and conquered Egypt in 728 B.C.,” the publication reported. The Nubians brought order and stability back to Egypt, torn apart by infighting. “Under Nubian rule, Egypt became Egypt again,” according to the publication.

Restoration required recreation and it was “in essence their renaissance,” Levi said. “The 25th dynasty…was a repetition of the birth.” The Black pharaohs of the 25th dynasty, Nubians, “… reunified a tattered Egypt and filled its landscape with glorious monuments, creating an empire that stretched from the southern border…all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea,” National Geographic reports.

Piye, was one of these kings and the first Nubian pharaoh who invaded Egypt in 730 B.C. and would have received the same accolades of any modern-day Black hero. Under the rule of Shabaka (Piye’s brother), the Nubians thwarted the encroaching Assyrians, “perhaps saving Jerusalem in the process,” National Geographic reports.

Like these great pharaohs who staved off attacks from their enemies, other Blacks in world history have crafted thought, crafted civilizations, built communities and were leaders in medicine, philosophy, religion, and education. Even when it came to social justice and equality, Blacks lead the way there too and as Levi put it, ancient Egypt was “the only nation in antiquity where women had complete and equal rights.”

Even those with a college education have benefited by principles of thought coming out of Egypt. In ancient Egypt education was paramount, Levi said. Egypt produced great minds like Imhotep, the father of medicine. The Egyptian educational system is the foundation of its Greek counterpart, he added. Pre -Socratic visitors like Thales acknowledged he went to Egypt to study geometry, Levi stated, before Pythagoras. The great Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato studied there, he contends. “Plato went to Egypt to study for 12 years,” and determined that was the type of education Greece needed—one based largely on the liberal arts.

The contemporary liberal arts comprise of studying literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science. In classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education proper to a free man unlike the education proper to a slave. This legacy, marked by the achievements of great Black civilizations like the Nubians, is one reason Black history can never begin with tales of slavery. “Slavery is only one factor in African history and it, too, is misunderstood,” wrote John Henrik Clarke in African People in World History.

“Fortunately history…leaves its mark on everything. If you do not find the books there are scripts… there are skeletons…sculptures… plants. There are many things that have left their mark and that is the reason why we reconstruct history by going…into all of those avenues…It is the only valid and genuine historical method to reconstruct the fragmented history of Africa and the Americas,” Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, an anthropologist and historian, said in 1986 at a lecture in London.

Tags: Lisette Livingston, Shanita Bigelow