When the World Was Black:

The Untold History of the World’s First

Civilizations

Part One
 When the World Was Black: The Untold History of the World’s First
Civilizations, Part One: Prehistoric Cultures. Copyright ©2013 by Supreme
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 DEDICATION
To Cheikh Anta Diop, Ivan Van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, Clyde Ahmad
Winters, Asa Hilliard, Charles Finch, S.O.Y. Keita, Leonard Jeffries, John
Henrik Clarke, Anthony Browder, Chancellor Williams, Paul Guthrie, Marimba
Ani, Mwalimu Baruti, B.R. Ambedkar, James Brunson, and all the other
dedicated scholars – past and present – who have played a role in my
understanding of Black history and the global struggle for self-determination.
Thank you for the work you have done.

To the Dalit people of India, the Papuan people of New Guinea, Pan-Africans
on the continent and abroad, those who consider themselves Black in Latin
America, and all those indigenous people throughout the world who identify
with the Black Global Diaspora. We are one. We will be together soon.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d first like to express my gratitude to everyone whose insight and feedback
were critical to the completion of this project: Runoko Rashidi, Dr. S.O.Y.
Keita, Baba Obadele Williams, Mwalimu Baruti, Robert Bailey, Mykel Archie,
C’BS Alife Allah, Mecca Wise, Keith Africano, Wasif Elai Sayyed, Tau Justice
Allah, Sha-King Ce’hum Allah, Divine Ruler Equality Allah, Sincere Justice
Allah, Metztli Yei Kiahuitl, and Deniz Lopez.
There are many others who are part of the SDP family who I haven’t had a
chance to thank in print. These individuals continuously play important roles in
our mission: Shabe Allah, Bo’kem Supreme Logic Allah, Queen Chuniq, Dierdra
Baptiste, Kano Ayala, Freedom Allah, Original Author Allah, Victorious Honor,
and anyone else you see out here repping SDP and its mission of “Reinventing
the World.”
Finally, there are the Black bookstores who support us heavily: Medu Books
(GA), Nubian Books (GA), Expansion Books (AL), African Imports (TX),
Everyone’s Place Bookstore (MD), Black Star Music and Video (NY), Lushena
Books (IL), Tapeman, Inc. (NJ), Umoja Books (OH), Black and Noble (PA),
Harlem World Music and Video (NY), Community Bookstore (LA), Source of
Knowledge (NJ), Tru Books (CT), and many others you’ll find listed in the
“Official Retailers” section of our website. Support them however you can!
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
D R . S U P R E M E U N D E R S TA N D I N G
As I type this brief message into my phone, perched atop the Pyramid of the
Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico, I find it absolutely breathtaking…not only to
consider the view before me, but to consider the opportunities before us all
today.
Here I am, at an ancient site, breathing in what some of our ancestors thought
and said at this very place, while recording my own thoughts and words using
the latest in modern technology. And unlike so many others who have become
lost in their gadgets, I’m not disconnected. I feel more connected than ever.
I feel connected to this place, to our ancestors, to our history in general, to our
people throughout the world today, to you the reader specifically, and on a
deeper level, to the knowledge itself. To the very source from which it all
emanates. And that source is not outside us, but it IS us. And you can’t help but
see that when you sit someplace like this.
So, it’s my honor to bring you this book. It is my contribution to bridging our
past and our present, our ancestors and our modern day kin all over the world,
and you with the knowledge of yourself. This book couldn’t have been written
until now. Never before has it been this easy to connect these worlds.
Technology can certainly drive us apart, but, used wisely, it can also be a tool to
bring us together. Technology has allowed for me to consult thousands of
books I would have otherwise had to travel to track down, to consult dozens of
experts who were sometimes thousands of miles away on archaeological digs,
and to survey thousands of our readers to determine the best way to deliver this
content to the people. It’s also thanks to technology that you will enjoy
hundreds of photos, many of them in full color, to enhance the experience even
more.
But please don’t think that technology has made this work a walk in the park.
This book was nearly the death of me. I’ve worked tirelessly for months, often
working for 12 hours at a time, day after day (as my Facebook and Twitter
subscribers can attest to), just to ensure that this book is as solid as a book of
this scope and magnitude ought to be.
One of the most difficult things about this process has not been the mountains
of data to sift through or the steady flow of new findings that have emerged
since I began writing – but the need to make this work easy to understand.
Between that and ensuring that I’ve done a good job of summarizing more than
200,000 years of Black history, I’ve been forced to rewrite this book no less than
eleven times.
And now, I’m satisfied. I’m very proud of arriving at what I consider a perfect
balance:
First, I’ve retained the technical depth of the book, meaning people with college
educations will find the book informative, accurate, and challenging.
But I’ve also included plenty of simple break downs so that people who are new to this
kind of information can keep up without feeling they have to understand (or even read)
every paragraph.
Finally, I’ve added so much visual content that this book its worth its purchase price for
the pictures alone. Beyond adding value, however, the visual part makes this book
accessible to people who are not even readers.
The images are accompanied by captions and simple breakdowns that tell most
of the story, so you can get a ton of understanding from this book just by
looking at the dozens of visual pages.
Finally, I’ve humbled myself to suggest “questions to consider” rather than
promoting theory after theory. This, in my opinion, is the best way to approach
the subject when there isn’t quite enough data to form a solid conclusion. And
when you’re talking about 200,000 years of Black history – you’ll see that there
are still hundreds of questions unanswered. It is my hope that some of our
readers will one day become the scientists and scholars that answer those
questions for my grandchildren to study.

Supreme Understanding
Teotihuacan, Mexico

For more on me, my background, and my qualifications, see “About the

Author” in this book’s Appendix.
FOREWORD
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI
It is always an honor to be asked to contribute to the body of scholarly works
about African people, particularly by our outstanding young scholars. And here
we have such a case. Indeed, the author has done such a comprehensive job
here, touching on so many aspects of the Global African experience that I think
that the most significant thing that I can do is to provide a kind of summary
overview that outlines the nature of that experience.
I am fond of saying that “History is a light that illuminates the past and a key
that unlocks the door to the future.” Supreme Understanding confidently shines
that light and unlocks that door. He understands that a sound knowledge of
both the past and present is a weapon in the liberation of the mind and, as a
result, wields that weapon most effectively.
Our concern is not only with Africa as the cradle of human culture, but as the
birthplace and the cradle of humanity itself. Africa produced the first modern
human populations (known to anthropologists as Homo sapiens sapiens), who then
came to populate the rest of the world. There were different routes with varying
degrees of difficulty that the migrants could have taken as they left the Great
Lakes region. These routes include the Nile Valley, the Suez Isthmus into Asia,
and the Straits of Gibraltar into Europe. It is in the light of these routes that the
presence of modern humans in Asia, Europe, and, ultimately the Americas, can
be traced.
In addition to the global migrations of Black people, which constitute the core
of our Introduction, obviously, African people did not abandon Africa, with the
Nile Valley probably the most brilliant example.
The earliest modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) populations of Asia were also
of African birth. Here we are speaking of the Diminutive Africoids – the
extremely important and much romanticized family of Black people
phenotypically characterized by: unusually short statures; skin-complexions that
range from yellowish to dark brown; tightly curled hair; and, in frequent cases
(like many other Blacks), steatopygia. They are probably more familiar to us by
such pejorative terms as pygmies, Negritos and Negrillos. Similar peoples who
live today in Southern Africa have been titled “Bushmen.” More accurate names
for these people are Batwa, San, Nama, and Khoi.
Moving slowly and sporadically from their African birthplace, beginning perhaps
100,000 years ago and continuing through the millennia, untold numbers of
Diminutive Africoids began to people Asia. Although they currently exist in
limited numbers, and are generally found in heavily forested, barren, isolated or
similarly forbidding terrains, the Diminutive Africoids were at one time the
supreme lords of the earth. It is indeed unfortunate that the histories of the
Diminutive Africoids, including distinct and fundamental contributions to
monumental civilizations characterized by agricultural science, metallurgy,
advanced scripts and urbanization, are so little understood.
As we progress through prehistory, we find evidence of ancient Black
civilizations in Japan, China, Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.), ancient
Sumer (modern Iraq), Elam (modern Iran), Arabia, and India. These civilizations
are all addressed in this text.
The epic story of the African presence in Asia is one of the most exciting and,
yet, least known aspects of the Black experience. The Black populations of Asia,
what they have done and are now doing, are questions that beg and demand
serious answers. These answers, which we must diligently seek to supply, cannot
be sought merely to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of an elite group, but to
further the vision of Pan-Africanism and reunite a family that has been
separated far too long. You will find this vision embraced wholeheartedly
throughout this text.
Like Asia, the history of Black people in Europe is exceedingly rich. The first
civilization of Europe was established on the island of Crete. It is called the
Minoan Culture, after King Minos, an early legendary ruler of the island. It has
been argued that the ancestors of the Cretans were natives of Africa, a branch of
Western Ethiopians.
And what of the Moors? It would not be inaccurate to say that the Moors
helped reintroduce Europe to civilization. But just who were the Moors of
antiquity anyway? Chancellor Williams has written that “The original Moors, like
the original Egyptians, were Black Africans.” More on that in future works.
Most modern scientists believe that the earliest immigrants to reach the Western
Hemisphere were Asians of the same physical type as the East Asians that we
are familiar with today. But both the evidence from genetic studies and physical
anthropology tell us that Black peoples came long before. Mongoloid peoples,
however, eventually came to the prehistoric Americas in such massive numbers,
crossing the Bering Strait in boats rather than across the Beringia land bridge,
that they eventually almost totally absorbed the New World’s earlier arrivals.
The resulting fusion of peoples constituted the Native American populations at
the time of the catastrophic European intrusions during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The earlier arrived Blacks (the very first Americans) tended
to fade away with increasing rapidity into the shadowy realms of fairy tales,
myths and legends. You will find many of these myths in this text.
Scientists have established that Black populations did not entirely vanish from
the Americas. The Olmec civilization of ancient Mexico has been labeled the
first civilization of the western hemisphere, as they surpassed their neighbors in
an attempt to settle certain problems of living together – of government,
defense, religion, family, property, science and art. Some scientists have
concluded that the Olmec may have originally have been an African settler-
colony which conquered the indigenous population of southern Mexico. Others
are convinced that the Black presence among the Olmec merely consisted of a
small but elite and highly-influential community. These issues are addressed in
this text.
Other scientists have found a host of cultural parallels between ancient Africans
and Native Americans, including architectural patterns and religious practices.
As for the latter, some Native American communities worshipped black gods of
great antiquity, such as Ekchuah, Quetzalcoatl, Yalahau, Nahualpilli and Ixtliltic,
long before the first enslaved Africans arrived in the New World.
All of these facts, buttressed by skeletons and sculptures, make it clear that
African people have had a profound presence and influence in pre-Columbian
America. Some scholars, such as Carlos C. Marquez, have even concluded that
“the youthful America was also a Negro continent.”
Traveling west across the Pacific, we find the Black people of Australia, who
settled there at least 60,000 years ago. Northeast of Australia, we find the islands
of Melanesia. C. Madang has described Melanesia (the Black Islands of the
South Pacific) as the eastern flank of the Black world, and the expression of ages
past when an uninterrupted belt of Black populations stretched across Africa,
Eurasia, Australia, Oceania, and ancient America. To the contrary, the present
Mongoloid inhabitants of Indonesia entered the region during relatively recent
times; a period which some scientists have dated to as late as the first
millennium C.E.
As we have just glimpsed, the Global African experience is vast. With that in
mind, I will simply say this: All strong peoples emphasize their history, and do
so all the time; weak peoples do not. Not only must intellectuals do their
scholarly work, they must make sure to give this information to the masses. This
has been the author’s goal in this work – to deliver this information in a way
that nearly everyone can understand.
I believe that if we are to be a strong people again, we must continually clarify
who we are, where we are, and what we are, and constantly emphasize the things
that made us great in the past. As Malcolm X said, “Of all our studies, it is
history that is most qualified to reward our research.” In other words, we must
use our history as a springboard for struggle. We understand that we cannot live
in the past, but the past surely lives in us; and that the past is not dead and
history is not finished.

Runoko Rashidi
October 2012
Los Angeles

Runoko Rashidi is a historian, writer and public lecturer with a pronounced interest in the African
foundations of humanity and civilizations and the presence and current conditions of Black people
throughout the Global African Community. He is particularly drawn to the African presence in India,
Australia and the islands of the Pacific. To date he has lectured in fifty-five countries. He regularly conducts
educational tours throughout the world, exploring the African presence both ancient and modern. As a
scholar, Runoko Rashidi has been called the world’s leading authority on the African presence in Asia. He
is the editor, with Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of the voluminous African Presence in Early Asia, and author of
Introduction to the Study of African Classical Civilizations, Black Star: African Presence in Early Europe, and
African Star over Asia: The Black Presence in the East. Runoko Rashidi’s mission is to help change the way
Africa and Africans are seen in the world.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
FOREWORD
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
HOW THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
THE MEANING OF CIVILIZATION
THEY SAID WE WERE SAVAGES
WERE WE PRIMITIVE?
AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY
THE HISTORY OF SAVAGERY
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION, ANYWAY?
THE MEANING OF CIVILIZATION
THE AGES OF HISTORY
AN INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY
THE UNDERGROUND CITY OF ANKHALLA
“REALLY OLD STUFF”
AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY
7 WAYS TO CONNECT PREHISTORIC DOTS
WHO IS THE ORIGINAL MAN?
THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST?
THEY SAID THEY WERE WHITE
THE SCIENCE OF RACE
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF RACE
WHY RACE MATTERS
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
WHY “BLACK”?
WHAT DID THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE LOOK LIKE?
WHO AND WHAT IS BLACK?
AFRICA BEFORE EGYPT
WHAT ABOUT AFRICA?
THE ORIGIN OF MAN
THE FIRST TECH INDUSTRIES
AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRONOLOGY
THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA
PREHISTORIC AFRICA
CHEMISTRY AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE BIG CITIES?
AN INTRODUCTION TO DATING TECHNIQUES
THE DESTRUCTION OF CENTRAL AFRICA
 ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION IN CENTRAL AFRICA
AN INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY
ART AND CULTURE IN NORTHERN AFRICA
THE JOURNEY OF MAN
WHY DID WE EXPLORE THE WORLD?
AN INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS
THE EXTERMINATION CAMPAIGN
THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION
WE ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT
THE EXODUS
A RE-INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS
THE TOBA EXTINCTION
TWO SHADES OF BLACK: AFRICOID AND AUSTRALOID
THE WAR AGAINST HUMANITY
WHO WERE THE NEANDERTHALS?
RISING TO THE OCCASION
MASTERING NATURE
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE
THE WORLD’S OLDEST PEOPLE?
THE GREAT MIGRATION
INDIA
WHO WERE THE DRAVIDIANS?
THE FIRST BLACK PEOPLE IN INDIA
THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS
BEFORE THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS?
AUSTRALOID PEOPLE IN INDIA
SOUTHEAST ASIA
THE DBP IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
AUSTRALOID PEOPLE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
SOUTHEAST ASIANS IN INDIA
WHAT DOES MONGOLOID MEAN?
THE FAR EAST
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “CHINESE”?
THE DARK PEOPLE OF CHINA
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF CHINA
THE AUSTRALOID PEOPLE OF CHINA
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF TAIWAN
AN INTRODUCTION TO JAPAN
THE LITTLE BLACK PEOPLE OF JAPAN
BLACK SAMURAIS AND THE AINU
AUSTRALIA
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE
BEFORE THE ABORIGINES?
AN INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY
PALEOLITHIC ASTRONOMY
THE STRUGGLE IN AUSTRALIA
THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
MELANESIA
 MICRONESIA
POLYNESIA
EUROPE
WHO WAS THE FIRST EUROPEAN?
WHO WAS THE GRIMALDI MAN?
BLACK EUROPEANS, CIRCA 50,000 BC
THE CULTURES OF PALEOLITHIC EUROPE
THE “LITTLE BLACK PEOPLE” OF EUROPE
WHO WERE THE CRO-MAGNONS?
SO WHEN DID THE FACE OF EUROPE CHANGE?
THE AMERICAS
WHO WERE THE FIRST AMERICANS?
THE TRAGIC FATE OF THE PERICÚES
THEY CAME WAAAY BEFORE COLUMBUS
BEFORE THE AUSTRALOIDS
BLACK ESKIMOS?
THE 500 NATIONS
HOW MANY MIGRATIONS WERE THERE?
ACROSS THE PACIFIC
WHY IGNORE ALL THESE MIGRATIONS?
AT THE EXTREME END OF SOUTH AMERICA
BLACK, BROWN, AND YELLOW
THEN WHAT HAPPENED?
APPENDIX
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
SCIENCE VS. PSEUDOSCIENCE
HOW TO ANALYZE HISTORICAL INFORMATION
WHAT DO WE CALL THEM?
“THOSE FOREIGNERS”
GENETICS GLOSSARY
THE GENETICS OF ORIGINAL PEOPLE
THE BIBLE AS HISTORY?
BLACK PEOPLE CAME BEFORE ADAM?
GOING BACK TO AFRICA – 50,000 YEARS AGO
AFRICAN PHYSICAL DIVERSITY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INSPIRATION FOR THIS WORK
WHAT’S IN VOLUME 3, 4, AND 5?
ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION
BASIC INSTRUCTIONS
“History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History
is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural
time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the
map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but
more importantly, what they must be.” – John Henrik
Clarke
Why are there are Black communities all over the world, from southern Russia
to southeast Asia, from South America to the islands of the South Pacific? Some
of them are no longer around, but we know they were there. They were
everywhere.
But who were these people? Where did they come from? How did they get to
distant outposts like Easter Island, Tierra del Fuego, and even the frigid regions
of northern Europe, Canada, and Siberia? And what role did these people play
in establishing the world’s first cultures and civilizations? Finally, what happened
to them?
These are the questions we’ll answer in this book. In this book, you’ll learn
about the history of Black people. I don’t mean the history you learned in
school, which most likely began with slavery and ended with the Civil Rights
Movement. I’m talking about Black history BEFORE that. Long before that. In
this book, we’ll cover over 200,000 years of Black history.
For many of us, that sounds strange. We can’t even imagine what the Black past
was like before the slave trade, much less imagine that such a history goes back
200,000 years or more.
Can you imagine what that does to a person? To grow up believing their people
started out as slaves? Perhaps some of us know a little about Africa, but how
much do we really know? How much do we know about the extent of the
ancient Black empires that spanned far beyond continental Africa? Chances are,
very little. In this book, we’ll tell the stories you haven’t been told.
We’ll talk about the Black migrations that settled the world. We’ll talk about the
Black people who founded the first cultures and civilizations of Africa, Asia,
Europe, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and North and South America. No
exaggeration. This book covers more than 200,000 years of Black history
across every square inch of the Planet Earth. We’ll rediscover a past when
the world was Black. As we learn the history of our ancestors, we’ll learn more
and more about ourselves.
WHY STUDY THE PAST?
Why are ancient Black civilizations important? What do they have to do with us
nowadays? Could this information serve as anything more than a source of
inspiration? Or are these stories mere reminders of the greatness that once was?
I could answer those questions myself, but it makes sense to draw on the
wisdom of those who came before me. People like historian John Henrik
Clarke, who said the profound words quoted above. Or Senegalese scholar
Cheikh Anta Diop, who said, “Intellectuals out to study the past, not for the
1
pleasure they find in so doing, but to derive lessons from it.”
This is what Malcolm X meant when he said in his 1963 “Message to the
Grassroots”:
Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you’ve
got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others
who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you
know how you can get yours straight.
2
He was echoing the sentiments of his teacher, the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad, who said in the classic Message to the Blackman:
The acquiring of knowledge for our children and ourselves must not be limited to the three R’s –
‘reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. It should instead include the history of the Black nation, the
knowledge of civilization of man and the universe and all the sciences. It will make us a greater
people of tomorrow. We must instill within our people the desire to learn and then use that
3
learning for self.
Later in the book, he connects the study of history with the pursuit of self-
knowledge:
I am for the acquiring of knowledge or the accumulating of knowledge – as we now call it;
education. First, my people must be taught the knowledge of self. Then and only then will they
be able to understand others and that which surrounds them. Anyone who does not have a
knowledge of self is considered a victim of either amnesia or unconsciousness and is not very
competent. The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my people here in
America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity. Knowledge of self
4
makes you take on the great virtue of learning.
What they’ve been telling us is that history is a rich subject because it can
illuminate the problems of the present, and present solutions that have already
worked for such problems.
History can also highlight the failures of the past, to help us see what not to do
again. The past is like an alternate universe that obeys the same laws as our own,
where we can see what happens when different things are attempted.
Studying the past also allows us to see how our present-day conditions came to
be. Both our strengths and our weaknesses are born from the triumphs and
tragedies of our collective past. Thus, if we want a better present and future, we
must come to understand the past.
 WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
In writing this book, I gave myself the daunting task of covering all the cultures
and civilizations of the world, going back as far as the earliest evidence of
human settlement, and extending up to the point of European contact. That’s
quite a lot of history. Thus, this book had to be split into two parts.
Part One covers history from 200,000 to 20,000 years ago. These were the
“prehistoric” cultures of the Paleolithic Age. This might make them sound
“primitive,” but we’ll soon see that these cultures were actually highly advanced.
Part Two covers history from 20,000 years ago to the point of European
contact. This is the time that prehistoric cultures grew into ancient urban
civilizations, a transition known to historians as the “Neolithic Revolution.”
Right now, you’re looking at Part One. In this book, you’ll learn:
Who the Original People of this planet are.
Why a branch of these people left Africa and settled the rest of the world.
How and when these people settled the entire Earth.
Why these people settled everywhere from the arctic tundra of Siberia to the deserts of
Peru, and what cultures they established there.
The “extinction event” that nearly wiped out half of the human race.
The people who were here before humans, and the threat they posed to human survival.
How these threats affected those who survived and became us.
How the actions and choices of these Original People affect our lives over 100,000 years
later.
What kind of culture the earliest humans had, and if they were “primitive savages” or
scientifically and culturally advanced?
The innovations and technology these Original People introduced to all of the world’s
earliest human cultures.
The threats faced by the direct descendants of these Original People who have survived
into modern times.
How we can apply the lessons of the past to the problems of the future.
 HOW THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT
This book is, of course, not the first to explore the subject of ancient Black
history. And it will certainly not be the last. What makes this book different is its
scope, its depth, and its approach.
This book covers the Black history of Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, the Pacific
Islands, and the Americas, whereas most texts focus on a very specific area,
typically limited to popular regions like the Nile Valley. This book is also
different because of how much work it took to put it together.
To summarize, here are ten reasons why this book was so insanely difficult to
research and write:
1. Most popular texts on ancient Black history are NOT multidisciplinary (with a few
exceptions, like They Came Before Columbus). This book is one of only a few works that
looks at archaeological, linguistic, genetic, skeletal, mythological, and anthropological
data to give readers the “whole picture.”
2. Few works have attempted to dig any further back than 4,000 BC. This book covers the
human journey from over 200,000 years ago, up to our first encounters with Europeans.
That’s quite a lot to condense into one text. We did however find a way to fit it in two
books. Thus, this book is split in two parts, one half covering the distant prehistoric part
(where the foundations were laid), and the other half covering the ancient Black past
when big cities were built.
3. This book covers not just one part of the world, but the entire world. Asia, Africa,
Australia, Europe, the Americas, the Pacific Islands, you name it, it’s covered. In many of
these areas, you seriously have to dig to find any of the data you’re looking for.
4. Our goal is to be respectful to Original People throughout the world, and considerate of
their unique local heritages, while still being truthful about the Black foundations of
these people, and later Black infusions into their civilizations.
5. It’s not just a reference book, it’s an easy-to-read reference book. This book is meant be
encyclopedic in nature, yet inviting and easy to read. The content is specific enough to
warrant quoting in academic papers, while not so technical that readers can’t keep up.
So by all means, quote us in your research papers! If you find us using conversational
language to make something easier to understand, you may not want to quote THAT line.
6. It’s just not as simple as saying “Black folks did this.” There is no such thing as a
monolithic Black culture or people. Black people are the most diverse people on Earth.
There were at least three separate waves of Black people who populated the planet,
each with their own unique contributions. Many of these people branched off and
evolved locally into smaller subgroups.
7. We have to exemplify the methods of responsible scholarship. It’s too easy to offer bold
claims that can’t be proven, but that goes against everything SDP stands for, and we
believe that kind of “scholarship” is part of the problem plaguing our communities today.
8. This isn’t a collection of “famous firsts” or disconnected Black history trivia. We’re
actually telling the story of how this world came to be the way it is today. Telling the
processes behind the highlights (for example, the backstory to the construction of the
pyramids) isn’t as exciting as just listing the highlights, but that’s what separates a
history book from a book of “fun facts.” We’re not just telling what happened, we’re
 explaining how it happened. As you can imagine, you won’t find stories about 10,000-
foot-tall temples on page one. And while it IS amazing that the Black people of the Indus
Valley had toilets and sewers 4,000 years ago (in contrast to Europeans who were
throwing their bodily waste out the window as recently as the 1600s) we have to
5
understand how much actually led up to these developments.
9. This book is part of our company’s campaign to engender empowered readers. Too
often, our great historians and scholars have died without anyone to continue their work
as intended. In other cases, lecturers and academics refuse to teach others how to find
what they’ve found. We’re doing things differently. This book is full of open-ended
questions and theories to research or expand upon, as well as guidelines on how to do
the research. On our website, we’ve created a forum where a new scientific community
can come together and continue writing this history. We call it “open source history.”
10. Finally, we work life lessons into all of our books. This can’t just be a history book. This
has to be a window into our past that allows us to better plan our futures.
This book is also different because we don’t resort to fantastic claims without
proof. That’s just something we don’t do, even if readers nowadays tend to let
other authors get away with it. We want to teach critical thinking, so we lead by
example. If it’s an extraordinary claim, it requires extraordinary evidence. If we
can’t back it up, we won’t say it. If it’s just a theory, we’ll say that, and we’ll
identify all that facts that suggest our theory is plausible.
Finally, we are big on reality. The facts are amazing by themselves. We don’t
need to make it seem like Black people built civilizations all over the world with
magic or psychic powers. Doing so makes the accomplishments of the past
seem effortless, and that sets us up for failure today – because nation-building
nowadays is certainly not effortless. Doing so also requires no explanation of the
process by which nation-building occurs, so you’re left with some fun stuff to
believe in, but nothing you can actually use. We actually consider this kind of
“teaching” to be a form of exploitation, and advise you to keep your eyes out
for the people who peddle this kind of fantasy to those who deserve better.
 HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
The following guidelines should make it easier to read and understand this book:
Think of this book like a reference book. It’s full of literally thousands of years’ worth of
content. To support many of the arguments we make, I’ve had to incorporate lots – and I
mean lots – of data. Sometimes, this can be overwhelming. The vocabulary isn’t always
easy either. But here’s the first step: relax.
You can reread this book as many times as you need to. And unlike The Science of Self,
Volume One, you don’t necessarily have to read this book from front to back. You can
skip around, because this work is meant to be encyclopedic like The Hood Health
Handbook – a useful reference on over 1,000 different historical topics.
In other words, if you come across a difficult concept, a technical-sounding quote, or a
section that simply doesn’t catch your interest, skip it. Often, those long block quotes are
followed by an explanation in laymen’s terms. And what doesn’t catch you on your first
read might catch your interest on your second read.
However, it might be easiest to understand if you don’t skip around too much, because
difficult concepts are explained the first time they’re mentioned, but not again
afterwards.
If you don’t feel like keeping a dictionary next to you while you read, there are free
dictionary apps for most smartphones, and Dictionary.com is easy to use as well.
Wherever we can, we define tough words, but you still might run into a few that you need
to clarify. Don’t stress! You’re improving your vocabulary. Soon, you’ll be able to use
“anthropometry” in a sentence.
When you read, write in the margins and highlight text as often as you can. You may even
want to use one of those colorful sticky-tab bookmarking systems.
It’s also helpful to keep a notebook where you take notes and record your thoughts.
We always ask that you share our work with others. We appreciate when you take
pictures of our books and share them online, or post quotes with the necessary credits.
SDP thrives off word-of-mouth.
At the same time, you may not get great results if you introduce this book to a friend who
doesn’t like reading. You may need to start with a book like How to Hustle and Win, or
Rap, Race, and Revolution, or Knowledge of Self. Those books are better suited for
general audiences. This book, like The Science of Self, Volume One, is much heavier
reader and will be tough for the uninitiated.
Still, carry the book with you. We delay our eBook releases (sometimes for a year or
more) for a reason! We want people to bring this knowledge into the REAL world. We love
the internet as much as you do, but we’re trying to kill all that disconnectedness and
“reinvent the world” by bringing our people back together. (You’ll get it when you read this
book).
So take this book out with you, and let those random conversations begin. You’ll be
surprised how much good can come from such a small gesture.
THE MEANING OF CIVILIZATION
WHO WAS CIVILIZED…WHO WAS NOT?
“When we classify mankind by color, the only primary race
that has not made a creative contribution to any civilization
is the Black race.” – Arnold Toynbee, The Study of History
When you think of a “civilization” what do you think of? When you took
history class in school, you were probably taught something about civilizations
(both ancient and modern), because that’s where all the history was made. The
rest of the “uncivilized” world wasn’t doing much that mattered.
When you think about it, what are some civilizations that come to mind? Most
of your peers will think of European civilizations, like Greece, Rome, and the
good ol’ U.S. of A. Some of us will, of course, think instead of ancient Egypt…
maybe Nubia or the Mayan civilization of Mexico. Few of us can go back
further than those. And few can tell you what makes something a civilization.
Think about it. What IS civilization? What do you think it means? Seriously,
stop for a minute. I’ll wait.
What did you come up with? I’ll give you some options. Which of the following
do you think a group of humans must have in order to be considered a
civilization?

The construction of urban cities

A steady food supply from farming
Trade with other civilizations
Laws and government
Private property
An established leadership
Social classes
A standing military
Monuments
Knowledge of science
Textiles and Ceramics
A Written Language
 “You know you ignant when you think ancient Egypt was the beginning of African culture. As if the millions of years before that,
everybody was on some monkey s***.” – Supreme Understanding, via Facebook
Based on your criteria, when do you think Black people developed their first
civilizations? Most people would answer that the world’s first civilizations date
back to ancient Egypt (or Sumer, and a few will say Kush or Nubia), and those
go back about 6,000 years. That’s pretty ancient, but if you think about it, that
still implies that Black people – who have been around as modern humans for at
least 200,000 years – have been wild and uncivilized for most of that time.
That’s not an accident. That’s what you’re supposed to think.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
Why they taught us that our ancestors were primitive savages.
The history of “savage” and “uncivilized” behavior
How the people who built the world’s first civilizations were pushed into the fringes of the
societies they built as outcasts.
Why the standard model of civilization is backwards.
The true meaning of “civilization.”
How our ancestors had the knowledge of modern civilization but only used it as needed.
The way history “works.”
How false history can be used to confuse and distract us.
How to tell sound historical information from misinformation and guesswork.
How scholars connect the prehistoric dots to piece together our past.
 THEY SAID WE WERE SAVAGES
As long as history has been written by Europeans, Blacks have been written out
of history. Black people have been described as primitive savages, an inferior
race that has given nothing to humankind in the way of the arts, the sciences, or
civilization. Hell, I don’t have to paraphrase what they said; I can give you some
direct quotes. So, here’s what they think about you.
In 1768, European “Enlightenment” philosopher David Hume said:
I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the white. There never was a civilized
nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or
speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.
In 1837, German philosopher Hegel said in his History of Philosophy:
At this point we leave Africa, not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it
has no movement or development to exhibit.
In 1902, John Burgess wrote in his history of Reconstruction that American
slavery was the consequence of nature:
A Black skin means membership in a race of men which has never created a civilization of its
own kind. There is something natural in the subordination of an inferior race, even to the point
6
of enslavement of the inferior race…
In 1934, historian Arnold Toynbee concluded that “the only primary race that
has not made a creative contribution to any civilization is the Black race.” As
recently as 1965, Professor Trevor-Roper, Royal Professor of History at Oxford
University, wrote:
Undergraduates…demand that they should be taught the history of black Africa. Perhaps, in the
future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little:
there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness, like the history
of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness is not a subject for history…The new
rulers of the world, whoever they may be, will inherit a position that has been built up by Europe,
and by Europe alone. It is European techniques, European examples, European ideas which have
shaken the non-European world out of its past – out of barbarism in Africa, out of a far older,
slower, more majestic civilisation in Asia; and the history of the world, for the last five centuries,
in so far as it has significance, has been European history. I do not think that we need to make
7
any apology if our study of history is European-centric.
I can imagine you didn’t find any of that particularly pleasant, so I’ll stop there,
as I’m sure I’ve made my point. The bottom line is: They argued, without a
shadow of a doubt, that you were made to be less than them. They taught
the world that you have given the world nothing, and are thus owed
nothing…not even respect.
DID YOU KNOW? Notice, however, that I didn’t say they
Some people argue that racism is a byproduct of actually believed this. They just taught
 economics, and that prejudice against Black people this to the world, and the rest of the
was developed mostly to justify the horrors of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade. Not true.
world spit it back in your face. But the
It is true that many Europeans revered Africans true scientists among them didn’t
before the 1500s, but we have to study history believe much of what they said and
holistically. The ancient Greeks and Romans may wrote about you. As you’ll see
have idolized Africans, but this was in the infancy of
European civilization. Later events – when they were throughout the book, they knew better.
more powerful – allowed their true sentiments to Wait, I’ve got just one more quote, and
come out.
First, we can study the Punic Wars and other
this one’s heavy. The following excerpt
historical conflicts between Europeans and Black from Bertram Weale’s 1910 work, The
people. Then we must look at the growing hatred for Conflict of Colour: The Threatened Upheaval
Black people during the Moorish occupation of Throughout the World covers so much of
Europe.
As they became increasingly capable of conquering what we seek to address in this book:
Black people, they became more vocal and upfront. The black man has given nothing to the world.
By the fall of the Moorish Empire, racism was out in He has never made a nation – he belongs to
the open. In reality, it had always been there, just as it
nothing but a subject race. He has no
is today. architecture of his own, no art, no history, no
real religion, unless animism be a religion. His
hands have reared no enduring monuments, save when they have been forcibly directed by the
energies of other races. The black man – the negro – is indeed the world’s common slave…Fate
thus seems to have marked the African down.
No matter how much one may animadvert [criticize] against the Asiatic, no matter how much
one may dislike him, it is a fact that, though he may never have been scientific, he has contributed
immensely to the civilisation of the world; has founded every great religion that exists; has built
enduring monuments and temples; and possesses withal in many ways a more reasonable, a more
subtle, and a more speculative brain than the European. In poetry, in art, the debt Europe owes
Asia is immense – far greater than is commonly supposed; for no one knows, nor will ever know,
how much the Greeks really borrowed from Indo-Persian civilisation, and how little they
themselves originated. Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Arab, Hindu, Persian – and many others –
have contributed their ordered quota in this sum total; all have had, and will continue to have, a
profound influence on the world’s progress.
Not so the black man. He is the child of nature – the one untutored man who was a helot in the
days of Solomon, as he is still a virtual slave, though his manumission throughout the world is
8
one of the great landmarks in the history of the nineteenth century.
Reading texts like this turns the stomachs of those of us who know better. It
makes you want to scream, cry, lash out in defiance, and – perhaps after you’ve
had enough – you just tell yourself “Well, it’s not true, and their ignorance can’t
hurt me.” This is, truthfully, a coward’s response.
TEACHING US THAT WE’RE STUPID
It’s like knowing your child’s kindergarten teacher is telling them that they’re
stupid on a daily basis, and you – instead of doing something about it – just tell
yourself “Well, it’s not true, and their ignorance can’t hurt my baby.”
But it can! And this IS what our children learn in schools! Not necessarily in
THIS language of course, because it’s not 1910 anymore, and no one would
word it this way. But the SAME ideas are being fed to our children. Even at
Black college and universities, many professors are so entrenched in the “old
school” that they don’t know how much of the world was authored by Black
people – or they’re simply too scared (even at HBCUs) – to really talk about it.
And this history MATTERS, because there’s a reason why they lied! These fools
weren’t ignorant, they LIED. And there’s still a reason why they still lie.
GREEN IS THE NEW WHITE
Think about this: Right now, much of the “developed” world is “going green.”
Environmentalism is big news, and big news means big business. But who’s
cashing in? The same Europeans who trashed the planet! Did you know that the
same companies who produce the garbage that destroys our planet are the same
ones manufacturing the “green” products that are supposed to save it?
And as people pursue this “radical change,” are they consulting with the
Original environmentalists? You know, the indigenous people who preserved
the planet for hundreds of thousands of years, using sustainable technology –
long before anyone white cared what “sustainable” meant? Of course not!
They said we were savages because we lived in “mud huts” – even though a
brick house is essentially a mud hut too! (brick = fire-dried mud) But now, white
people are spending thousands of dollars to build “Eco-Domes” using the same
construction techniques – now that they’ve realized they’re superior to many
9
modern dwellings. Meanwhile, many of the original “mud hut” architects weren’t
simply written off as “savages,” they’ve been pushed to the brink of extinction!
The oldest people on the planet are all nearly gone. Think about WHY.
Think about what compels an “environmental” organization like the World
Wildlife Fund to purposely push for population control and the imminent death
of indigenous people in the regions where they work so hard to save small
animals. Don’t believe me? Check out our investigation of the evidence in The
Hood Health Handbook, Volume Two. It’s all right there, in their own words.
Trust me, my desire to tell the true story of Original People is not about
romanticism or reminiscing. It’s about radical change. A reversal of the
prevailing social order. I’m striving to undo what they’re doing daily. By the time
you’re done with this volume, you’ll see just why ancient history is not old news,
and just how important it is that these stories continue to be told. Until then,
we’ll always be seen as savages and animals, bound for extinction.
 WERE WE PRIMITIVE?
We’re going to deconstruct and destroy hundreds of myths and misconceptions
throughout this series of books. Some are related to science versus pseudo-
science, or history versus fantasy, or logic versus fallacy. Many of the
“erroneous” ways of thinking are deeply ingrained in our minds, because we’ve
been taught to respect claims and beliefs without requiring evidence. But
many of these myths and misconceptions about Original People have us
portrayed as inferior or backwards, and these are – ironically – just as ingrained
in us, because we’ve been taught to hate ourselves. We’re here to reverse that
process, using the evidence to tell the true story.
How well do you know what’s real versus what we’ve been told? Try this
activity, marking the following items as either true or false.
Africa is the home of the wild. T F
The jungle life is hard and savage, and it is a sign of
T F
progress when people grow out of it.
Tribal people walk around naked because they don’t know
T F
better.
We became civilized humans within the past 40,000
T F
years.
Ancient Egypt was the first great Black civilization. T F
Today’s Europeans descend from the first humans to
T F
settle Europe.
Indigenous people engage in just as much warfare and
bloodshed as modernized people, except with less T F
technology.
The technology we have today is much more effective
T F
than primitive technology.
Early humans slept out in the open or in the treetops until
T F
they learned to build simple huts.
Darwin’s theory of evolution taught that man descended
T F
from monkeys.
All our different skin colors and facial features come from
T F
the environment.
The diet of the earliest people involved a lot of meat,
T F
which we secured by daily hunting.
The Original People did not have a written language or
T F
numbers until ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
And my personal favorite: Before urban cities emerged in
T F
the ancient world, our people were primitive.

WELL, WERE WE PRIMITIVE?

Depends on what you mean by primitive. If, by primitive, you mean we lived
simple lives unhindered by modern technology, modern problems, and modern
social ills…or that we lived according to the “primary” laws of nature rather
than man-made codes invented to control human behavior….then yeah, I guess
10
you could say we were primitive. We didn’t have stainless steel tools from
Home Depot. We didn’t have Gucci suits and shoes. We didn’t wear chains that
turn your neck green.
But, as you’ll see in this book, we didn’t need any of that. We had the
technology we needed, some ridiculously fresh attire, and jewelry that would put
Jacob the Jeweler to shame. But even if we didn’t have anything close to those
things, we would have still had everything we needed. Don’t let anyone convince
you that we were desperate and fighting for survival the whole time. And don’t
let anyone tell you that a “simple life” means a savage life.
No matter what European anthropologists said about us in the early
1900s, we certainly weren’t savages. Unfortunately, this image – of a bunch of
naked wild people chasing animals with bones in their noses and spears in their
hands – persists even a hundred years later. But this isn’t an accurate picture of
11
indigenous people now, nor was it what we lived like 100,000 years ago.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY
BY ROBERT BAILEY
History is the story of what happened and how it happened. It’s not a set of
trivia to memorize. If that’s the way you learned history, you probably know
bits and pieces of what happened in the past, but not in any logical order that
will help you understand how all that old stuff led to what’s going on now, or
how it will affect the future. But memorizing names, dates, and places isn’t all
bad. It can help you remember the story itself, but if all you got was the trivia
and no story, that’s a bad deal. But let’s be real: just because you’re getting a
story doesn’t mean you’re getting the full story or the true story. That’s why
you hear people say history is “HIS story” meaning the white man’s version of
how things went. This brings us to the study of historiography.
Historiography is the study of how history is, and has been, written. It also
refers to the various interpretations of a historical event and the body of
historical work on a given topic (like the historiography of Black civilizations).
Primary sources such as eyewitnesses, personal diaries, journals, etc. are better
at giving an idea of what happened regarding a past event than secondary
sources such as books written by a historian. Even still, primary sources must
be put into context. Historiographers are NOT the same as historians; a
historiographer is like a detective, looking into how sources are formed.
There are many different approaches from which a historiographer may work.
They may compare sources and look for patterns recurring throughout them
for common themes, as wells as consider the corruption or authenticity of a
source, in addition to the motives and perspective of the author of source.
History is never truly objective, because history is an interpretation of facts.
Hence the African proverb, “Until the lions have their historian, tales of the
hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” While studying history, you can practice
thinking like a historiographer by asking yourself, how and why some facts are
included or excluded from a history. Historiography is useful in that it helps us
get to the bottom of things and to find out the truth of what actually
transpired.
So how long has the telling of history been going on? Prehistory itself is
defined as history of humankind before recorded history. While we haven’t
always recorded our history down on paper, accounts of the past were passed
down orally, through what is known as oral tradition. Elders pass down their
knowledge to specific members of their clan, according to their respective
place in the clans; in addition, the first people to receive the knowledge must
be direct descendants of that knowledge.
 THE HISTORY OF SAVAGERY
“There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he less savage than the other savages.” – Mark
Twain, Following the Equator
When my wife Mecca and I traveled to the city of Prague in the Czech Republic,
we wandered around as if we were on a foreign planet. No one spoke English,
and we didn’t speak their language or anything close to it. They clearly hadn’t
seen too many couples like us either. Perhaps that’s why Kanye West had such a
hard time casting Black children for his “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” video,
which was shot there before we made our trip. We documented some of our
experiences there in a video found on my YouTube channel.
One of the highlights of this video is our trip to Prague’s Torture Museum. Yes,
it’s a museum dedicated entirely to torture devices and the history of their use.
They had giant metal spikes that women were forced to sit on, and caskets filled
with barbed points that were closed on living people. These devices were used
throughout European history, but we recognized a few of them from the history
of American slavery as well. It was disturbing to say the least.
As it turns out, there are torture museums throughout the Western world, most
of them just like the one in Prague. Guess why? Because torture is one of the
few things that Europeans gave to the world. There is not a single spoken
language, written script, form of government, economic system, industry or
technology, branch of science, artistic technique, musical genre, sport, or
agricultural product that Europeans gave to the rest of the world. As we’ll
explore in a separate book, titled Black People Invented Everything, all of these
things came from Original People.
But when it comes to torture, genocide, child molestation, bestiality, and all
sorts of human degradation, we know that those things weren’t a part of ANY
indigenous culture. As the scholars profiled in Tariq Nasheed’s Hidden Colors 2
documentary explain, there are no known instances of African cannibalism. Yet
there are dozens of well-documented cases of European cannibalism throughout
the ages. And just how “civilized” are a people who go around enslaving and
raping everyone they meet? What makes a people civilized?
SO WHO WERE THE REAL SAVAGES?
As we explained in The Hood Health Handbook, Volume One:
Historically, Original People have always been very big on being clean. We were the ones who
invented soap, bath houses, and even shampoo – all before anyone ever thought to say
12
“cleanliness is next to godliness.” We’ve included hygiene in all of our religious and cultural
 traditions. Meanwhile, Europeans were historically pretty gross.
From living in caves sealed with feces to bathing only once or twice a year (yes, a year!), when we
came to Europe as the Moors, we had to teach them how to bathe! If you saw Robin Hood when
it first came out, you’ll notice that the Moorish brother is the one who has to teach Robin Hood
and them to wash up.
We also had to teach them about sanitation. We came from civilizations that had sewers and
flushing toilets as early as 3500 BC. But as late as the 1800s, Europeans used “chamber pots,”
which they poured out the window when they were done! Now imagine what’s in the streets! But
a lot of that was cleaned up by the huge rats and pigs they had running through the streets of
Europe at the time. You can imagine the health complications.
When Europeans came to North America, they brought a gang of diseases (most of which came
from animals), as well as their standards of hygiene. Feenie Ziner, who wrote a biography of
Tisquantum (better known as Squanto), recorded that Squanto, “…tried without success to teach
them [the Pilgrims] to bathe.” The Native people of Mexico would hold flowers to their noses
when talking with the Spanish Conquistadors in an attempt to mask the odor they could smell
through the ARMOR of the Spanish.
DID YOU KNOW? In fact, Queen Isabella of Spain – who once
The most popular examples of “flushing toilets” in the boasted that she had bathed only twice in her
ancient world are those built by the Black people of life, the first time when she was born and the
ancient India, but there’s also plenty of evidence from second time the day of her marriage – upon
13 14 hearing Columbus’ reports on the frequency of
ancient Africa as well as the Mayans and other bathing among the Native People issued an
Original People, including the ancient Egyptians and edict that stated in part, “They are not to bathe
Minoans. as frequently as hitherto.”
Everywhere you look among people of color, we have washed regularly, put “fruits and berries”
in our hair and skin (remember “Coming to America”?), and kept up the highest standards of
hygiene. And even when our homes were built from clay and straw, they were impeccably clean.
Don’t let those ancient ruins fool you. You gotta see a mock-up of how they looked BEFORE
they became ruins. Or visit a tribal village today. Those little huts get SWEPT daily. In fact, we
invented the broom too!
So what happened to us? We continue:
What happened to us? Simple. We fell victim. Poverty and oppression changed our cultures
drastically. Many of us are in plain survival mode, while others are just not tryin because we’ve
lowered our standards for ourselves and each other.
We can actually compare photos and sketches of indigenous cultures from the
1800s and 1900s, illustrating the gradual change that occurred among people like
the Fuegians of South America. The oldest accounts of the Fuegians describe
them as a respectable people who often intimidated Europeans with their
strength, endurance, commitment to the protection of their women, and their
high moral standards. Some of these people were so revered they became the
subject of myth and mystery.
Yet, less than a 100 years later, photos reveal the Fuegians in a state of morbid
disrepair. Their hair is unkempt, their faces dirty. They look broken. Who broke
them? They’d been living in this area for thousands of years! And they were just
fine until…Well, you know.
So when we look at so-called “primitive” people throughout the world, keep in
mind that these people are often the direct descendants of the Original People
who actually built that country’s first civilizations. These “lawless” people were
once that society’s lawgivers. They’ve been marginalized, vilified, and forced to
live on the fringes, surviving in the forests and mountains of the lands where
they once built thriving ancient civilizations.
This is just ONE of the many reasons why we may have the wrong idea about
who is savage and who is civilized. Another issue is our lack of consensus on
what “civilization” means to begin with.
 WHAT IS CIVILIZATION, ANYWAY?
THE BACKWARDS MODEL
In school, you may have been taught that the developments we associate with
“modern” civilization were improvements over the older models of human
society. That is, we “got better” or became “more advanced” over time. We’re
taught that crude, primitive society evolved into “modern society,” which really
just means “Western society.”
The point of this curriculum was to ingrain in your mind that the apex, or
height, of all civilization was modern Europe and, by extension, America.
Basically, the ultimate goal of all historical development was to produce
“sophisticated Western culture.” Which is interesting, because how could
“Western” civilization describe such distant places as Britain, America, and
Australia? Easy! It’s because “Western” means white, and “primitive” means
everyone else!
“Unless one chooses to live in a state of unconsciousness and alienation, one cannot live without memory, or with a memory that belongs to
someone else. And history is the memory of nations. And thus we come to the formidable question of methodology.” – African historian
15
Joseph Ki-Zerbo
So this way of teaching history is really a platform for advancing the standards
of Western civilization over the modes of living that have worked everywhere
else in the world for hundreds of thousands of years. And the implication is that
the indigenous cultures that came before the Western world’s rise to dominance,
and “failed” to receive the bounties of Western influence, are primitive and
“backwater.” So, in a nutshell, history class taught you that you are the
descendants of savages, and white people were the teachers of all humanity.
But if we critically reexamine the historical record, we know this timeline is
more backwards than the movie Memento. I call it the “Backwards Model” of
history because it starts with whatever white people are doing now, and takes for
granted that those are “best practices.” Then it works backwards to show how
those things came to be.
THE ORIGINAL MODEL
Modern Western civilization is praised for its systems of economics, trade,
industry, agriculture, literature, scientific knowledge, government, and social
organization. While all of these things were drawn from Original People at
various points in history (which we’ll document throughout this book), none of
these things characterized the “high points” of Original People’s civilizations.
In fact, it is only in the most recent epoch of our immensely long history that we
developed the practices Europeans would later usurp, adapt, and then use
against us. The true high points of our civilization have been when:
the majority, if not all, of the people enjoyed shared access to common resources
decisions affecting the community were made collectively and not by a powerful in-group
knowledge was not purposely kept from commoners by the elite but was shared freely
Put simply, we’ve been at our best when we shared a socialist equality that is
increasingly rare in a modern world that promotes individual benefit over
collective prosperity. This book will document some of the periods in our
history when this has occurred, the reasons behind the points when it did not
occur, and how even the most “primitive” social groups (or “tribes”) were more
advanced in their scientific knowledge and mastery of the environment than the
great civilizations Western historians celebrate today.
WAS ANCIENT EGYPT THE APEX OF OUR
HISTORY?
We may upset some people with this point, but one of the most celebrated of
Black civilizations, ancient Egypt, is also one of the most celebrated in Western
history precisely because of this dynamic. That is, while early Egypt was both
advanced and prosperous, it was no “better” in terms of the prosperity of its
common people than any of a hundred other ancient civilizations in Africa
(most of which you’ve never heard about…until this book).
Part of the reason Egypt seems so great is because we know so much about it.
This is mostly because white people were so fascinated with it. After all, ancient
Egypt provided much of the artistic, religious, cultural, and scientific
foundations of early Western civilization. As a result, ancient Egypt most
resembles (even to us) the most celebrated aspects of Western civilization,
including a capitalist economy, an elite government separated sharply from the
common people, social stratification (meaning there were different classes with
different levels of social standing and economic means), a strong standing
military, and organized religion.
Although not even the worst of these elements were half as bad as they would
16
later become when they emerged in Western civilization, they still provide us a
focal point that “looks familiar,” whereas the “primitive” societies of Central or
Southern Africa, for example, do not…Even though the people of Central
Africa were producing advanced mathematical artifacts over 100,000 years
before the Greeks took the Pythagorean Theorem from Egypt.
WHAT MUST WE DO TO CORRECT THIS?
All of the above tell us one thing: We have to shift our paradigm. We can’t
define civilization and success by Western standards. If we do so, we were only
“civilized” and successful within the past 10,000 years, and only in specific
places throughout the world. This means that – everywhere else, and for the
majority of our history – we were actually “uncivilized” and savage, just like
Europeans said we were.
We can’t work with that model. We have to keep in mind that, when the
Egyptians erected the great pyramids 5,000 years ago, they said they were at the
decline of their civilization. Does this mean there were bigger and better pyramids
before then? No! This means that their model of civilization was once better
than what it became in the era of urbanization and monument building!
 THE MEANING OF CIVILIZATION
Elijah Muhammad defined civilization as “One having knowledge, wisdom,
understanding, culture, refinement, and is not a savage in the pursuit of
happiness.” While some may not immediately see how this relates to the
emergence of historical civilizations, I find this definition especially illuminating.
After years of research, I’ve arrived at a similar definition. “Civilization” is
found whenever the people are one, meaning a collective that enjoys
shared access to knowledge and information, shared decision-making,
and shared resources, within a culture that allows for all to participate
equally, with mores and values that discourage destructive tendencies,
particularly those practices that exploit others in the pursuit of individual
benefit.
With this definition, it brings a number of so-called “advances” under new
scrutiny. Was urbanization a “step up” from the previous way of life? Was
agriculture an improvement? Was the invention of writing an advantage we
previously lacked? Did we benefit from the new models of social organization
that came about when we urbanized? A new approach to history – one that no
longer celebrates the Western model over the Original model – suggests
otherwise.
The past 200,000-plus years of human history present us with evidence of brain
surgery, astronomy, earth-shaping, long-range seafaring and trade, mining, and
feats of engineering that modern man struggles to reproduce today – all before
4,000 BC. Yet in this same prehistoric epoch, we rarely find instances of murder,
poverty, famine, torture, genocide, or the many other “advances” we find in
modern civilization, particularly in the past 6,000 years (which is when we tend
to say “civilization” started). This long historical record among Original People
– which few historians have attempted to explore – suggests we only developed
certain practices to compensate for failures in other areas.
For example, the invention of agriculture only came when human populations
had failed to adequately replace the natural food supplies they’d thrived on.
We’d always known how to selectively breed plants and animals (the
foundations of agriculture), but only NEEDED to do so when we’d screwed up
our symbiotic relationship with nature.
Similarly, the invention of writing may appear quite incredible to us today,
especially since it’s one of the primary ways we’ve learned about what really
happened in the ancient world after 4,000 BC (and why we know so little about
what happened before then). But we’d always known how to write and mark
things systematically. There are cave paintings over 40,000 years old that
demonstrate artistic abilities that rival those found on any Egyptian tomb. There
are markings on carved bones and rock surfaces over 40,000 years old indicating
the use of a communication system.
But the development of true “writing” began about 4,000 BC with pictographic
images – particularly name-seals and other markers of ownership – because, by
that time, we had eroded our egalitarian systems of collective ownership to the
point where we needed to mark what belonged to whom.
Over time, other issues arose, creating a demand for more systematic methods
of writing and record-keeping. Before that, we’d been able to pass on elaborate
messages using a stick carved with a series of 5 dots and 6 lines (a practice still
found among some African groups and aborigines in Australia, in a “mail
17
service” that often spanned hundreds of miles on foot).
DID YOU KNOW? Yet the “ancient civilizations” most of
In The Science of Self, Volume One, we discuss how us celebrate today depended on writing
the origins of agriculture are not isolated in time and
space among any specific human society, but that
to communicate things we’d previously
agriculture is a response to one’s circumstances. For communicated much more effectively
this reason, we can even find farming among other without ever needing a stick, stone, or
organisms. Species include fungus-growing ants, ink. These changes weren’t inherently
slime mold, and ambrosia beetles that have
developed quite sophisticated cultivation and “bad” (though they were used against
18
harvesting routines. us quite effectively throughout the
Western onslaught), because all change
happens for a reason. In many ways, all that happened was meant to be. Yet it’s
important to know these new developments weren’t inherently “better” than
their predecessors either.
Wearing a toupee to cover a balding head isn’t better than having a full head of
natural hair, even if someone thinks your toupee looks better than your original
hair (which they never saw). Similarly, settling down and growing crops (which
eventually led to the development of class stratification) isn’t better than living
off the land, even if your high school World History textbook told you so.
Fortunately, that textbook is old news in more ways than one…because now
you have this book.
 THE AGES OF HISTORY
THE NEOLITHIC AND PALEOLITHIC AGES
Historians love naming things, so they came up with something called the
Neolithic, which helps them pin down the traditional origins of urban
civilization throughout most of the world. The Neolithic is a historical period,
literally translating to “New Stone Age.” It followed the Paleolithic (“Old Stone
Age”) period and began with the rise of farming and other social changes.
But the Neolithic isn’t really a specific time period as much as it is a set of
characteristics that a society can develop. Typically, the main features
responsible for the “Neolithic Revolution” were the systemic use of agriculture
and animal domestication. For some time, the scientific community said this
happened no sooner than 4,000 BC anywhere in the world, and much later
throughout Africa and the Americas.
But they were wrong. Researchers later found Neolithic cultures appearing in
the Near East region known as the Fertile Crescent by 10,000 BC, and from
there spreading eastwards and westwards. By 8000 BC, there were early
Neolithic cultures in Anatolia, Syria and Iraq, followed by southeast Europe by
7000 BC, South Asia by 7000 BC, China by 6500 BC, the Americas by 5800 BC,
and the Philippines by 5000 BC. And so it appears that all of the “scientific and
cultural advances” of the Neolithic period were introduced for the first time no
more than 12,000 years ago. This is the story we’ll explore in Part Two.
NEOLITHIC IDEAS BEFORE THE
NEOLITHIC AGE?
But guess what? All of these innovations can be found – in a somewhat more
“organic” form – looooong before 12,000 years ago. I’m talking about 100,000
years ago. Dozens of locations throughout the world present evidence of
agriculture, animal domestication, urbanization, and written language, long
before the dates above.
Some Asian sites, for example, show clear signs of agricultural knowledge over
19
20,000 years ago. Others in Africa are even older. This reminds us that we
didn’t suddenly “discover” civilization and “become” civilized. We must have
had this knowledge for a long time, and began using it to the point where it
became “institutionalized” much later in our history, when circumstances
demanded it.
So the developments of the Neolithic Age don’t constitute “progress” as much
as historians have led us to think. They told us that human society is “civilized”
once it is urbanized, beginning with the transition from natural subsistence (i.e.,
nomadic groups thriving off of hunter-gathering or foraging cultures) to urban
societies (sedentary lifestyles sustained by plant and animal domestication). That
is, like a Black child diagnosed with ADHD, we aren’t “civilized” until we learn
20
how to sit down (settle) and do our work (agriculture). If anything, the
Neolithic doesn’t represent “the rise of civilization” as much as it does “the rise
of urbanization.” In other words, city life. In future chapters, we’ll explore
whether such changes were “advances” or simply different responses to
changing conditions.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY
BY ROBERT BAILEY
Archaeology is basically the study of the past, based on what we’ve dug up out
of the ground.
Of course, it’s not as simple as finding something in the dirt and making a
claim, because archaeologists have to be able to date it, analyze it, connect it to
other factors, and then explain it, usually in some sort of scientific publication.
Archaeology has given us a lot of insight into the distant past, especially for
the time before written records (which is basically 99.9% of the past).
Archaeology (comes from arkhaios, meaning “ancient” and logia, meaning “the
study of”) is the scientific discipline which studies ancient cultures and
societies primarily by recovering, examining and interpreting remaining
material evidence such as artifacts, tools, graves, pottery and any other
remnants they may find useful. Exploration of past societies and cultures has
always been of great fascination to people and continues to grow in popularity.
The Rosetta stone and Dead Sea scrolls are popular examples of archaeological
discoveries of great significance. Archaeological findings such as these help
us learn more about things like human evolution, cultural history and
technological advancements. It’s more based on interpretation and cross-
comparisons than hypothesis-making and experimentation.
When we look at archaeology at its core, it’s basically digging up the remains
of generations long gone; something that’s been going on for thousands of
years and probably longer. We know the Ancient Egyptians dug into their past,
as evident during New Kingdom Egypt when pharaohs excavated and
reconstructed the Great Sphinx. Another example is the Babylonian Princess
Ennigaldi’s collection of artifacts. Housed in a palace at least 2,500 years old,
21
this collection may have been the world’s oldest museum. When we consider
these examples, the fundamentals of archaeology have been practiced for
awhile before they were accepted and established as a scientific discipline by
Western society – this time for the purpose of studying the Black and brown
civilization builders who came before them.
And in fact, the “exhuming” of ancient history may have been inspired by the
influence of the Moors, as archaeology gradually became a science during the
Age of Enlightenment in Europe. The techniques and methodology of
modern archaeology were primarily established through the work of three
scholars: Heinrich Schliemann, Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, and William Flinders
Petrie.
 THE UNDERGROUND CITY OF ANKHALLA
One of the Earth’s oldest civilizations is now inaccessible to most travelers and
scientists, but it remains preserved under the Earth’s surface. Deep within a
subterranean labyrinth of chambers and tunnels, about 50 miles under the
22
surface of modern Baghdad, there is an ancient city named Ankhalla.
In the 1850s, a team of archaeologists, led by the renowned Dr. Doan Bilivmy,
were excavating a cave system in the Zagros Mountains when they fell into a
hidden passage. What they discovered next was shocking. They tried to make
their way back to the surface, but ended up traveling through miles of
underground tunnels. After days of walking, they found themselves in what they
described as a “crystal city.” There were massive buildings and temples made
from pure quartz. Some artifacts appeared to have been made from solid
diamond. There were channels of water fed by thermal springs and what looked
23
like manmade waterfalls and fountains that were still in operation.
When the team looked at artifacts scattered around the city, they found
inscriptions that looked just like the scripts of ancient Egypt, Easter Island, and
the Mayan civilization. They also saw engraved images of carnosaurus and
24
noncincadon, which hadn’t walked the early in over 9 million years! Who were
these people? Had they been around this long, or were these creatures still living
underground?
The team reported feeling a strange, warm sensation as they walked closer to the
city’s central structure, which they described as a “massive black pyramid that
looks to be made of obsidian, with a blinding beam of light shining from its
pinnacle.” This black pyramid, said to be over 700 feet tall, provided light for
25
the entire underground city.
One of the team members, Dr. Madis Tufup, saw small beings walking around
the pyramid as they approached. They appeared to be dark silhouettes with an
iridescent glow. These “etheric beings” spotted the team and began approaching
them. Bilivmy later reported:
The next thing we knew, we found ourselves back above ground, as if we had never missed a
moment of time. We did not feel exhausted but were rejuvenated and felt years younger. I could
not believe it. When the doctors at Lord’s Faith Hospital attempted to track the growth of the
tumor on my lung, the CAT scan revealed that the cancer had disappeared from my body. I
26
believe it was these dark shining angels who cured me of my disease.
What happened to the city and its inhabitants? No one knows. After this
incident, no one has been able to find the cave that led Bilivmy’s team into the
city of Ankhalla. Many have claims that Ankhalla is merely a myth. But in 2006,
geologists in Baghdad reported that something massive was under the surface of
27
the Zargos Mountains. It is very likely that they were picking up signals from
28
Ankhalla’s black pyramid. In our upcoming book, Ankhalla Revealed – available
soon for $29.95 – we’ll dig up some more of the story that nearly all history
29
books have ignored.
REVIEW
Actually, we won’t. This story is totally made up. I really just typed it off the top
of my head. Along the way, I left about a dozen clues that this “history” was
bogus. You might have caught a few, but kept reading. Or you might have just
stopped and skipped to this part to see if you bought the wrong book. If you
found this story exciting and believable, don’t feel too bad. This represents the
other end of the spectrum when we talk about bad history, and we want to have
an honest discussion about it.
On one end, there’s the “conservative history” that denies everything Black or
contrary to the mainstream Western view, often twisting logic and the facts to
do so. On the other end, there’s the “alternative history” that flies in the face of
the mainstream, but often ignores the criteria of sound research methodology.
This is an example of the kind of “history” some of us are used to reading (or
watching via YouTube). Problem is, how do you know if it’s real?
The story you just read is literally 0% factual. I mean, the Zagros Mountains are
real, but they aren’t in Baghdad. There’s no Dr. Doan Bilivmy (“don’t believe
be”) or Madis Tufup (“made this stuff up”). And how likely is a city fifty MILES
under the earth’s surface? How did the scientists walk for days in dark tunnels?
Where did the light come from? How did they know how tall it was? How on
earth could the people have lived alongside dinosaurs? Especially when neither
of those creatures is a real dinosaur? And did you check the references? If not,
do it now.
What’s the point of all this? To remind you that all information is not good
information. Some of the stuff you’re reading might be just as bad as the
Eurocentric crap. In this book, we’ve worked hard to use a sound methodology
and reliable evidence to make our claims. After you’ve read this book, our hope
is that you’ll be better prepared to read other books like this, many of which will
be more technical. And we also hope that you’ll be able to tell when you
encounter bogus claims that don’t deserve your attention.
 “REALLY OLD STUFF”
OR, WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE?
So here we are, telling you that we’ve been building complex societies 400,000
years ago. You’re right to wonder, “Where’s your evidence?” There IS evidence,
but it might not be what you’d expect to see. Until about 12,000 years ago,
human societies throughout the world haven’t left considerable traces of their
existence. This doesn’t mean that organized cities and societies didn’t exist
before this time. They’re just not as strong in the archaeological record.
This is primarily because most of the earliest human societies, no matter how
organized or intellectually advanced, lived in greater harmony with their natural
environment than later populations, and these groups therefore found it
unnecessary to create the types of artifacts that would typify later periods. As J.
Douglas Kenyon says in the introduction to Forbidden History:
After all, it is argued, if there had been an earlier, advanced civilization we would have discovered
unmistakable evidence of its existence. Presumably, we would have seen the remains of its
highways, and bridges, and electrical wiring. We would have found its plastic bottles, its city
dumps, and its CD-ROMS. Those are, after all, the things we will leave behind for future
archaeologists to puzzle over.
But could an ancient civilization have risen to heights similar to our own, yet have traveled a
different road? What would we understand of a world that might have employed fundamentally
different – though no less effective – techniques to harness the forces of nature? Would we, or
could we, comprehend a world capable of, for example, creating and transmitting energy by
means other than a power grid, traveling great distances without internal combustion engines, or
making highly complex calculations involving earth science and astronomy without electronic
30
computers?
And this is exactly what you’ll find throughout this book. Yet, of the prehistoric
people that evidently did produce such innovations long “before their time,”
many have been ignored or hidden by the scientific community that considers
these “out of place artifacts” a challenge to the conventional timeline of human
history.
That is, if the scientific community is saying that humans only became
“intelligent enough” to appreciate art about 30,000 years ago, yet someone
discovers an artistic sculpture 300,000 years old, then that sculpture may be
ignored, dismissed, or hidden away altogether!
DID YOU KNOW? Michael Cremo and Richard
As ice patches melt around the world, archaeologists Thompson have documented countless
are finding remarkably preserved artifacts emerging
from millennia of deep freeze. Sometimes, these are
examples of this in their massive work
artifacts made of organic materials, like wood or Forbidden Archaeology. William F. Corliss
 bone, which wouldn’t otherwise survive. Recently,
has also collected several volumes of
Craig Lee of the University of Colorado announced
“out of place artifacts” in his Science
the oldest discovery yet: the foreshaft of a 10,400-
Frontiers series of books. The reason
year-old wooden dart, recovered from melting ice
these two sources are important is
near Yellowstone National Park. As Lee notes,
artifacts made of organic materials like wood give us
because – unlike less reputable writers
“another window to the past.” But such artifacts are
who “make stuff up” to make their
hard to find and begin to decay the moment the ice
melts back.
31
points – these individuals only
compiled their information from
reputable journals known for their academic integrity. Yet these findings were
often ignored or covered up as soon as they were announced, so if it wasn’t for
people like Cremo and Corliss, we wouldn’t even know about some of the most
amazing discoveries of our past.
Yet such discoveries continue to be made. Most recently, the eminent journal
Nature published a paper documenting clear evidence for the use of stone
32
cutting tools 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. The tools themselves
haven’t been found, but the marks they left tell of precise, sharp cuts that are
unlikely to have come from some “monkey-man” banging a rock. Of course,
mainstream scientists have been in protest since.
When you see the stone tools that archaeologists consider man’s earliest
inventions, most have been so weathered over the millennia that they resemble
natural occurrences or “primitive handiwork,” and people are led to believe that
prehistoric man had little ability.
For example, the ancient pyramids of China have eroded, grassed over, and now
resemble hills and earthen mounds. Some were purposely destroyed. Same story
with the structures now known as the “mounds” of North America. But what
did these structures look like before this? If the heavily eroded Sphinx is any
indication, these mounds could have once been monumental works of
engineering.
Another issue is that we’ll never have the FULL record of the past. We’ll only
find bits and pieces, and attempt to put the story together by connecting those
dots. For example, we don’t have fossils for every person who ever lived. We
have less than 0.001%!
And most of these bones and artifacts are only found in places where
archaeologists have selected to dig (often not in predominantly Black areas), and
where the soil and other conditions have preserved them somehow. Don’t even
mention that most of our earliest settlements are either buried deep under
modern cities and farms, or submerged underwater thanks to 50,000 years of
rising sea levels.
We’re basically assembling a puzzle from a few tiny bits and pieces, hoping to
get some idea of what the bigger picture should look like. But it’s not hopeless,
nor is it guesswork. In fact, we’ll show you some of how it’s done.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY
ROBERT BAILEY
Anthropology is the scientific study of human biology, evolution, culture, and
behavior all over the globe, from our earliest beginning to modern times. Since
the field is so large, it is traditionally divided into four branches: biological or
physical anthropology, archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology and linguistic
anthropology. Biological anthropology strives to understand the human being
as a living organism, human evolution and how different races came to be.
Socio-cultural anthropology seeks to understand the different aspects of
cultures, as well as what culture is. Linguistic anthropology is the study of the
languages of mankind and how they’re different from other animal
communication. Archaeology, as you’ll learn, is the study of ancient cultures.
Anthropology as a whole seeks to define what sets human beings apart from
other organisms and answers questions like: “who are our ancestors? Why are
there variations among different groups of people? How did these variations
come into existence? How are social relations among humans organized?”
Anthropologists work in many ways. They may do everything from research to
studying DNA in a lab to taking notes while making observations in the field.
There is another field of anthropology which focuses primarily on the many
uses of anthropological knowledge called applied anthropology. There are
many benefits that come with the study of anthropology, such as a better
understanding of you, others and our collective history.
Modern anthropology is a product of the late 19th century, but we know that
the study of humans didn’t start here. In Anthropology: the Human Challenge, the
authors note the distinguishing characteristic of anthropology:
“Many academic disciplines are concerned in one way or another with our
species…but anthropology is distinct because of its focus on the
interconnectedness and interdependence of all aspects of human experience in
all places and times-both biological and cultural, past and present.”
We know that the “focus on the interconnectedness and interdependence of
all aspects of human experience” is found in many indigenous cultures around
the world. But when did anthropology start? Some sources say early
anthropology is rooted in the efforts of Western civilization to better
33
understand the lands it was colonizing.
Another way of looking at the question of origins is to examine early Egyptian
and Mayan accounts of the “different types” of people they encountered.
Their records suggest that we also studied the diversity of our neighboring
people, probably long before we kept such written records, but not with the
intent of using this information to subjugate them, as with what happened
with later European anthropology. A related field, anthropometry (the
scientific study of variation in the size and shape of the human body) can be
34
traced back to about 3500 BC in Sumer.
 7 WAYS TO CONNECT PREHISTORIC DOTS
As we noted in the Introduction, this book employs a multidisciplinary
approach. I’ll walk you through a few of the methods used to make sense out of
the distant past.
7. Anthropological Evidence
Pros: Anthropologists describe how societies of people look, live, and think.
Cultures that have very similar traditions might be related.
Cons: Anthropologists can influence the people they’re studying and may not
report the true traditions of those people. Also, even indigenous cultures
change, so a people described 100 years ago may be quite different from how
they were 1,000 years ago.
6. Mythology/Cultural Narratives
Pros: These are the historical records of most of the world’s people, and often
record real events in language that must be deciphered.
Cons: It can be hard to separate the symbols from the substance. Also,
missionaries heavily influenced many indigenous origin myths.
5. Archaeological Evidence
Pros: The things we find in the dirt are solid evidence. There are accurate ways
to date and place what ancient cultures left behind.
Cons: Archaeological remains can be interpreted in many different ways. Many
remains, especially artistic representations of Black people, have been destroyed
or hidden from the public.
4. Ecological Evidence
Pros: Looking at other forms of evidence (like climate, plant and animal
remains, and geological evidence) can give us clues as to what may have
happened, and why things happened the way they did.
Cons: Some scientists ignore social factors (which may be unknown) to focus
on environmental factors, which can give us the wrong idea. For example, Black
people in America didn’t move to the North after slavery because the climate
was better there.
3. Linguistic Evidence
Pros: Cultures that share words and languages might be related.
Cons: Languages mutate very quickly. Also, loanwords or entire languages can
be adopted by unrelated people because of conquest (i.e. Mayans speaking
Spanish). And similar-sounding words in distant cultures don’t mean there’s a
connection.
2. Skeletal Remains
Pros: Even when we don’t know a people’s complexion or culture, we can tell a
lot about them by looking at their bone structure. This can reveal, for example,
how the first Native Americans looked like Australian aborigines.
Cons: Like other archaeological remains, controversial skeletons can be hidden
or destroyed. Scientists can also ignore one index (like an arm length that is
clearly African) to focus on another (like nose width, which can vary even
among Africans).
1. Genetic Evidence
Pros: Genes are the holy grail of a people’s history. They can tell us who was
with who, who went where, and when they went there.
Cons: We’ve crossed paths (and genes) so many times over the past 100,000
years that genetic evidence can tell you different things, depending on what
you’re looking for. Different types of DNA can point in different directions,
based on what happened with the men versus the women. Also, Europeans
have “contributed” (ahem) to the DNA of literally billions of Original People,
further clouding the picture.
So there you have it – seven different ways to connect prehistoric dots. We’ll be
using all of these methods to establish the claims we make in this book,
including others you’ll learn about later. You, too, can begin studying this data
on your own.
How do you find this information? Simple. You read and ask questions. You
look at our sources, and the sources of other books you consult. You follow up
and dig deeper. You investigate possible connections, and look for contradictory
evidence to make sure you’re not headed down the wrong track. And you don’t
just believe the first thing you read or hear, especially if it’s not substantiated
somehow. Notice that “intuition” and “faith” aren’t on the list. Nobody just
35
“knows in their heart” what their ancestors did on May 18th, 1678. It takes
research to find those answers.
WHO IS THE ORIGINAL MAN?
THE FIRST HUMANS
“The black man is the first and the last, maker and owner of
the universe. From him came all brown, yellow, red and white
people…The time has arrived when it must be told the world
over. There are millions who do not know who is the original
man.” – Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman
Black people are the original authors of all human history. Sounds like a bold
claim, something that people often say, but can never fully substantiate. It’s the
type of statement that falls in league with “Black people are the mothers and
fathers of all civilization” and “All the gods of the world’s religions were
originally Black.” These are some bold claims, often made by excited lip
professors and arrogant rhetoric-ologists, but they’re far from untrue.
And these claims can be substantiated. The purpose of this book is to not only
document the evidence behind claims like these, but to tell the story of how all
this came to be. In this chapter, we’ll explore the history of the first humans,
Black men and women who possessed within themselves the genetic potential to
produce all of the world’s populations, as well as the cultural foundations for all
the world’s civilizations.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
How the first humans were Black people living in the part of the world now known as
Africa.
How these Original People came to be.
Why white scholars attempted to argue against these facts.
Where the concept of “race” comes from, and how it was used against Black people.
How Black scholars began using racial data to prove that Black history was world history.
How this led to a new “raceless” (or “colorblind”) school of history and anthropology.
Why race still matters today.
How all Original People are different, yet still related and very similar.
Who is Black…and who is not…and who cares.
 THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST?
“The Black people – the Original People – we go to school to learn about American history and…we don’t have knowledge of ourselves.
We need to find out who we are instead of learning about someone else.”
– rapper Grand Puba, Spin Magazine, 1991
Without doubt, the first man was a Black man. There’s absolutely no reason to
36
think otherwise. Whether you’re using Gloger’s Rule, genetic markers, or the
features of the oldest skeletal remains ever found, you can’t possibly come to
any other conclusion. Hell, simple common sense will tell you that if it all
happened in Africa, they must have been Black.
Yet, scientists once did everything they could to fight this “idea” from becoming
“fact.” Within the past two centuries, scholars of considerable authority were
writing “history” books that relied upon the authority of the Bible to “prove”
that the first man was white, that Blacks were the cursed descendants of whites,
37
and that all of human history occurred within the past 6,000 years.
You might want to believe that things have changed. Or you may know they
haven’t. If the recent attempts to write Black and brown people out of school
history curriculum (e.g. in Arizona and Texas) are any indication, you know that
the “mainstream” version of history can be seriously flawed. You might have
realized that we “learn” a history of lies, as I did, when you first heard about
Christopher Columbus “discovering” America (even though the Indians were
already here), or how those Indians were “warlike savages” (even though they
taught the Pilgrims how to farm, catch fish, and survive the winter). It’s safe to
say that some aspects of the standard telling of history are flawed, biased,
missing, distorted, or just plain wrong.
So it should be no surprise that, even in 2012, there are scientists still attempting
to validate a “multi-regional” hypothesis for the origin of man. In other words,
they want to prove that different races evolved in separate places, and all of
them do not descend from human ancestors in Africa. You’ll find similar
attempts to scientifically distance “origins” from “Black” throughout this book.
We can, however, safely say that all humans on the planet today are descended
from a single ancestral population that can be traced back to East Africa about
200,000 years ago.
THE EVOLUTION OF ORIGINAL PEOPLE
“Original” means we were here in the first place. To understand exactly how
and why we are the “Original People,” you have to understand a very
misunderstood concept called “evolution.”
If you’ve read The Science of Self, Volume One, you already know that:
Evolution is a scientific theory that teaches that living things change over generations
Evolution doesn’t actually teach that man comes from monkeys
Our ancestors can be traced back all the way to the origin of life itself
Every phase of our ancestors, from single-celled organisms up to modern man, has had
melanin as an “organizing chemical” and increasing levels of consciousness providing
the blueprint for future growth, order, and direction
Before modern humans, we had many hominid ancestors (who were also Black and born
in Africa), who were variations of the prototype that eventually gave way to us
There are literally millions of years of human history that come before the first “modern”
humans emerge from the mix around 200,000 years ago
The Science of Self, Volume One explains – in considerable depth and detail – where
the Original man comes from, how he came about, and how far back his
“origins” really go. In this book, we’ll tell his story, at the same level of depth
and detail. We’ll learn about the Black people who founded all of the world’s
first cultures and civilizations, looking into their lifestyles, their
accomplishments, and their diversity. This is a story covering over 200,000
years.
 THEY SAID THEY WERE WHITE
Since the 1700s, so long as any group of people – anywhere in the world –
seemed worthy of praise, they have been described by historians as white.
Doesn’t matter where they found the civilization. They just called them
Caucasian. If all the artwork shows brown-skinned people, they called them
“brown Caucasians.” If the artwork shows them with thick lips and curly hair,
they say those people were the slaves, and the white people didn’t want to be in
the picture. In more recent years, scientists have stopped discussing what
ancient people looked like. Now they use genetics and linguistics to suggest that
white folks were the ones responsible.
DON’T LET EM TELL YOU THEY DON’T
SEE RACE
Despite anything they say to the contrary, white people have always “seen race”
– how could they not? In a Black and brown world, you’ve GOTTA notice that
you’re the odd one out. And as soon as they realized how to dominate the
world, race became their rallying point. Spreading “civilization” was just another
way of referring to the spread of white global domination.
And so they taught that civilization was the dominion of white people. If anyone else on
Earth had it, they must have learned it from white people. Fortunately, they said, very few
non-white people actually had it!
As Charles Seignobos said in his 1907 History of Ancient Civilization:
Almost all civilized peoples belong to the white race. The peoples of the other races have
38
remained savage or barbarian, like the men of prehistoric times.
Yet Seignobos immediately follows this statement with the following:
It is within the limits of Asia and Africa that the first civilized peoples had their development –
the Egyptians in the Nile valley, the Chaldeans in the plain of the Euphrates. They were peoples
of sedentary and peaceful pursuits. Their skin was dark, the hair short and thick, the lips
strong. Nobody knows their origin with exactness and scholars are not agreed on the name to
39
give them (some terming them Cushites, others Hamites).
It’s patently absurd. He’s saying, only white people are civilized, even though the people
who invented civilization are Black-skinned, woolly-haired, and big-lipped. We don’t know
what kind of people they were. But we’re sure they weren’t Black.
And this is how ridiculous some of their claims sounded, even then. Black
historians of the time were constantly incensed by these preposterous claims.
Yet they felt no shame in asserting that the Mayans, Egyptians, Ethiopians,
Indians, Chinese, and Japanese were originally white. In fact, historians once
taught that not only was Europe the cradle of modern civilization, it was the
birthplace of humanity itself. In other words, Africa gave the world nothing.
And Black people were simply the bastard offspring of the glorious white race.
Fortunately, we now know that the entire human race started with Black people.
The only question is, then what happened?
 THE SCIENCE OF RACE
WHERE DO THE DIFFERENT RACES
COME FROM?
I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Well if everyone came from Black people, where
did all the different races come from?” We can consult with pioneering Black
historian John G. Jackson for some insight into this matter. In his 1939 classic,
Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization, he wrote:
Most history texts, especially the ones on ancient history, start off by telling us that there are
either three, four or five races of man, but that of those races only one has been responsible for
civilization, culture, progress and all other good things. The one race is of course the white race,
and particularly that branch of said race known as the Nordic or Aryan. The reason for this is
obvious; the writers of these textbooks are as a rule Nordics, or so consider themselves.
However, prejudice alone will not account for this sort of thing. There is a confusion among
historians and anthropologists concerning the proper classification of races, and this confusion is
40
used by biased writers to bolster up their preconceptions.
In other words, white writers use the general public’s misunderstandings of race
to help support their bias in favor of white people. Whites are portrayed as the
authors of all that is good, while everything else is murky and unclear. Jackson
continues:
It is therefore necessary that we discuss the subject of race classification in a rational manner
before proceeding further.
The early scientific classifications of the varieties of the human species were geographical in
nature. The celebrated naturalist, Linneaus (1708-1778), for instance, listed four races, according
to continent, namely: (1) European (white), (2) African (black), (3) Asiatic (yellow), and (4)
American (red). Blumenback, in 1775, added a fifth type, the Oceanic or brown race. This
classification is still used in some grammar school geographies, where the races of man are
tabulated as: Ethiopian (black), Caucasian (white), American (red), Mongolian (yellow) and
Malayan (brown).
During the year 1800, the French naturalist, Cuvier, announced the hypothesis that all ethnic
types were traceable to Ham, Chem and Japhet, the three sons of Noah. After that date, race
classification developed into an amazing contest; a struggle which still rages. By 1873, Haeckel
had found no less than twelve distinct races of mankind; and to show the indefatigable nature of
his researches, he annexed twenty-two more races a few years later, bringing the grand total of
human types up to thirty-four…Where one anthropologist finds three racial types, another can
spot thirty-three without the least difficulty.
In other words, racial categories are determined by whoever is defining them.
Yet, consistently, no matter how mixed up the black, brown, red, and yellow
masses were at the bottom, it was clear who was on top:
The classifiers of race, however, regardless of how abundantly they disagreed with each other as
to the correct groupings of human types, were of unanimous accord in the belief that the white
 41
peoples of the world were far superior to the darker races.

ARE THERE ONLY TWO RACES?

Jackson continues his critique of this system with a startling quote:
This opinion in still very popular, but modern, science is making it hard for intelligent people to
accept the fallacy. Many years ago the German philosopher, Schopenhauer, remarked that, “there
is no such thing as a white race, much as this is talked of, but every white man is a faded
or bleached one.” Schopenhauer possessed keen and sagacious foresight on this point…
He then cites the classification system of eminent Professor Franz Boas, widely
considered the father of American anthropology, who “divided the whole
human race into only two divisions.” He quotes Professor George A. Dorsey’s
summary of Boas’s two-race system:
Open your atlas to a map of the world. Look at the Indian Ocean: on the west, Africa; on the
north, the three great southern peninsulas of Asia: on the east, a chain of great islands
terminating in Australia. Wherever that Indian Ocean touches land, it finds dark-skinned people
with strongly developed jaws, relatively long arms and kinky or frizzly hair. Call that the Indian
Ocean or Negroid division of the human race.
Now look at the Pacific Ocean: on one side, the two Americas; on the other, Asia.
(Geographically, Europe is a tail to the Asiatic kite.) The aboriginal population of the Americas
and of Asia north of its southern peninsula was a light-skinned people with straight hair, relatively
short arms, and a face without prominent jaws. Call that the Pacific Ocean or Mongoloid
division.
Professors A. L. Kroeber and Fay-Cooper Cole are of the opinion that the peoples of Europe
have (been) bleached out enough to merit classification as a distinct race. This would add a
European or Caucasoid division to the Negroid and Mongoloid races of the classification
proposed by Professor Boas. If we accept this three-fold division of the human species, our
classification ought to read as follows: the races of man are three in number; (1) the Negroid, or
Ethiopian or black race; (2) the Mongoloid, or Mongolian or yellow race; and (3) the Caucasoid
42
or European or white race. This is the very latest scheme of race classification.
Dorsey is saying the only truly distinct “complexes” of physical traits can be split
along “Negroid” and “Mongoloid” lines, but he concedes that modern
Europeans are “bleached out enough to merit classification as a distinct
race.” Thus the only thing distinguishing whites as their own “race” is white
skin.
But what exactly does Mongoloid mean? And where do those traits come from?
In the chapter on China, we’ll get into an in-depth explanation of the origins of
Mongoloid features.
43
What you’ll realize, as you continue reading, is that Negroid and Mongoloid
(and Australoid, who we’ll discuss soon) are merely different faces of the same
Original People. Thus, if there are truly only two races on this planet, there is
only the Original People and those who have been “bleached out” from their
Original self.
 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF RACE
Whatever happened to all the racial classifications discussed by Jackson? Within
the past fifty years, such racial classifications have mostly been abandoned by
44
most anthropologists.
You’ll rarely find “Negroid” or “Mongoloid” or anything similar used to identify
people, especially those who built ancient civilizations. Why? Most modern
anthropologists are now arguing that race is simply a social construct and has no
solid, measurable basis. They’re stripping both the past and the present of its
racial distinctions. In other words, it went from “Race is the only thing that
matters” to “Race doesn’t matter” to “What race?”
This is largely due to the work of anthropologist Franz Boas. Yes, the same
Boas we mentioned earlier! As we’ll soon see, this “colorblind” view of culture
and history are not at all what Boas wanted, and in fact, these ideas were
promoted to detract from the race-based historical claims of the Black
Consciousness Movement that Boas contributed to!
THE ORIGINS OF “THERE’S NO SUCH
THING AS RACE”
German-American anthropologist Franz Boas has been called “the Father of
Modern Anthropology.” He earned his doctorate in physics, and did post-
doctoral work in geography, but applied the scientific methods he learned in
those fields to the study of human cultures and societies. Until then,
anthropology was all about formulating grand theories from the anecdotal
accounts of biased Europeans writers – some of whom had not even visited the
people they sought to describe.
Faced with the ridiculous levels of bias and hostility against nonwhite people in
his day’s anthropological community, Boas worked tirelessly to correct
misconceptions about African inferiority. He refuted the claim that European
and Asian civilizations were more advanced than African societies, pointing out
that, against the total history of humankind, the past two thousand years was a
brief span. He reminded his colleagues that African history spanned millions of
years and countless critical technological advances.
Boas credited ancient Africans with the origins of iron smelting, grain
cultivation, and animal domestication, saying Blacks pioneered these important
practices long before they spread to Asia and Europe. He highlighted the
cultural eminence of traditional African societies, and attacked arguments
promoting the inferiority of the Negro race, reminding the world that Africans
were brought to the Americas through force and relegated to the lowest status
possible. When Boas spoke to Black audiences, he called for them to not only
resume their ancient greatness, but to exceed those achievements. In an address
to the Black student body of Atlanta University, he said:
If, therefore, it is claimed that your race is doomed to economic inferiority, you may confidently
look to the home of your ancestors and say that you have set out to recover for the colored
people the strength that was their own before they set foot on the shores of this continent. You
may say that you go to work with bright hopes, and that you will not be discouraged by the
slowness of your progress; for you have to recover not only what has been lost in transplanting
the Negro race from its native soil to this continent, but you must reach higher levels than your
45
ancestors ever had attained.
Boas suggested that white prejudice might be “intractable” (it could not be
reformed), but he also considered it the honest scientist’s responsibility to argue
against myths of racial purity and inferiority, and to use the evidence of this
research to fight racism.
BUT THEY GOT IT ALL WRONG!
Yet Boas fathered a school of American anthropology that ended up doing the
opposite. In the 60s and 70s, Boas’ students would repudiate the concept of race
altogether, either trivializing its significance, or making it seem as if there was no
such thing as race. Effectively, by the mid-70s, the idea of “race” was considered
passé in academic circles, especially when looking at the same ancient history
Boas had once cited to celebrate the Black race.
How did this happen? Were Boas’ students truly clueless as to what he hoped to
accomplish through an “anti-racist” movement in modern anthropology? Did
they really think “anti-racist” meant “race doesn’t exist”? Or did the timing have
something to do with it?
In the 60s, we had the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement, which
was basically the intellectual side of the political Black Power Movement. The
scholars who lectured and published in this period were using the works of
classic historians and anthropologists, who used racial terms to describe the
people who built our ancient civilizations or made other contributions to the
past.
Boas himself was one of those scholars, as can be seen in works of his like The
Mind of Primitive Man and Race, Language, and Culture. In fact, some historians
credit Boas as a critical contributor to early Afrocentric thought (or African-
Centered Studies). But after Boas, anthropology was a raceless place. Since
whiteness is an assumed “norm” or “standard” throughout our society, the
subconscious effect of neglecting to mention racial characteristics in
anthropological work is to make all these people seem white.
In short, Franz Boas wanted to fight scientific racism, not eliminate the
relevance of race altogether. And now we have a generation of anthropologists
who act as if race doesn’t exist (and never did), and all it does is strip Black
scholars of needed ammunition. Isn’t it interesting how things can be turned
around?
 WHY RACE MATTERS
“Race is everything: literature, science, art – in a word, civilization depends on it.”
– Dr Robert Knox, The Races of Men, 1850
People who hear me explain how we are all “Original People” sometimes
counter with, “But we ARE different in SOME ways, right?” Of course, but
what do these distinctions mean?
In How to Hustle and Win, Part One, I explained how many of the most popular
“racial” or “ethnic” identities aren’t even races or ethnicities, but nationalities
and linguistic groups. That means they’re just the political name for where
you’re from or the language you speak. Case in point: There were once at least
500 indigenous nations in the Americas, but that doesn’t mean there were 500
races. There are over 600 linguistic groups in the island of New Guinea alone,
but that doesn’t mean there are 600 races. Similarly, there are jet-Black people
who speak Spanish living in the Dominican Republic. Next door, on the same
island, there are Haitians of the same complexion speaking Creole. Both groups
are mostly descended from West Africans kidnapped in the slave trade. Are they
different races? Of course not. Such distinctions would be stupid. But we still
tend to think that our country of origin, or the language we speak, defines our
identity.
These things might influence our cultural identity, but not our REAL identity.
After all, most of these “countries” are just based on the way Europeans carved
up our respective continents in the 1900s. Hell, even those continents are
imaginary distinctions. There’s no physical boundary separating Europe from
Asia. And Europeans actually dug through miles of land (the Panama Canal and
Suez Canal) to separate Africa from Asia and North America from South
America.
So who are we really? One thing’s for sure: We can’t define it with geographic or
linguistic identities. This is partly why the 5% group the human families of the
planet Earth into “shades” of humanity. That is, the Black, brown, and yellow
people are the Original People. And then there’s white folks. Now don’t be
mad that I’m making that distinction. Because I’m not the author of it. It was
white people who distinguished and separated themselves from the darker
people of the world, later creating the concepts of race that we know today as a
way to make us ALL feel different. One very pertinent example of this can be
found in the modern “Latino” identity.
WHAT’S A LATINO?
Independent researcher Rasol has written about the European constructs that
inform and motivate Latino-centrism:
There are several aggressor agendas that it seeks to foment:
(A) Continued theft and destruction of Native American identity: Latino is an ultimately Euro-
centered identity. If Native Americans become ‘Latino’ then their pre-Columbian [pre-Latin]
heritage is sublimated, and the distinction between natives and Euro-interlopers is erased. This
serves the interest of European domination of “Latin America.” The very idea of Latin America
is likened here to the Arab world of North Africa. It is an imperialistic ruse.
(B) Destroying the historical reality of Blacks because its very antiquity threatens the fledging
“Latino” construct: Kemetians are Black, the name means “Blacks.” Moors are Black, the name
means “Blacks.” Yet there are no ancient “Latinos” whether in Southern Europe or Native
America. Blacks have an ancient history. Native Americans [Aztec, Olmec, Maya, Navaho] have
an ancient history. Latino is a modern invention that seeks both to invent a history post-facto,
and/or deny the histories of other peoples it would like to devour.
How then to get Blacks and Native Americans to drop their ancient identity and accept, instead,
an inferior status in the South European-dominated Latin ethnic construct instead?
This is the problem [an advocate of “Latino” identity] faces. He exists in a fog of neither being
Black nor White nor Native American. He needs these more powerful ethnic constructs to go
away so that his intrinsically weak mulatto-Latino-brownish-mixed race concept can flourish. I
could ‘almost’ sympathize, except for one thing: They spit their hate-venom systematically in the
direction of Blacks [especially those who promote a Black, or African, identity for all people of
African origin], and do not ever really challenge the dominant ethos of the Anglo-white west.
Why is this? It’s because the middle-caste has an instinctive coward motivation to advance itself
‘within’ the caste system by attacking lower-castes, who are presumed to be weak [this is well
known from South African ‘Coloured’ and East African ‘Indian’ examples], as opposed to their
46
caste-masters, whom they fear they can little influence.
That’s heavy. You might want to reread it.
BUT AREN’T THERE SOME REAL
DIFFERENCES?
So what can be said about our geographic and linguistic distinctions? They DO
have a place, because everybody wants to acknowledge their family and
community, as well as the cultural traditions they know best. So we can’t expect
someone who sees himself as Mexican to welcome the idea of being called
Black, especially when being “Black” has the worst possible stigma everywhere
on the planet. Hell, even Black people are trying not to be called Black!
But what we can do is show that Mexican brother that he is more than whatever
“Mexico” and “Spanish” and “Latino” and “Hispanic” are supposed to be. He
may discover that his people call each other cholo because they are descended
from the Huichol people, a mighty warrior nation of indigenous people. Or
perhaps his lineage is Mayan, or Aztec.
Whatever the case, he’ll also learn that his ancestors found solidarity with the
Africans who came to their continent, and together, they resisted the Europeans
who raped and oppressed them. Thus, his Black blood is something to be
proud of!
Further down the line, he will learn that at a distant point in the past, before the
ancestors of the Mayans split off from the ancestors of the Huichol, the
indigenous people of the Americas were Black themselves. The earliest Native
Americans were dark-skinned with features resembling the Australian
Aborigines, and many of them remained dark-skinned until the 1400s when the
Europeans went to work, doing what they do! You can check the European’s
47
accounts (including those of Columbus) to see for yourself!
And guess what, this story is not only the story of Mexico. It’s the story of all
the native people of the world, from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines, and from
Alaska to Peru. We all share very similar stories. I’m not saying you have to stop
claiming your culture if you’re Mexican, just to ask yourself what you were
before you were Mexican. That’s a topic I explore a little deeper in La Brega:
Como Sobrevivir en el Barrio (the Spanish edition of How to Hustle and Win).
For example, you might learn that pork came from the Spaniards, and is not an
“indigenous” food. You may want to learn a little Nahuatl or Huichol, because
Spanish is not an indigenous language. And you may want to reconsider that
white Jesus and Mary that were used to strip your people of their beloved
ancestral traditions. (But to be fair, at least many of the people of Latin America
have made Christ and Mary Black, which is more than we can say for some
other members of the Black Diaspora!)
Even after doing all that, the most important realization is to see that the
Original People of the planet are all ONE. If we allow our geographic and
linguistic distinctions (as rich as that heritage may be) to cause us to think we are
all DIFFERENT, we’re in trouble. In New Guinea, the reason why there are
600 languages is because the people are at war. When two groups stop fighting
and come together, they end up merging their languages. But when two groups
cannot stop fighting (either over limited resources or because an “outsider”
egged on the rivalry), they don’t just develop distinct languages and nationalities
(or “tribes”), but they also develop cultural traditions where they denigrate (put
48
down) the people of the opposing group.
This is another area where European influence plays a role. For example:
The Japanese didn’t dislike Black people until the 1940s. Before then, Japan was
sending generals to meet with the Nation of Islam and other Black organizations,
pledging solidarity with Black people in America, promising allegiance and support to end
white rule. As soon as our government got wind of these tactics, the US nuked Japan and
 then rebuilt their country according to Western standards.
Similarly, Indians didn’t dislike Black people until the British came. Before then, India and
East Africa did regular trade. China did the same, with no inkling of “racism” until
Europeans came. The earliest Arabs were almost indistinguishable from Africans, but
49
Islam and Arabia became “Aryanized” following the Iranian Abbasid revolution of 750.
Racism in Islam soon became endemic.
Most Native Americans aligned with enslaved Africans, absorbing runaway slaves and
“Maroons” into their communities, as early as the first documented slave revolt in North
50
America in 1526. Africans and Indians fought white settlers together in countless wars
and uprisings. The “Five Civilized Tribes” who owned slaves were the ones who took on
the values of the West, and these values were spread by force. Anti-Black sentiment is
not an indigenous Native tradition.
And Mexicans were leading figures in southern slave revolts, especially those in Texas. In
fact, the famous Battle of the Alamo was all about white people trying to maintain slavery
there, and Mexicans and Africans fighting together to stop it.
What’s the common denominator behind the change in all these scenarios? It
doesn’t take a historian to figure it out. I’ll give you a hint. It rhymes with
“bright steeple.”
SO MUCH IN COMMON
We don’t have to discard everything that makes our cultures unique. But we DO
have to let go of the idea that we’re really very different, or that our tribe is
better than another. This type of thinking is the reason why there is so much
ethnic conflict in Africa right now. Europeans were able to come in, intensify
pre-existing (and relatively non-violent) rivalries, and cause people to fight and
kill one another.
Once that started, it became hard to stop. And the same ones who caused this
mess could simply step back and watch us exterminate each other. When they
were ready, they would return to “intervene” and introduce “peace” (along with
their rules and regulations). The same thing already happened to the Native
Americans, effectively reducing a North American population of 30 million in
51
1492 to less than 6 million by 1650. That’s over 20 million people in less than
200 years!
To do this, it took more than smallpox and genocidal campaigns waged by small
bands of heavily armed Europeans. It took “racial strife.” In other words, there
was NO way the Europeans could have killed off THAT many people without
first creating or agitating conflict among the people they sought to destroy. If
you don’t believe me, look at the piece on Thanksgiving in How to Hustle and
Win, describing how Native people like the Wampanoag were used against their
own, and then later murdered.
And now, we’re in the same boat. You have Blacks vs. Mexicans in prison
systems and hoods throughout the West, and – to a lesser extent – Blacks vs.
damn near everyone else in the rest of the country. In fact, in any country you
visit, whether Arab, Asian, or African, the darkest people are often the lowest
on the social totem pole. Seems like nobody wants to be Black (or be associated
with Black nowadays).
Where does it come from? It doesn’t take a genius to tell. So we’ve got to get
back to the way things were, when the Original People of the planet were not
divided along color lines. All we had was cultural, geographic, and linguistic
distinctions. Other than that, “race” wasn’t an issue, because we were all too
dark to notice.
It was white people who created the idea of race to separate themselves from us,
and then weaponized this concept against us. But we’ve had moments of clarity
since then. In the 1920s, Black activists like Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad,
and even W.E.B. Du Bois were working to build international solidarity with the
revolutionary movements in China, Vietnam, Japan, the Middle East, India, and
nations throughout Africa.
Then World War II came, with the forerunner of this movement, Japan – then
heralded as the “champion of the darker races of the world” – being nuked as a
warning to all those who would align with Black people. A resurgence came in
the 60s, when the Black Panthers built ties with Asian and Hispanic groups like
the I Wor Kuen, the Red Guard Party, and the Young Lords. You can read
more about these episodes in Black and brown solidarity in How to Hustle and
Win, Part Two, but for some real depth on the topic, check out Afro-Asia:
Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian
Americans by Fred Ho and Bill Muller and The Darker Nations: A People’s History of
the Third World by Vijay Prashad.
The bottom line is, in order for us to really change our global predicament
(because all Original People are in a pretty bad state), we’ve got to begin by
shedding some of this tribalism disguised as “racial identity.” Black, brown, and
yellow are one. We are the Original People. As my brother Stic.man says, “We
must UNTIE…to UNITE!”
 WHERE IT ALL STARTED
How could the oldest populations of Africa look so different? Think back to the
Crayola box. Geneticists now know that Africa, particularly East Africa, has
more genetic diversity than anywhere else in the world. In fact, populations in
Africa have more “within group” genetic diversity than separate populations
elsewhere in the world. In other words, there may be more genetic diversity
between two members of the Sokoto people than between Germans and
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Japanese.
This is because everyone outside of Africa carries a subset of genes you can find
in Africa. And the fact that there is more genetic diversity in East Africa than
anywhere else in Africa narrows down the “root of humanity” even further.
Gonder’s 2007 comparison of the mtDNA of 62 ethnically diverse Tanzanians,
Khoisan, and Bakola Pygmies – against a pool of 226 mtDNA genomes from
around the world – found that “a large and diverse human population has
persisted in eastern Africa and that eastern Africa may have been an ancient
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source of dispersion of modern humans both within and outside of Africa.” In
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other words, Africa is the source for all genetic diversity.
 WHY “BLACK”?
Some of our readers may wonder why we choose the word “Black” over
African. The reason is simple. If we’re talking about origins, the Original People
certainly came from Africa, but so did everyone else on the planet today. There’s
not much of a distinction then. Plus, you’ve got a ton of issues associated with
55
the validity of the name “Africa” and who came up with this name (and why).
If we’re talking about populations who remained in Africa, where then do we
draw the line as to who is African once they leave Africa, and who is not? After
all, Original People are not regional or local to any one place on Earth. “The
Earth belongs to the Original Man,” Elijah Muhammad said, later adding that
“Africa” was a placename promoted by Europeans to divide Black people from
each other. Chancellor Williams, in his important work The Destruction of Black
Civilization, uses the word “Black” for the same reason we do. He explains:
An African is a member of the black race, and from times immemorial he was known as such by
all peoples of the world. Throughout this work the terms refers to Blacks only. It should be
noted that I write about the African people – not African peoples, as Western writers do. I am
dealing here with essentially one people, one “race,” if you please, the African race. In ancient
times “African” and “Ethiopian” meant the same thing: A Black. This, of course, was before the
56
Caucasians began to reorder the earth to suit themselves…
In How to Hustle and Win, Part One, I quoted what Minister Louis Farrakhan said
to Gil Noble regarding how language can shape your reality. He explained that
the use of the word “Black” shifted people from a “minority” view of the world
to a collective “majority” mindset. Identifying members of the Diaspora –
regardless of where they lived – by this common denominator “developed in us a
body and the nervous system that connected us to our people all over the
world.”
And almost as soon as “Black” approached common usage throughout the
world, the media began dismantling it and replacing it with new, less global,
terms. Min. Farrakhan explained:
So the subtlety of the enemy, in deceiving us, was that he knew the value of language and that if
you shift the language you shift perceptions. What he did was to create the death of our nervous
system that connected us as a family. Then we could become tribes and kill one another and not
feel the pain of our Brothers in the Caribbean, our Brothers in Brazil or our Brothers in Africa.
We began to be less and less global and more and more narrow in our focus, to be narrower right
down to gang and tribes in terms of denomination and organization, and kill each other
throughout America and not really feel the pain.
It is with these considerations in mind that we refer to a Global Black Diaspora
rather than localizing people to one part of the planet. As we’ll explore in this
book, the first human populations of EVERY part of this planet were Black
57
people.
 WHAT DID THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE LOOK LIKE?
By 50,000 years ago, there are some measurable differences between the remains
found in East Africa and those found in Australia. By 20,000 years ago, those
differences are much strong. By 10,000 years ago, the people of the world look
very different from each other. And here we are now, where white people have
gladly informed us that we all belong to separate races without a common
history.
In really, the ORIGINAL Original People were not split along racial types. In
fact, the oldest human remains in Africa aren’t as racially “specialized” as we’d
expect them to be. The world’s first humans were more “generalized” than
today’s distinct races, and the reason today’s various races all look SO different
is because we’ve had so much time to evolve locally, separated from each other
by geography or social barriers.
I’ll have to use some concepts from population genetics to explain. You see,
over the course of thousands of years of mixing and marrying, one set of traits
can become the common traits for nearly the entire community. That’s called
genetic drift. And whatever “subset” of traits the founder population carried
into an isolated area, those are the traits you have to choose from, in terms of
what can emerge in future generations. That’s called the founder effect.
In the beginning, those traits may have been much more muted and less distinct.
They also must have had a great deal of variety, because neither “genetic drift”
nor “founder effect” had taken place yet. Instead, all the possible diversity was
present. Just as we noted about East Africa, the Original People possessed the
prototypes for all the physical diversity you see on the planet today.
We should be clear about one thing though: They were – without doubt – all
Black-skinned people. There’s no way nature would have allowed for a lack of
melanin in any of the places where the first humans settled.
And this is why some of the oldest human remains don’t look distinctly like the
features of any race. It’s only within the last 50,000 years that we start finding
specific “looks” developing among different sets of human remains, and within
the past 10,000 years these common traits become even more homogenous
across cultural communities as racial types. As Richard Klein has written:
Most early modern skulls do not exhibit unequivocal characteristics of any present-day race and it
seems increasingly likely that the modern race formed mainly in the Holocene, after 12-10,000
years ago. This is perhaps particularly clear for eastern Asia (the present-day hearth of the
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‘Mongoloids’), but it also applies to Europe (the homeland of the ‘Caucasoids’).
This is why the remains of the world’s first settlers have a diverse range of
features, from which any of the world’s races could have emerged. Thus, all of
the world’s “pygmy” populations look like Black people, but they don’t all look
alike. This is because the earliest communities of Original People didn’t all look
the same. Not only was there great “within group” diversity in these
communities, their features weren’t as pronounced as you’ll find in today’s races.
Thus, some branches of the Original People may look more like African people,
while others look more like Australian people. You might think of those two
groups of people and imagine a very clear difference. Yet 50,000 years ago, these
people looked much more like each other than they do today.
This is why, when Walter Neves describes the earliest human remains in the
Americas, he said they resembled “present Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-
Saharan Africans.” There’s no way a set of remains can look like all those people
unless they had the prototypical features of all those people. This is why the
Original People were quite literally the Origin of All People.
They were the prototype, not specifically aligned to any one racial type. But
don’t be confused in the least. They were Black. Anthropologists have tried to
call many of the oldest humans exclusively “Australoid” (rather than using the
honest description Neves employs), as a means of distancing these people from
Africa. Others have gone even further and attempted to classify these
generalized remains as Caucasoid!
These people didn’t look fully Australoid or Africoid, but their populations most
likely possessed a more muted form of both features. So yes, they still looked
absolutely Black. Nobody would think they were anything else. But – as the
differences between the San, Aka, and Hadzabe people reveal – they didn’t all
look alike.
For example, the first human settlers of the planet, having dispersed from
Africa, may have had woolly hair. But all Original People don’t all have woolly
hair. Depending on where they had settled and how long they’d been there,
some had woolly hair, some had curly hair, some had coarse, wavy hair, and
some – particularly those living in humid, tropical climates, had what’s known as
“peppercorn hair,” or very tightly-curled coils of hair that remain close to the
scalp.
The Australoid people who spread across the globe around 70,000 years ago had
straighter hair than their predecessors. These coarse and wavy-haired people
went back into Africa about 50,000 years ago and, again, developed woolly hair
after several generations of living in the equatorial forests. In other words,
different hair textures are better suited for different climates, but they’re not an
indicator of who was Black and who wasn’t.
In fact, the undeniably Black people of the Solomon Islands often have naturally
blonde hair (in a variety of textures). At first, anthropologists assumed that
European settlers had “contributed” to the native gene pool. But geneticists
later found that this blonde hair gene was totally unrelated to the European
variant and was thousands of years older. It had evolved on its own. (Well, not
exactly on its own, as it must have been “preferred” by at least some early
communities for it to emerge in 5-10% of the Melanesian population.) In other
words, all Black people do not look alike, and that is part of the NATURE of
Original People.
This diversity goes all the way back to the very roots of humanity. This is why
Africa is the most diverse place on Earth. This is also European scientists
cannot define who and what is Black, nor can they choose which specific Black
population is the representative type for all Black people worldwide.
 WHO AND WHAT IS BLACK?
In a detailed genetic analysis of African populations, Tishkoff and Williams
reported:
Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000
distinct ethnic groups and languages… Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA
markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world…
Extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations…indicates that
59
there is not a single ‘representative’ African population.
But this diversity “baseline” isn’t limited to genetics. Think about it. What
determines our physical features (phenotype)? Right, our genes. Thus, Africa is
the source of all physical (phenotypical) diversity as well. We can also find
60
generalized forms of a wide variety of bone structures (which give us our
different facial features), suggesting that all of these “looks” originated in Africa
as well. For starters, there’s no such thing as a “Black nose.”
WHAT IS A BLACK NOSE?
DID YOU KNOW? Blacks in America still carry much of
Several prehistoric human crania from Bromhead’s
this ancestral diversity in their noses
Site, Willey’s Kopje, Makalia Burial Site, Nakuru, and
and hair textures, without any traces of
other localities in the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya
“Cherokee blood” or white ancestors.
resemble those of modern Africans, particularly those
Despite only 17% non-African mixture
of the “Nilotic Negro” type. However, even these
prehistoric skulls show great diversity, and several
into their genes, a recent nasal study
have features that white anthropologists excitedly
61 found that that modern-day Black
described as “Caucasoid.” Other scholars have
women (and Blacks in general) exhibit
interpreted these remains as “proto-Australoid.” In
wide variability in nasal indices (with
reality, these skulls have a generalized morphology
that looks more like “no race” than like Caucasians.
up to 50% possessing narrower noses,
And since white people’s most defining feature is their
such as those similar to Europeans). In
whiteness, there’s no change these Equatorial
other words, Black noses are naturally
Africans were white-skinned, no matter how their
noses were shaped. Again, all Black people don’t
more diverse than you think. West
look alike.
African noses are typically wider than
those of East Africans, but not as wide as those of Australian Aborigines. And,
as African anthropologist Shomarka O. Keita explained, East Africans didn’t get
62
aquiline (narrow) noses from Arabs or Europeans.
You see, a West African or “Bantu” nose is so distinctly Black that, when
Europeans found such noses on ancient sculptures throughout the world, they
destroyed the noses, knowing that these features would be dead giveaways as to
who these people were. But they left many of the noses that were more aquiline,
so they could show these examples off to the world, indirectly hinting that these
people were European. But they weren’t! So be careful about how you define
Blackness. If you eliminate Black people with naturally narrow noses, you allow
those people to be co-opted and identified as white.
WHAT ABOUT BLACK HAIR?
We must also be careful in our views of Black hair. In 1971, Czech
anthropologist Strouhal’s study of Egyptian origins used narrow limits of what
constitutes “African hair” as a parameter, thus claiming pre-dynastic Nubians
were really white “Europids” overrun much later by waves of Negroes, and that
few “true Negroes” appeared in Egypt until the New Kingdom.
Keita says this is common practice, noting that many Egyptologists use an
extreme “true negro” definition for what constitutes a Black or African person,
and anyone who falls outside of these narrow limits is classified as something
else, usually Caucasian or some other euphemism for white. Yet, as Keita adds,
there’s a clear double standard, as few have attempted to apply the same model
63
in reverse and define a “true white.”
Bottom line, there’s a lot of diversity in terms of Black hair as well. We know
this from looking at the Black people of India and Australia, but this diversity
also exists in Africa. In Keita’s investigations of Egyptian origins, he observed
that the Badarian hair analyzed by Strouhal (and classified as “mulatto”) was “no
different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or some Somali, and does not
require a gene flow explanation…Extremely “wooly” hair is not the only kind
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native to tropical Africa.”
WELL, WHAT ABOUT BLACK SKIN?
That would be the bottom line, wouldn’t it? In the end, we can look at Black
people all over the world, all throughout history, and the color of their skin tells
us where they came from. It may not tell us how we’re related to them, but we
know we’re related. But…are light-skinned Black people still Black?
I mean, we know that most light-skinned people in predominantly Black nations
are the by-products of miscegenation (mixing with whites), and much of this
happened through conquest and rape. But does that explain ALL of the skin
color diversity among Black people? To best answer that question, we should,
again, look to Africa.
To my surprise, I learned that recent studies have confirmed there is more
indigenous skin color diversity within African populations than anywhere else.
That is, there’s more NATURAL variation in skintone in Africa than elsewhere
in the world. Even after adjusting for distance from the equator, J.H. Relethford
found that “skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African
65
diversity as found with other traits.”
And not only are there significant differences between the browns of the Tuareg
and the blue-black of the Nuer, there is more “within group” skin color diversity
between members of the same ethnic groups in Africa than there is between
members of ethnic groups in Europe or Asia.
In other words, there may be more skin color difference between two members
of the Sokoto people than between Chinese and Japanese. What does this tell
us? All diversity begins where we begin. So Africa, naturally, has more variation,
because everyone outside Africa is descended from subsets of people from
66
Africa.
In The People of Africa, Jean Hiernaux writes:
In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means
or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live
the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the
lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area,
the range of the average nose widths covers 92% of the world range: only a narrow range of
extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about
67
80% of the world range.
So when you take into consideration the fact that – from the time humans
began expanding out of Africa, up to the present day – Africa has the highest
genetic and phenotypic diversity on the planet, it helps us understand why the
Black people of the world could look as different as the Indian Veddoids and
the South African Khoisan. It also helps us see that many of the physical
features we associate with Asians or Europeans can be traced back to Africans.
As Keita notes in “The Diversity of Indigenous Africans,” his contribution to
Theodore Clenko’s Egypt in Africa:
Why are these data important? Because they indicate that the background genetic variation of
Europeans, Oceanians, and Asians originated in Africa and precedes in time the presence of
modern humans in these areas. Europeans and Asian-Australians did develop more unique
genetic profiles over time, but had a common background before their average “uniqueness”
emerged. This background is African in a bio-historical sense. Therefore, it should not be
68
surprising that some Africans share similarities with non-Africans.
As many of the physical features that supposedly characterize Caucasoid (or
“white”) and Mongoloid (or “East Asian) people can be found indigenous to
Africa, we have to ask – what truly makes one “other” than this diverse range of
possibilities? In other words, what makes a white person white besides white
skin? We’ll get to that. The point here is that you can find the “baseline of all
phenotypes” in East Africa, along with all of the world’s genetic diversity. This
is why Eurocentrists like to separate East Africa from the rest of Africa, even
when they use false dividers like “Sub-Saharan Africa” to separate “true
negroes” from the rest of the world, they ignore the fact that East Africa is
69
actually south of the Sahara!
The way around all of this confusion is to keep this in mind: When we look at
the migrations that populated the Earth, we will certainly see clear physical (and
genetic) distinctions between these indigenous populations, but we know that
they are essentially the same people, with the same origin.
SO WHO IS NOT BLACK?
Taking this argument to its logical end, we would naturally wonder, at one point
does one STOP being Black? This issue troubled me for a few months after I
first realized some of the things I’ve explained above. But revisiting what the
Five Percenters taught me, I realized that “Black” is an identifier not limited to
color or appearance. Black is about conscious identity. If not that, then Black is
just another label with no more merit than Negro or Colored. But when we
consider the conscious (and some would say “cosmic”) identity of Blackness, we
70
have to consider what that implies. In one of my old plus lessons, the question
of “What is Black?” is asked.
The answer says that Black is about color, culture, and consciousness. It’s a
psychosocial identity. Being Black is something you were born into (i.e., the
Black Nation, with “nation” literally meaning something you’re born into), but
being Black is something you must consciously and culturally identify with.
Before European domination of the world, being “Black” wasn’t a rallying point
for most of us. We didn’t need to yell that we were Black and proud until white
folks made us unproud to be Black.
So in the prehistoric past, our identities weren’t bound to our Blackness. And
after surviving the ups and downs of nature, and beating the Neanderthals, we –
the Black people of the world – didn’t exactly have a common enemy, and thus,
not much of a common identity.
In other words, we were more bound to our local and ethnic identities. We
repped our clans, because that was all we knew. Even in the modern day, the
Black tribes of the New Guinea highlands continue to feud with each other and
telling them they’re all Black won’t stop them. They speak different languages,
claim different territories, and rep different ancestors and totems. Sound familiar
to the gang problem here?
But what if the indigenous people of New Guinea saw what Europeans were
doing to their land and to them? Would they come together? What if all the
Black and brown people of the world were to come to this realization at once?
Just as Black is a psychosocial identity, we’ll explore how white is also a
psychosocial identity, and one that is defined by its opposition to everything that
is not white, in Volume Four.
For now, let’s just say that – despite our diversity in color, culture, and
consciousness – in the face of whiteness, Blackness is the only identity that’s
real. Perhaps that’s why there’s been such a concerted effort to convince us that
this “Blackness” does not actually exist!
AFRICA BEFORE EGYPT
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
“[T]he white man knows that he didn’t get us out of the
jungle, he don’t get us out of some place that was savage – he
got us out of a place that was highly civilized in culture and
in art, and then brought us down to the level that you see us
today. But they are afraid to let us know what level we are
on. They’ll tell the Africans because they know the Africans
know it, but they don’t want you and me to know it. Because
the first thing you and I would start asking them is, ‘Well,
what did you do to us?’ And if you find out, then you’ll want
to do it to him.” – Malcolm X71
When’s the last time you saw Africa on TV? What did they show? Chances are,
they weren’t doing a feature on Africans living in big cities like Nairobi, Accra,
Lagos, or Durban. Most likely, the last thing you saw was all about animals or a
“tribe” of people with some practices very different from your own. Many of us
still think that the people of Africa are ALL poor and starving, or that the
majority of people live in huts, hunting animals to survive. Trust me, I’ve asked
groups of students, and that is what they think about Africa. There’s a reason
for this. It’s what you’re supposed to think so you believe that living in America
constitutes progress (and, in some people’s view, salvation).
“Whoever controls the images of a people also controls the self esteem, self respect and self development of those people.” – Dr. Leonard
Jeffries
The truth is that the people of Africa were the first to build big cities, and to
transition from hunting to farming, and to build large housing complexes. The
people of Africa were often living so well when the first Europeans came that
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many of the early reports are gushing with praise and admiration.
Even today, Africa is highly urbanized. Just look up “The Africa They Don’t
Show You” or “The Africa You Never See on TV” on YouTube. There’s even
an Africa Channel on cable (you might already have it without knowing about it),
which is constantly presenting glimpses into the urban life of today’s African
nations. But there’s a reason we are led to think of Africa as the “dark
continent,” or “primitive,” or “backwater.” There’s a reason Africa is rarely
mentioned in discussions of world history. There’s a reason tourists to Africa –
outside of Egypt – are immediately routed to the “jungle safari,” rather than the
local market, a sacred site, or an ancient monument.
By disconnecting the world with its birthplace, Europeans have effectively
changed the foundational reference point of all humanity from its origin to its
oppressor. In other words, we once looked at the root of human civilization for
inspiration and grounding, and now we look to the West for what to do and
think next. None of this is accidental.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
Why Africa is so deeply ignored in discussions of history.
What we know about our earliest ancestors and their cultures.
The great diversity of African people, cultures, languages, and genes.
Why big cities and widespread agriculture weren’t necessary for the earliest African
cultures.
How, over 2,000,000 years ago, the first humans in East Africa pioneered technological
industries that worked for millions of years.
How South Africans pioneered chemistry and technology over 60,000 years ago.
How Central Africans pioneered ecology and conservation over 30,000 years ago.
How North Africans mastered the arts over 20,000 years ago.
How South Africans pioneered chemistry and technology over 60,000 years ago.
What we can learn and apply from these cultures today.
The ancient historical foundations of Pan-Afrikanism.
 WHAT ABOUT AFRICA?
Typically, when you read books about human history, there is this discussion of
when “we left Africa” or “when modern humans left Africa to settle the globe.”
This suggests that the people who are still in Africa are either not worthy of
consideration, or are not modern humans. The truth is that all of us are
descendants of that same small ancestral group of humans who made that
exodus, including the millions of Black people living in Africa before the
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Europeans came. But, if you leave that part unsaid, or unexplained, it does give
off the impression that native Africans (and their descendants) are not part of
the human story.
Another thing you’ll notice about the “standard telling” of human history is that
Africa is only relevant millions of years ago during the evolution of modern
humans, and then much later, whenever they say those humans left Africa for
greener pastures. Isn’t that offensive? As if there was no human history worth in
that gap? Then, the next time Africa becomes relevant is after the rise of
Ancient Egypt, which is 100,000 years later! That’s a thousand centuries of
history ignored! But guess what? It’s not just the European scholars who do this.
When’s the last time you read a Black history book that dug into African history
before the rise of Nile Valley Civilization? There’s not too many.
As African historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo has said:
Africa has a history. The time has long gone by when maps had great empty spaces representing
the African continent as marginal and subordinate, and the knowledge of scholars on the subject
was summed up in the cryptic phrase: Ibi sunt leones “Here be lions.” But then came the discovery
of the mines and their profits, and incidentally of the “native tribes” which owned the mines, but
which, like them, were annexed as the property of the colonizing countries.
The history of Africa, like the history of mankind as a whole, is really the story of an awakening.
The history of Africa needs rewriting, for up till now it has often been masked, faked, distorted,
mutilated, by “force of circumstance” i.e. through ignorance or self-interest.
Crushed by centuries of oppression, Africa has seen generations of travellers, slave-traders,
explorers, missionaries, governors, and scholars of all kinds give out its image as one of nothing
but poverty, barbarism, irresponsibility and chaos. And this image has been projected and
extrapolated indefinitely in time, as a justification of both the present and the future.
For Africans, the history of Africa is not a narcissistic mirror nor a subtle excuse for avoiding the
tasks and burdens of today. If it were an alienating device of that kind, the scientific objects of
the whole enterprise would be compromised. But is not ignorance of one’s own past, in other
74
words of a large part of oneself, even more alienating?
This is why I set out to fill in the gaps. Let’s start with the beginning.
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN
Before the emergence of Homo sapiens, the planet was settled by an older species
of man known to anthropologists as Homo erectus.
We tend to give Homo sapiens all the credit for “manmade” technology and other
“human” advances, but this is only because Homo erectus is considered a
“primitive” ancestor of Homo sapiens. But as you’ll see in the following section,
there is strong evidence of continuity between the first Homo sapiens and their
Homo erectus ancestors.
THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION
Throughout this book, we talk about a place we call the “root of civilization.”
When we say “civilization,” we’re talking about pretty much ANY culture we –
as Original People – ever founded, whether it was urbanized or not. After all, we
were always civilized people, never savages. So when we look for the root of
where human activity and industry can be found, that’s in East Africa.
The earliest evidence of archaeological activity (anywhere) comes from the
Great Rift Valley sites of East Africa, such as Olduvai Gorge and the Afar
Desert in Ethiopia. From dozens of sites like this, scattered throughout East
Africa, we can form a picture of our ancestors using tools, building homes,
employing scientific reasoning to make collective decisions, making ecological
use of natural resources, and all the other earmarks of civilization. And we’re
talking about millions of years ago.
In The Science of Self, Volume One, we explored the development of the Original
man, leading up to the emergence of “anatomically modern humans” at the root
of civilization, where we find the remains of the people who fathered and
mothered everyone on this planet today. It should be noted that these ancestors
did not survive by chance or dumb luck. They developed the necessary tools
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and industry needed to compete with other lineages of archaic humans and
literally take over the globe. They were the best of the best. Just think about it.
These people, over 200,000 years ago, possessed within themselves a legacy so
strong that their descendants were the ones who carried on, while millions of
other lineages died off through the ages. And you’re their last of kin.
As Christian preacher Joel Osteen has said, “You have winner in your DNA; you
have survivor in your blood.” I take it a step further and note that your ancestors
survived the Neanderthal Wars, climate change, malaria outbreaks, political
collapse, the Maafa (the slave trade), and all kinds of other challenges that
eliminated so many of their peers. And here you are. That’s beyond being a
winner and survivor. You’re the Original man and woman. You are the Alpha
and the Omega. You are the exodus, the journey, and the final destination. The
only question is: What will you do to ensure that your descendants survive to
carry on YOUR legacy 200,000 years from now?
To get a better grasp of what this future could hold, we need to review the
cycles of the past. We’ll begin at the root of civilization.
 THE FIRST TECH INDUSTRIES
BEFORE SILICON VALLEY…THERE WAS
THE RIFT VALLEY
Today’s industries serve modern society’s complex needs. The industries of the
past were fewer because we really didn’t “need” all the things we depend on
today, like cell phones, microwaves, Kindles, and that odd-shaped electronic
“neck massager” your wife keeps in her bottom drawer.
Then again, do we need all those things today? That’s another book perhaps.
The bottom line is that we handled our business very effectively using the
simplest of resources. As a result, most of our prehistoric industries were
sustainable, and not a threat to our ecosystem, as they are today. Yet – even
without silicon computer chips – we can call those prehistoric developments
“technology,” because technology simply means “the application of scientific
knowledge for practical purposes.”
So what kind of technology did we have back then, and when did it qualify our
societies as “civilization”? While historians typically associate textiles (fabrics),
metallurgy (metal-working), and ceramics (pottery) as markers for the emergence
of civilization, these industries are just “modernized” versions of much older
practices. For example, before we made clay pots, we have gourds. Before we
had looms to weave fabric, we sewed together leather and fur. And so on.
Basically, we always had this knowledge. It’s just been a matter of how and
when we used it.
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You see, technology doesn’t move us forward in any linear way. Instead, we
produce technology as we see fit, and society changes correspondingly. New
needs emerge, and new techniques are designed to address them more
efficiently. The adoption of new technology is generally the result of us
77
addressing an observed need, not us becoming smarter somehow.
The first manufactured technology (that we have solid records of) are stone
tools. Earlier you read about evidence of tool use 3.39 million years ago in
Dikika, Ethiopia, so we probably had tools even before then – some made from
organic materials like bone and wood and others from stone so weathered we
78
can’t tell if they were manmade. The best evidence, thus far, is bone tools
79
dated back to 3.3 million years ago in Sterkfontein, South Africa. The world’s
first stone tool industry is known as the Oldowan industry. Oldowan stone tools
are the oldest recognizable tools in the archaeological record, and date back to
about 2.6 million years ago in Gona, Ethiopia.
TWO TYPES OF TOOL TRADITIONS
As simple as they sound, the Oldowan tools got the job done. For about a
million years! That’s when new techniques emerged, known to scientists as the
Acheulean method of tool design. The Acheulean industry lasted from 1.7
million years ago until about 100,000 years ago. That’s another long stretch. But
these new techniques didn’t “phase out” outdated technology. Instead, Oldowan
toolsets continued production alongside the Acheulean. The only difference:
Simply struck tools are called “Oldowan.” When these tools are reworked to
have finer details, they’re called “Acheulean.” And we used both up until
100,000 years ago. But why?
This forced scientists to reconsider the idea that an “advanced” industry was
succeeding a more primitive one. Some said that different populations – either
different species of man or different cultures – carried these technologies, as
both technologies emerged first in East Africa but followed different paths of
dispersal.
After spreading throughout Africa, Oldowan technology was carried only as far
as southern Asia and some parts of Europe, while Acheulean (the earliest
examples of which come from Kenya) extended as far beyond as China and
South Korea. However, this may not be the only explanation for these two co-
existing traditions. Some scientists have argued that groups could use both
techniques in response to different circumstances. Kinda like switching between
using a flathead or a Phillips screwdriver.
THE FIRST STATUS SYMBOLS?
But what were the circumstances that called for the finer craftsmanship of the
Acheulean tools? Surely the 20cm Acheulean cutting edge had a competitive
advantage over the 5cm cutting edge of Oldowan tools, but there are also sites
where hundreds of impractically large Acheulean hand-axes sat unused. These
sites, including Melka Kunturé in Ethiopia, Olorgesailie in Kenya, Isimila in
Tanzania, and Kalambo Falls in Zambia, have raised questions about whether
many popular Acheulean tools, like these hand-axes, were created for form,
function…or just fashion.
Recent studies have suggested that some of the Acheulean industry was really
about the latter, promoting social identity through craftsmanship and style. This
would explain the apparent “over-sophistication” of some examples.
One theory goes even further and suggests that some special hand-axes were
made and displayed by males in search of a mate, using a large, well-made hand-
axe to demonstrate that they possessed sufficient strength and skill to pass on to
their offspring. Once they had attracted a female at a group gathering, it is
suggested that they would discard their axes, perhaps explaining why so many
are found together.
OTHER SUPER-OLD ACCOMPLISHMENTS
If you remembered that humans show up around 200,000 years ago, you
realized that all these tools were first used by Homo erectus. Yet, both the
Oldowan and Acheulean tool traditions were continued by Homo sapiens,
which shows a great deal of cultural continuity. What this tells you is that the
history of the Original man does not actually begin 200,000 years ago, but goes
back much further. If you take a lot at some of the following accomplishments,
it becomes clear that Homo erectus was no misshapen beast-man, but simply an
older variant of man who eventually became us.
240,000 years ago, Homo erectus was using upper Paleolithic blade tools in
Kenya, technology that wouldn’t resurface in Europe until almost 200,000 years
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later.
At least 350,000 years ago, he built the first stone wall (and some of the oldest
81
rock engravings) in Bhimbetka, India. 300,000 years ago, he introduced
82
geometric engraving in Pech de l’Aze, southern France.
Between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus built huts, paved social
83
areas, erectus altars, and designed counting tools, in Bilzingsleben, Germany.
Nearby in Schoningen, Germany, there are 400,000 year-old wooden spears,
wooden boomerangs, 3-piece composite tools, and tools made using other
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tools.
DID YOU KNOW? By 500,000 years ago, in Zhoukoudian,
Our ancestors weren’t “scavengers.” During the early China, Homo erectus was collecting
Paleolithic, as early as 2 million years ago years ago, 86 87
we hunted and gathered cooperatively – cutting the minerals, making fire, and hunting
meat with stone tools and cooking it with fire. But the with canines.88 His ancestors had
evidence suggests loose associations with minimal
social structure. From the middle to upper Paleolithic pioneered maritime culture 700,000
periods (within the past 100,000 years), we became years ago, when the earliest evidence of
more organized, efficient, and specialized, even ocean travel is found in Flores,
developing rituals and traditions to standardize some 89
85
of these conventions. Indonesia. We discussed the rafts that
he built – using only wood, bone, and
stone tools – to navigate the waters of southeast Asia in The Science of Self, Volume
One. As early as 800,000 years ago, he built homes with organized living plans,
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complete with hearths, carpeting, bedding, and polished wood. Over 100,000
years prior, this bedding could be found in the Wonderwork Cave in South
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Africa.
1.5 million years ago, our Homo erectus ancestors were designing Acheulean
92 93
hand axes in West Natron, Tanzania, making 500º fires from South Africa to
94 95
East Africa, woodworking in Koobi Fora, Kenya, creating representational
96 97
art in Olduvai Gorge, and working animal hides in Swartkrans, South Africa.
2 million years ago, we find the earliest evidence of a windbreak structure in
98 99
Olduvai, and even the first toothpick in Ethiopia.
How far back does the history of “man” go? If you refer back to The Science of
Self, Volume One, you’ll know that the lineage of the Original Man and Woman
goes back to the very origins of life itself (and beyond). Since the focus of this
book isn’t evolutionary biology or quantum mechanics, we’ll simply say this
much: If you are “Original” you are the “Origin of All.” And, since the
beginning of time, it’s all been cyclical. As the saying goes, there’s nothing new
under the sun, meaning whatever happened 200,000,000 years ago was
reproduced, or re-cycled, 200,000 years ago, only at different scales and levels of
complexity. We’ll get deeper into how this works in Volume Three, but – if you
get it now – you’ll draw much more from what we reveal about the history of
modern humans.
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Anatomically modern humans emerge on the scene about 200,000 years ago.
They continue many of the Lower Paleolithic traditions of their ancestors, but
rapidly introduce new traditions. By the time of the Upper Paleolithic (50,000
years ago), life is quite different from how it was at the dawn of the era.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRONOLOGY
Okay, there’s plenty of time periods discussed in this book. We cover some
Homo erectus history going as far back as two million years ago, but most
of this book deals with what happened between 130,000 and 3,000 BC.
Needless to say, a lot happened.
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It’s not easy to imagine a thousand years, however. It’s understandable if
things get a little confusing. So, let’s talk a few basics before we begin. BC
means “before Christ.” Most modern historians don’t use “BC” anymore,
and prefer “BP” which means “before present” or “BCE” which basically
means the same as BC, but it stands for “before common era.” Some even
use conventions like “15 kya” (15 thousand years ago). We’re going to use
BC because that’s what most readers will be familiar with. Occasionally,
we’ll say things like “30,000 years ago” and only rarely will we throw in a
“kya” or “mya” (million years ago). So if we say 3,000 BC, that actually
means 5,000 years ago (because it’s been a little over 2000 years since the
alleged birth of Christ). And if we say 16,000 years ago, that means 14,000
BC
Now that that’s said, you may want to think about what a thousand years
ago really means. Perhaps you could consider how different were just a
hundred years and multiply that by ten! Now, think about 10,000 or 100,000
years ago. That should give you some idea of how amazing it is when we say
that our ancestors in South Africa had paint and glue factories 60,000 years
ago.
Let’s also talk about something a little more complicated. Many historians
and archaeologists don’t name a lot of specific “time periods” but instead
use names for the various “eras” or “ages” of human culture, such as the
“Upper Paleolithic” or the “Late Neolithic.” But don’t think that something
like the “Neolithic Age” refers to the same time period in India as it does in
Mexico. Because so many human cultures spread by diffusion, these periods
really only tell us about when different regions adopted a new phase of
culture. In other words, the whole world didn’t “become Neolithic” at the
same time. When we use words like Paleolithic and Neolithic, we’re just
using them to help you understand the culture of the people we’re talking
about. You’ll see such terms used in most other history books, so we’d be
leaving you in the dark if we avoided using them.
THE HISTORICAL PERIODS
Historians and other scientists use many different terms to describe the
periods of the past. The simplest distinction is that everything in the past is
not always called “history.” History specifically refers to the past so far back
as we have written records of what happened (literally, “his story”). This
goes as far back as “Ancient History” which is where we find the beginning
of written languages around 3,000 BC. Before that, it’s called “Prehistory.”
Another way to break up the past is by looking at technology, or the tools
we used. After the Acheulean Phase, the people of Africa were still in what’s
called the Stone Age. Because, until we developed the science of metallurgy
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to make iron, copper, and steel tools, we relied primarily on stone tools.
But don’t get it twisted! The rest of the world was in the Stone Age too!
Until the advent of metallurgy (making tools out of copper, bronze, and
iron), everybody using stone tools was in the “Stone Age.” Yet in Europe,
archaeologists call this SAME period the Paleolithic. Everywhere else
(especially Africa), the same phase is called the Old Stone Age, which
sounds pretty primitive standing next to a period with a “sciencey” name
like “Paleolithic” (which means “Old Stone Age”). Why’d they do it like
that? Just because. White folks can do stuff like that.
So throughout this book, whenever we talk about the Old Stone Age or the
Paleolithic, we’re calling it ALL the Paleolithic no matter where it is. The
other period we’ll talk about in this book is known as the Neolithic. Since
lith- means “stone” and neo- means “new,” it literally means the “New Stone
Age,” but that’s not very accurate. We did continue to use stones to build
megalithic structures and other monuments, but the Neolithic involved
many new adaptations and technologies necessitated by our rapidly growing
settlements, including the eventual development of metallurgy.
The Paleolithic and Neolithic periods are the two phases of history covered
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in this book. They actually cover a pretty massive timeline:
Lower Paleolithic (c. 2.6 million years ago – 300,000 years ago) Middle
Paleolithic (300,000–30,000 years ago) Upper Paleolithic (50,000–10,000 years
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ago) Neolithic (varies, depending on region)
The Paleolithic typically begins with the earliest evidence of stone tools (and
thus the “first industries” of man). But, as you may remember from Volume
One, Homo sapiens don’t show up in the fossil record until about 200,000
years ago.
 THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA
In order for us to discuss what was going on in Africa before the emergence of
Nile Valley Civilization, we have to embrace a few new understandings. First,
many of us believe that Africa is monolithic. That is, we think there is “one”
African culture, or “one” African people. I can understand if you’re talking
about things you see in common, but most people who think of Africa in a
monolithic sense aren’t breaking down “the cultural unity of Black Africa” like
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Cheikh Anta Diop did. No, I’m talking about the ones who think Africa is a
country, and all Africans are starving on the days they’re not hunting lions and
tigers. I’m sure you know some people who think that way.
The reality is that all African people do not look the same, think the same, or
behave the same. Africa is the most linguistically, genetically, and phenotypically
diverse place on the planet. After all, it’s where everyone – with all their diversity
– comes from! So how could it not be?
Africa is like one of those Crayola crayon boxes with 120 different colors in
(and the built-in sharpener!) and everywhere else in the world is just an 8-pack
or one of those 3-packs they give your kids at the restaurant. Maybe Europe
would be where you find the off-brand crayons made by some other company.
You know, the kind that melts as soon as they see sunlight, and their colors are
never as strong as the real Crayola crayons? Anyway, the point is that Africa is
the place where humanity started, so you can find the origin for just about
anything and everything somewhere in Africa.
Naturally, that means you’ll find a lot of diversity. Over the course of several
million years of history, you’ll also find a lot of these elements meeting, mixing,
and interacting with each other to form new elements – almost like the diverse
array of elements in the primordial soup that birthed life on Earth. Or kinda like
that Alchemy game you should download on your phone.
For example, there’s so much physical diversity in Africa that you can find the
origins of all the world’s facial features there. In fact, you can find all of our
prototypical traits in East Africa alone. As one old text on African history notes:
Negroes are the tallest people and shortest ones as well. A pygmy of four and a half feet has to
tip his head very far back to view a tall Watusi towering perhaps three feet above him. Negroes
may be stocky or stringy, sturdy or frail. They may be hawk-nosed, flat-nosed; thick-lipped or
thin-lipped. The skins of some are nearly black in hue; others are pale buff. Trying to settle on
representative features is like looking into a kaleidoscope. Colors and patterns shift before your
eyes, leaving you with an impression only. No wonder some anthropologists prefer to catalogue
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Negroes in several races instead of just one.
There’s great cultural diversity as well. There are city-dwellers, farmers,
pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, and foragers. There are monarchies, democracies,
and republics. You can find capitalism, socialism, and everything in between.
Polygamy, monogamy, endogamy, exogamy (those are real things!) – all there.
You’ll find matrilineal descent and patrilineal descent, shamanism and totemism,
scientists and warriors. It’s all there, and that’s where it all comes from.
One of the clearest examples of Africa’s cultural diversity can be seen in its
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many languages. Africa has almost 2,000 linguistic groups. That’s a lot of
different languages. But thanks to the groundbreaking work of linguist Joseph
Greenberg and those who followed after him, we can categorize those languages
into a few distinct families. This helps us track down the origins of these
languages, which again brings us back to East Africa.
And Africa wasn’t a static, unchanging place for the millions of years it was
inhabited by people. If we know there were dozens of migrations within the
75,000 years it took for humans to settle the entire globe, just imagine how
much movement occurred over millions of years in Africa. Africa’s linguistic
history can reveal a lot about the migrations and other historical events that
occurred in the past. When we incorporate genetic data and the archaeological
record, we’re able to deduce a reasonable picture of African prehistory. But it’s
not easy.
I’ll be the first to admit that this story is a sketchy one, even for specialists in the
subject. Many of the oldest human remains have long ago dissolved in the soil,
the mostly wood and bone artifacts haven’t survived either, foreign elements
have become a part of the narrative, and Eurocentrism has distorted the
remaining evidence into a mess that honest scholars must now clean up.
Fortunately, the picture of African prehistory has gotten a lot clearer over the
past century. One thing we’re pretty certain of is that the “mother tongue” (the
original spoken language of all humanity) was probably most closely related to
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the “click languages” spoken by the ancestors of the Khoisan people (who
were spread throughout southern and eastern Africa between 102,000 and
109
142,000 years ago).
This click language ultimately goes back to the East African root of civilization
where modern humans were born. These people made one of the first exoduses
out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. This would explain some of the
residue of click language in the East African Hadzabe, as well as in the “secret”
Damin click language of Australia. Some of these people traveled south, where
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they became the click-speaking Khoisan of Southern Africa.
The fact that the Khoisan of Southern Africa look SO different from the East
African Hadzabe is testament to the physical diversity of the oldest human
populations of Africa. These two communities are both over 100,000 years old –
with only minimal outside genetic influence – yet the Hadzabe look like Wesley
Snipes while the Khoisan look like the rapper Canibus. In case you forgot what
Canibus looks like, that means they look like Black Chinese people.
A UICK NOTE ON LEMURIA, ATLANTIS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN
No. Just no. The word “Utopia” literally means “no place.” As in, it doesn’t exist. I’m not saying
things weren’t better for us long ago. We really did have it better before all this modern
civilization stuff. But there’s a reason why white folks have been on this hunt for a mythical land
where all civilization came from. It’s because they don’t want to give credit to Africa. Just think
about it. They’d rather cite obscure legends about some sunken continent that happens to be
“near Africa” (immediately north, east, or west of Africa), but not IN Africa. There are plenty of old
settlements that are now underwater, thanks to rising sea levels, but a sunken continent? Sorry.
There’s a reason all the continents look like interlocking puzzle pieces. No missing continent.
Just a missing respect for Africa. There’s actually an island off the coast of East Africa known as
Lemu (as in Lemuria), but I don’t think anyone has suggested that the founders of civilization
came from here. Maybe it’s too African. A few scholars have broken this trend. Some have
argued that placed like Lemuria, Atlantis, and Eden were situated somewhere in Africa. For
example, some have said the Minoan civilization – which was founded by Blacks – was the
historical Atlantis. Citing “three major events in modern human evolution – the perfection of
language, the formation of the ancestral human population and the exit from Africa,” Nicholas
Wade has called Ethiopia “the real world’s counterpart of Eden’s mythical garden.” (Nicholas
Wade. (2006). p. 64) Still others have given all credit to ancient migrations leaving Nubia (what
is now the Egypt/Sudan border). Personally, I’d rather research real places that I can visit, than
“mystery history” only found in theosophical books written by white folks with secret agendas.
 PREHISTORIC AFRICA
We’ve already discussed many of the earliest cultural traditions of East Africa,
going back over two million years. From 2,000,000 BC to 2,012 AD, East Africa
has always been populated, but not everyone who was born there has stayed
there. Because of environmental changes, great migrations have left East Africa
several times. Several of these migrations went into Asia and Europe (and later
everywhere else), but many others went into other parts of Africa. This is the
African history most historians ignore, because the implicit assumption is that
Africa was only significant in terms of its relationship to the people who wrote
the history. Outside of that, it was perfectly fine to leave thousands of years to
the imagination.
We won’t do that here. Genetic studies have revealed that the earliest humans in
Africa expanded into many different branches, at least five of which went into
other parts of Africa while only one (identified with mtDNA Haplogroup L3)
went out of Africa. For now, let’s focus on some of the lineages that went into
other parts of Africa. We’ll start with a culture that introduced advanced
chemistry and other technology to southern Africa…over 50,000 years ago.
 CHEMISTRY AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
What do you know about Southern Africa? Mandela, Apartheid, maybe
something about Steve Biko, maybe something about the native Khoisan
people. Maybe you’ve heard of the “Hottentot” people identified with Sartjie
Baartman. Or maybe all you know is that Ludacris shot his “Pimpin All Over
the World” video out there.
Well, I hope that’s not all you know. Either way, there’s much more to know.
For most of us, even those of us who study African history, our knowledge of
Southern Africa is limited to what has happened within the past 2,000 years. Yet
there was SO much that was happening here over 50,000 years ago!
THE STILL BAY CULTURE (69,000 –
67,000 BC)
Archaeologists working at the Blombos Cave and nearby Sidubu Cave in
Southern Africa have assembled a body of evidence for a culture they’ve named
the “Still Bay” Culture. The people of Still Bay ushered in a wave of
technological advances, including projectile weapons, manufactured jewelry,
surgical tools, and chemical adhesives…71,000 years ago.
These are the modern words, of course, but archaeologists described the
artifacts as stone-tipped wooden spears, shell beads, piercing needles, and the
earliest example of compound glue, used for attaching stone points to the
wooden spears. There are even older examples of glue, such as a 90,000-year-old
find in Israel, but this evidence was the first that allowed for a chemical analysis,
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revealing a compound adhesive made from plant gum and red ochre. The
chemical formula used by the people of Still Bay was strong enough to endure
repeated use in hunting, even by air. If that sounds amazing, it gets even better.
THE HOWIESONS POORT CULTURE
(62,000 – 58,000 BC)
DID YOU KNOW? About two thousand years after it
Archaeologists have found “77,000-year-old evidence emerged, the culture at Still Bay
for preserved plant bedding and the use of insect- basically disappeared. That’s not bad if
repelling plants in a rock shelter in South Africa.” In
other words, our ancestors were making their you consider that most civilizations
mattresses out of plant materials that were don’t last even a thousand years
specifically chosen to keep bugs out of their homes. (especially not nowadays). But after a
There’s also evidence of “medicinal plant use” and
other early science. The scientists report, “This 5,000 year gap following the
 discovery is 50,000 years older than earlier reports of
disappearance of Still Bay, another
preserved bedding and provides a fascinating insight
into the behavioural practices of early modern
culture emerged in the same region.
humans in southern Africa.”
112 Archaeologists call this one the
Howiesons Poort culture.
64,000 years ago, when other Stone Age people were using spears or stone axes,
the people of Howiesons Poort were using a bow and arrow. This was 20,000
years before the bow and arrow caught on for good, showing – as we noted
earlier – that sometimes “inventions” don’t serve enough of a societal need to
become widespread. Knowing this, it’s reasonable to propose that some people
could have been using bows and arrows 120,000 years ago, and we just haven’t
found the evidence yet!
DID YOU KNOW? The evidence from this period in
Archaeologists often have to rely on “clues” to make Sidubu Cave suggests that, in addition
sense of historical evidence. For example, ochre
stains found on the non-cutting edge of stone tools
to using spears and arrows to hunt
were there because these stones were attached to a game, the people of Howiesons Poort
wooden handle. The wooden handles were probably used traps and snares to capture small
smooth, well-shaped, and “painted” with ochre animals. These devices used the same
pigments. The intricate designs on 30,000 year old
ivory handles in Asia suggest that wooden tool knowledge required for the
handles in Africa could have been ornately carved as construction of bows (latent energy
well. stored in bent branches) as well as a
developed knowledge of cords and knots. In other words, their sheep knots
would have put your Scoutmaster to shame.
Another dig from Howiesons Poort turned up a cache of ostrich eggshells
engraved with geometric designs, which Science News said “demonstrates the
existence of a symbolic communication system” around 65,000 years ago. These
artifacts, like the others above, were probably used as a show of skill, and a
means of distinguishing one group, or manufacturer, from another (the “first
brand names”!).
But they also served a clear purpose. These ostrich shells were used as canteens
(complete with carved water-spouts), and probably helped their makers travel
across the dry patches of Africa during migrations, including the one that left
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Africa about 60,000 years ago. As if that wasn’t enough, Howiesons Poort
also had composite weapons. These moon-shaped, “geometric-backed” blades
were sharp on the straight edge and blunt on the curved back. They were
attached to handles using compound glue, now made from a formula of plant
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gum, ochre and fat.
Wait, let’s be clear. The blades were sharp along their entire edge, which meant
there was no room for twine to hold the blade to the handle. That means the
glue had to be as strong as modern-day superglue. To get these results, the mix
of ingredients had to be heated to a very specific temperature, one hot enough
to melt everything together but not so hot that the adhesive became dry or
brittle. Doesn’t sound primitive to me. Scientists have cited the chemistry
required for this glue as evidence of complex thinking long before the cave
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paintings of Europe.
Speaking of which, many of the geometric designs on the blades, canteens, and
shelter walls were made by carving but others were done with pigments,
including ochre. Archaeologists have actually found “ochre pencils” along with
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evidence that ochre was used as body paint. Imagine that. We had pencils and
superglue 60,000 years ago. Scientists have asked, “How could primitive humans
do this?” Good question. Another important question is, “Why did these
humans stop?”
“You would imagine that the technology would continue, but it truly
disappears,” researcher Lucinda Backwell said. But these methods reemerge and
become consistent only much later. For example, Backwell used a microscope to
find that a stone tool was used to whittle pinkie-size bone arrowheads at
Howiesons Poort into highly symmetrical points, a technique still used by some
117
Khoisan people today.
But just as the Still Bay culture disappeared and left a 5,000 year gap in
technology, the sites associated with Howiesons Poort, along with its long-
distance trade routes, were abandoned around 60,000 years ago. And Howiesons
Poort was replaced by a less technologically developed culture! It took 20,000
years for another comparable culture to emerge in that area. So what happened
to the people of Howiesons Poort? And why?
And how did the people of Howiesons Poort and Still Bay become so
technologically advanced to begin with? Researchers agree that these
developments (and their subsequent disappearance) challenge the idea that we
“discovered” our early technologies through the “accumulation of
improvements.” Blackwell and colleagues have commented that the “brain
change” argument doesn’t fit this evidence either:
Such innovations…can hardly be used to support the “classic” out of Africa scenario, which
predicts increasing complexity and accretion of innovations during the MSA [Middle Stone Age],
determined by biological change. Instead, they appear, disappear and re-appear in a way that best
fits a scenario in which historical contingencies and environmental, rather than cognitive, changes
118
are seen as main drivers.
In other words, nature and biology didn’t write our history. WE wrote our
history. Researchers Zenobia Jacobs and Richard Roberts agree that
environmental change wasn’t as significant as social change. Although it’s hard
to determine “historical contingencies” in a period so remote, Jacobs and
Roberts used genetic data to argue that these “leaps forward” were the
byproduct of the development of the African social network (not Facebook, but
human communities). In other word: small bands of people coming together to
become a culture. Jacobs and Roberts explain:
The SB [Still Bay Culture] may reflect an episode of population expansion of the L3
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haplogroup in southern Africa, during which social networks promoted the rapid transmission
of this advance in technological sophistication and florescence of symbolic behavior throughout
the region. This suite of behavioral changes may have bestowed a competitive advantage on
hunter-gatherer communities, perhaps by promoting group coordination and cohesion or by
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enhancing technological efficiency and economic productivity.
Just as our coming together resulted in a highly advanced culture, our growing
apart signalled its demise:
The end of the SB represents the disintegration of this social network, owing to population
contractions and isolations…Cultural innovations are less likely to survive or prosper among
small and solitary social groups. Connections were not re-established until the start of the HP
[Howiesons Poort culture], five millennia later, when local populations again expanded, but this
time in association with a different technological innovation (backed blades). The demise of the
HP reflects the final collapse of this integrated, sub-continental network of hunter-gatherer
communities, and their return to a number of geographically isolated and genetically distinct
populations. Similarly sophisticated stone-tool technology did not reappear until the advent of
the Later Stone Age, about 40,000 years ago, when there is evidence for renewed genetic
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admixture in the sub-Saharan mtDNA pool.
That last line is important. It’s basically saying we didn’t get busy like Howiesons
Poort again, until we got some new blood in our community. When more
people come together, culture revives.
DID YOU KNOW? But what happened to the people who
In Rhino Cave in Botswana, archaeologists Sheila founded Howiesons Poort? Jacobs and
Coulson and Nick Walker claim to have found a Roberts note that a social network
massive stone carved to resemble a giant python,
with features such as an eye, mouth, and several collapse would explain the end of long-
hundred grooves cut to resemble scales along the distance trade, but not the
sides of the 20 foot-long, 6.5 foot tall sculpture. The abandonment of the caves and rock
researchers also discovered fine quartz flakes in the
cave’s crevices (possibly meant to reflect light) and shelters where people spent much of
spearheads identical to those found elsewhere in their time.
Botswana, which had been dated to 77,000 years Could the technologically advanced
ago. However, this is a highly disputed claim, and
such large stone constructions don’t fit the pattern of people of the Howiesons Port culture
cultures that lived this long ago. If it was truly a simply have “packed up” their
“python cave,” it was an anomaly. canteens and hunting tools and headed
northeast to join the confederation of people who tackled the Neanderthals and
left Africa around 60,000 years ago? It’s certainly possible.
For one thing, we know that the L3 haplogroup carried by the people of Still
Bay and Howiesons Poort is the one who left Africa. For another, we know that
many of the innovations developed by Howiesons Poort don’t emerge again
until we find them in Asia, Europe, and North America. As Jacobs and
colleagues noted in another paper:
The cause of these two bursts of technological innovation [SB and HP], closely spaced yet
separated in time, remains an enigma, as does the reason for their disappearance. But,
intriguingly, both fall within the genetic bottleneck that occurred 80 to 60,000 years ago and the
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subsequent expansions of modern human populations within and out of Africa.
Perhaps we are all the descendants of the builders of Howiesons Poort. They
seemed like some smart brothers and sisters, definitely some ancestors worth
looking up to.
WHY IS SOUTHERN AFRICA SO
IMPORTANT?
According to archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood:
What has been suggested up until now is that modern human behavior was a very late
occurrence…that though people were anatomically modern in Africa from about 150,000 to
100,000 years ago, they remained behaviorally non-modern until about 40,000 or 50,000 years
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ago, when they suddenly changed and then moved into Europe and elsewhere.
That is, we didn’t become fully human until we became Europeans. Sound
familiar? Well, thanks to the work of Henshilwood and others, we’re now
learning just how untrue that is.
Henshilwood’s team found specialized bone tools and engraved red ochre in
South Africa’s Blombos Cave, dating back to at least 70,000 years ago. “The
implications are that there was modern human behavior in Africa about 35,000
years before Europe,” said Henshilwood. Not long after this, another dig in the
same cave turned up 75,000-year-old stone tools made by pressure flaking, a
process of finely trimming the edges of a finished stone tool heated in a forge,
using a bone point hard enough to remove thin slices of rock. Before this find
the oldest evidence of humans using the technique was dated to only 20,000
years ago in Europe’s Solutrean culture and among some prehistoric Native
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American groups.
But here’s what’s even more interesting: Stone Age tool expert John Shea told
Science News he didn’t think pressure flaking made these tools “better” than older
models. Shea proposed that Blombos tool makers probably employed this
technique to advertise their skill or to denote users’ social identity.
Basically, a way to flex one’s creative muscles and distinguish one nation from
another. Again, like an early brand name.
But Shea agreed with the study authors that humans were using creative
techniques like pressure flaking much further back than they’d been getting
credit for, and suggested that the method may even date back to 100,000 years
ago, suggesting that this technique originated in Africa before it spread
elsewhere. And it certainly may date back that far, or even further, considering
that we have heat-treated stone blades in South Africa from 164,000 years
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ago.
These early dates suggest that some traditions and techniques emerged and
diffused through early human cultures gradually, not all at once. The scientists
conclude:
The finding fits with the idea that symbolic art, rituals and other forms of modern human
behavior developed gradually over hundreds of thousands of years, not in a burst of cultural
innovation marked by cave paintings and other creations that appeared after 50,000 years ago in
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Western Europe.
In other words, as Maury Povich would say, “Europe, you are not the father (of
civilization).”
 WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE BIG CITIES?
While there’s certainly more to be found in future digs in southern Africa, what
we won’t find is a massive prehistoric population explosion that forced the
construction of large metropolitan cities. In fact, people native to the area, like
the San, took great efforts not to disturb the natural ecology of their homeland.
So, while southern complexes like those found at the Great Zimbabwe Ruins
(which we’ll discuss a little later) are indeed fantastic, it’s important to keep in
mind that those structures were built within the past 2,000 years by the
pastoralist Bantu people who came after the native Khoisan peoples.
IS CITY LIFE BETTER?
Is urbanization an “advance”? It makes sense that large, dense populations will
require agriculture to provide adequate food supplies, which will also lead to city
planning, governmental regulation, stratification of society (who’s on top and
who’s at the bottom), boundary demarcation (land ownership), legal codification
and a number of other civic features that all relate to the questions of “Who is in
charge here?” and “Who owns what?”
But when our populations grew so large that we transitioned to agriculture as a
response to the scarcity of natural food sources, is that progress? There’s
nothing wrong with ceasing to migrate/relocate and settling down to build a
home (it had to happen at some point), but that doesn’t mean the group who
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settled was “better” than those who chose not to.
Urbanization creates a number of complications we didn’t have before. In
addition to the dangers of social stratification (which can seriously magnify pre-
existing conflicts between groups of people who now have to share a city),
urbanization also increases incidence of disease, depletion of natural resources,
and problematic changes to the natural environment.
FIXING THE SIDE EFFECTS OF CITIES
Urbanization can actually affect the weather, creating stronger summer storms
through “heat islands” pumping hot air into the lower atmosphere, with each
new road and building providing dark surfaces to soak up midday heat. As cities
grow, this can cause more flooding and greater storms. Coastal areas and desert
areas are both affected.
To counteract this, people can plant more trees, use light colored materials for
the surfaces of building materials, build more underground dwellings, and create
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fractally organized city plans that more evenly distribute heat and energy.
These are solutions modern society is having a hard time implementing today
(even though we are in an environmental crisis), yet these methods were in use
throughout our ancient civilizations!
You’ll see countless examples of ingenious city planning as you read on, but
you’ll also see examples where excessive construction and consumption of
resources led to the downfall of societies already weakened by internal conflict
between competing factions. History tells us that the best way is to simply “live
off the land” (or use temporary, organic materials like thatched huts) and to split
up large populations when groups get too large for the local ecosystem…which
is what we were doing even before then.
BUT WE HAD SOME AMAZING CITIES,
RIGHT?
I know, I know, you want to hear about the fantastic urban complexes with
giant temples and 50-ton monuments erected using science that modern people
can’t wrap their minds around. I understand.
And we’ll get to that. But I hope that you now understand that, not only were
we doing “just fine” before we transitioned to the cultural patterns we normally
associated with “modern civilization,” we’ve also been doing things that
resemble modern civilization far longer than most people think as well.
An easy way to look at all this is to say that – when our circumstances called for
it – we’ve built “urban” societies (whether this was 4,000 or 40,000 years ago),
and when our circumstances allowed for a more naturalistic approach, we went
in THAT direction instead (up to as recently as the modern day).
Typically, we didn’t NEED cities until a site’s population grew to great
numbers. So most of the big cities we’ll discuss will come at the end of this
book’s chronology. But many of the techniques and sciences employed by these
civilizations can be found thousands (even millions) of years prior.
Either way, none of these things happened instantly. Everything has a cause and
effect, so we’ve got to understand the millions of years of history that led up to
the developments that happened within the past 10,000 years.
It is only by doing so that we can equip our minds to understand why things are
the way they are now, and to be able to see into the future of what’s coming
10,000 years down the line. Offering you anything less would be uncivilized.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO DATING TECHNIQUES
No, we don’t mean THOSE kinds of dating techniques. There’s other books
for that. We’re talking about the methods that scientists use to figure out how
old something is. Sounds boring, but pay attention because there’s a quiz at the
end. And if you read carefully, you’ll have one more tool to avoid being
suckered by phony claims about ancient things. Warning: Technical reading
ahead.
Scientific dating methods typically consist of measuring a naturally occurring
radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates. The decay
rate is known as the half-life. Here’s how it works with the most well-known
example, C-14 dating, also known as radiocarbon dating: An organism acquires
carbon during its lifetime. Plants acquire it through photosynthesis, and animals
acquire it from consumption of plants and other animals. When an organism
dies, it ceases to take in new carbon-14, and the existing isotope decays with a
characteristic half-life (5730 years). The proportion of carbon-14 left when the
remains of the organism are examined provides an indication of the time
elapsed since its death. Because of its short half-life, the carbon-14 dating limit
lies at only 58,000 to 62,000 years. Also, C-14 is no longer the preferred dating
method, because C-14 levels can be thrown off by external factors, making it
less reliable than newer methods.
Other radiometric techniques, using isotopes with longer half-lifes, offer long
dating limits. Other common methods include: TL (thermoluminescence)
dating, which is best for dating ceramics within a range of about 5,000 years ago
to 1 million years ago); U-series (uranium series) dating, which has an upper age
limit of a little over 500,000 years and is best for coral; and ESR (electron spin
resonance) dating, which is best for dating teeth from up to 2 million years ago.
There are many other techniques relying on different isotopes, and scientists
often use two different methods to make sure they’re accurate. They’ll also
incorporate other methods like studying the stratigraphy of the soil where
something is found to help corroborate those dates.
What these techniques have in common is that they rely on the presence of a
particular element to work. If that element isn’t present – for example if it’s a
brick with nothing organic on it – you can’t use the technique. In the case of
the brick, you won’t be able to use C-14, because there’s no carbon to date. But
you might be able to use the stratigraphy of the soil where it was found, along
with TL dating to determine when the brick was fired.
 WHY SHOULD THIS MATTER TO YOU?
Why? Because the above techniques are key words to look for when you
evaluate anyone’s claim about how “super old” something is.
Case in point, there’s a white guy named Michael Tellinger claiming there’s
evidence of a 200,000 year old civilization in South Africa. He’s got all these
pictures of stone circles that he claims are the remains. Seems fantastic right?
And it IS in Africa, right? Wrong. If you read further into his claims, he’s only
using this “evidence” to point to alien intervention. He’s not giving credit to
any Black civilization builders. He’s saying aliens put Black people to work to
build this stuff 200,000 years ago, and that’s how they “jump-started” the
modern human race. But what about those stone circles?
Well, here’s where you ask what dating techniques he used. And his answer?
NONE. He claims that you can’t effectively date stones, but – if you look
above – you know that’s not true. There are plenty of different ways to come
up with at least SOME idea of a date. But he’s not going to do that, because
then it would show that those stone circles are actually just cattle kraals used by
Bantu herdsman since the 1500s.
And he’s got a book to sell. A few actually, primarily to people who want that
“fantastic” Black history – even if it’s not based in any real evidence (only to
find out he gives all credit to aliens instead of Africans). To be sure, the Black
people who actually live in that area would laugh if they heard those cattle pens
were evidence of an ancient civilization. Yet, for those of us here who don’t
know better, we need to know the methodology by which we can evaluate a
claim. Or else we keep reposting garbage like that online and buying up books
filled with lies.
 THE DESTRUCTION OF CENTRAL AFRICA
Like the Amazon rainforest, Europeans have never thought of Central Africa as
a “significant” place in world affairs. For the most part, they’ve gone into
Central Africa to obtain resources, and have never stayed too long or made it
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too deep into the interior to find out anything more.
By the time a few anthropologists came to Central Africa, the slave raiders had
wreaked havoc and left things a mess. When they weren’t kidnapping outright,
they escalated conflicts between neighboring people into full-fledged wars and
later genocides, providing firearms to whoever provided them slaves (thereby
making things worse and worse). In 1901, economic sociologist Karl Bücher
reported on the agricultural societies that were left in ruins:
Travellers have often described the deep impression made upon them when, on coming out of
the dreary primeval forest, they happened suddenly upon the well-attended fields of the natives.
In the more thickly populated parts of Africa these fields often stretch for many a mile, and the
assiduous care of the Negro women shines in all the brighter light when we consider the
insecurity of life, the constant feuds and pillages, in which no one knows whether he will in the
end be able to harvest what he has sown. Livingstone gives somewhere a graphic description of
the devastations wrought by slave hunts; the people were lying about slain, the dwellings were
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demolished; in the fields, however, the grain was ripening and there was none to harvest it.
At the same time that they raided for slaves and laid these villages to waste, they
ravaged the people with biological warfare. Yes, biological warfare.
You see, wherever Europeans went, they brought a TON of diseases, such as
syphilis, influenza, smallpox, measles, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. Most of the
people they encountered had never had such diseases. So they had no resistance
to these illnesses and began dying rapidly. This happened in the Americas,
Australia, East Africa, South Africa, Southern Asia, East Asia, the Pacific
Islands, you name it.
In Central Africa, they destabilized the region so heavily that it has taken
centuries to recover. But when Europeans first came into the area, they reported
highly sophisticated nation-states, often with governmental procedures they did
not fully understand. Chancellor Williams’ The Destruction of Black Civilization is
especially insightful in this regard.
These Europeans did not, however, have any difficulty understanding the wealth
these people enjoyed. As Robert Bailey notes in the 365 Days of Real Black History
Calendar: “A 16th century traveler visited the central African kingdom of Kanem-
Borno and commented that even the Emperor’s dogs had “chains of the finest
gold.”
Naturally, it wasn’t long before problems ensued. Central Africa was soon
engulfed in intertribal warfare, with kingdoms competing to trade prisoners of
war for guns and ammunition to defend themselves against neighboring
kingdoms doing the same thing. Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped
Africa is especially insightful in this regard.
Before long, Central Africa was a shadow of its former self. When some of us
think of how dense the “jungle” growth is in Central (and West) Africa, it would
behoove us to consider that many of these trees were actually planted as
“screens” and defensive fortifications against slave raiders. This fact – detailed
in an article titled “Pre-Colonial Plant Systems of Defense” in The World Atlas of
Archaeology – is just a glimpse into the advanced ecological knowledge held by
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the people of this region.
We can only imagine what kind of sciences they’d mastered in the ancient past.
Actually, we don’t have to imagine. We only have to research. Let’s begin.
 ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION IN CENTRAL AFRICA
The forests of equatorial Africa are totally ignored by most historical scholars.
Either they’re looking at East Africa for the origins of man, or Northeast Africa
(Egypt) for the origins of civilization. A few might be talking about more recent
“pre-colonial” kingdoms in the West and South. And that’s IF they’re looking at
Africa at all! Needless to say, the studies of prehistoric Central Africa are limited,
to say the least. But what HAS been found is highly important, because it
rewrites much of the way we interpret “progress” and “civilization.”
THE LUPEMBAN AND SANGOAN
CULTURES
(300,000 – 10,000 BC)
Studies conducted on archaeological sites in Central Africa show that the
hunter-gather communities that occupied the region had two primary
technological traditions: (a) the Lupemban Culture, and (b) the Sangoan Culture.
Though the Lupemban culture was once dated between 30,000 and 12,000 BC,
it’s now recognized as far older, with possible dates of 300,000 BC in Zambia
132 133
and Kenya. The Sangoan Culture has proven to be nearly as old. Think
about that. We don’t even have human remains that old (yet). This means these
traditions literally are older than anything else we know about humanity. And
don’t think that having the same culture for so long is a sign of stagnation!
Instead of signifying a standstill, the continuity of these traditions demonstrates,
as one study notes:
[T]he inherent flexibility and capability of exploiting a variety of environments enabled the
hunter-gatherer communities to face and adapt to environmental changes regardless of stone
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technology.
In other words, the people of Central Africa employed a way of life that worked
for nearly 300,000 years. These traditions “enhanced rather than hampered
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human occupation in the area.”
Renowned archaeologist Charles Thurstan Shaw proposed that the origins of
African agriculture could be traced back to a proto-agricultural phase that once
covered much of West Africa. He suggested this transitional period may have
begun among Sangoan hunter-gatherers, who probably resembled present-day
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pygmies in appearance and lifestyle. This seems feasible, since, before the
arrival of taller people in Central, West, and Southern Africa, these regions were
populated by people who looked like or were closely related to pygmy people
such as the Ba Aka of the Western Central African Republic and Northwest
Congo.
WHO WERE THESE PEOPLE?
We’ll get deep into the history of so-called “pygmy” people in the next chapter.
For now, it is important to note that the ancestors of modern humans
developed near East Africa area, where Ba Mbuti people like the Efé and the
Hadzabe of Tanzania still carry the original L1 haplotype. At several points in
the distant past, the Sahara Desert area was lush and green, allowing easy
migration along its southern border. This is when people from the Eastern
Congo moved to the Western Congo.
Thus the Mbenga people of the west (such as the Ba Aka of the Northwest
Congo) also carry the L1 haplotype, being direct descendants of these first
modern humans. All of these people – the Mbuti and Mbenga alike – are known
to anthropologists as “pygmies” because they are human communities where
adult men do not grow more than five feet tall. We’ll explain the reasons for
these unique qualities in the coming chapter.
Getting back to Central Africa, the microliths used by the Shum Laka people of
Central Africa (about 30,000 years ago) may have been so small because their
users were small. What we know is that Sangoan hunter-gatherers gradually
moved towards agriculture by, at first, employing microlith technology to
protect fields of wild grains and, later, making clearings for wild yams and oil
137 138
palms. By 12,000 years ago, the Sangoan people were using hoes. No, not
like that.
In other words, the ancestors of people like the Aka introduced the proto-
agricultural phase to West Africa long before the Bantu arrived. They practiced
management of wild resources and moderate levels of cultivate, while the Bantu
people who came later would modify those techniques to begin full-fledged
farming.
THE SHUM LAKA CULTURE
(35,000 – 5,000 BC)
Another study, focusing on the Shum Laka Culture in northwestern Cameroon
(as well as regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo), found that the
microlithic quartz tradition used there for 30,000 years was “appropriate for the
exploitation of a wide variety of environmental settings” and this flexibility
represented “an adequate technological response to the environmental changes
in Central Africa at the end of the Pleistocene.”
Basically meaning that there’s a REASON why Africans of prehistoric times
weren’t building massive stone complexes 20,000 years ago. They didn’t need
them! There were, instead, employing the appropriate tools to make the most
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effective use of their ever-changing environment.
After twenty millennia of microlithic tradition in the Shum Laka region, things
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changed. Around 5000 BC onwards, a new culture, with macrolithic tools,
polishing and pottery, slowly developed. By 2000 BC, an industry with
sophisticated axes, blades, and pottery had emerged. With a striking
technological continuity, this culture survived throughout the Iron Age.
Increasing importance and diversity of trees exploited through the Stone to
Metal Age and the Iron Age suggests they knew the science of arboriculture, or
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the cultivation and management of trees and larger plant life.
DID YOU KNOW? At some point, the Niger-Congo
At Katanda, a region in northeastern Zaïre (now proto-agriculturalists surpassed all their
Congo), they found a finely wrought series of harpoon
points, all elaborately polished and barbed. Also
neighbors in the practice of African
uncovered was an equally well crafted dagger. The agriculture and taught the science
discoveries suggested the existence of an early throughout Africa. No matter who
aquatic or fishing based culture over 90,000 years contributed to its development, we
142
old. In one of these prehistoric fishing communities, know that it was the work of Black
in the Ishango region of Zaïre (now called Congo)
near Lake Edward, archaeologists discovered one of Africans who spoke Niger-Congo
the earliest artifacts representing substantial languages. And we know that it is at
mathematical knowledge dating back at least 20,000 the cradle of the Niger-Congo
years. This item, known as the Ishango bone tool,
was actually more recent than a similar mathematical language family where we find the
tool found in present-day Swaziland, dated to 35,000 roots of the Bantu people.
BC. By 2000 BC, the Niger-Congo people
who hit the northern edge of Central Africa (in what is today eastern Nigeria
and Cameroon) struck out in two different directions. Some skirted the forest
and continued eastwards until arriving near the Sudanic Nile in Kordofan,
developing a language family known as Niger-Congo.
Others pushed deep into the forests of southern Cameroon to begin what is
now known as the great Bantu migration. The ones who went south developed a
language family known as Benue-Congo, which covers the 300-plus Bantu
languages spread across Africa today. Partly due to their adoption of agriculture,
the Bantu people spread quickly.
DID YOU KNOW? By 300 BC, Bantu speakers were all
When the Great Zimbabwe ruins were “discovered” over the place. Once they acquired the
 by Europeans in the late 1800s, the stone palace –
knowledge of smelting iron from their
built at a massive scale (spanning 1,780 acres)
relatives in Meroe to the east and the
without the use of mortar – was so amazing it turned
Nok people of Nigeria to the west
the archaeological world upside down. In fact, the
(where such technology had been
white government of Rhodesia (the old name for
Zimbabwe) attempted to force archaeologists to deny
improving for centuries), Bantu
that it was built by Black people. Great Zimbabwe has
migration became more frequent, and
since been adopted as a national monument by the
branched out in several directions,
Zimbabwean government, with the modern state
being named after it. The word “Great” distinguishes
possibly due to a rapidly growing
the site from over 200 smaller ruins, known as
population assisted by improved
Zimbabwes, spread across southern Africa, such as
Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in technology.
Mozambique, also with monumental, mortarless
The Bantu who reached the
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walls. Great Zimbabwe is the largest of them.
Zimbabwean plateau in the 11th
century AD built massive fortifications and stone structures that are now
regarded as a World Heritage Site, known as Great Zimbabwe. These
monuments were constructed entirely from stone (no mortar!) and built to such
fantastic dimensions that European explorers claimed they must have been built
by foreigners (either aliens or other Europeans).
And these Bantu didn’t just spread into unpopulated territory. They encountered
older populations, such as the Khoisan of southern Africa. By the 15th century,
the Bantu – with their iron weapons – had “extinguished or absorbed” nearly all
of the indigenous people they encountered, except for the Khoisan people living
in the Kalahari and Namib deserts to the southwest. In West Africa, Bantu
people built massive empires that – until the 1400s – rivaled any European
nation, except perhaps those under Moorish rule. Yet, as we know, many of the
Moors who introduced civilization to Spain and Italy were themselves Bantu
people united under the flag of Islam. The Bantu people of West Africa made
up the bulk of those Africans kidnapped and sold during the European slave
trade.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO GEOGRAPHY
A lot of this book will be confusing if you don’t have a grasp of basic
geography. Considering that one-third of Americans can’t identify the location
of the USA on a world map without those helpful boundary lines, you
shouldn’t feel too bad if you don’t where Tunisia is. But have you ever noticed
how the same people who can’t pick out Darfur, Iran, North Korea, or Libya
on a map will be the first ones telling you about why those are important
places – now that some website or media personality told them so?
It’s my personal opinion that we should become well acquainted with our own
communities, and then progressively expand outward in our worldview, until
we can understand the universe. Yet many of us prefer to try to move in the
other direction. It just doesn’t make sense to me, to try to speak on the 12th
planet in the 84th galaxy when you don’t know a damn thing about what’s
happening in your own city, much less the countries next door. But I digress. I
understand that geography, especially in the context of this book, can be
tough, because we’re talking about ancient places that aren’t known by those
names anymore.
For example, ancient Nubia was situated in the region now known as northern
Sudan and southern Egypt. And, over time, it’s been known by tons of names
besides Nubia, as well as many different cultures and civilizations. But if I
write, “Over 4500 years ago, the people of Western Anatolia, which is situated
in modern-day Turkey, did long-distance trade with the people of the Indus
Valley,” you’re missing a vital piece of the picture if you don’t know just how
far Turkey is from India. It’s over 2500 miles!
To make things easier, we’ve included maps wherever possible. We’ve also
included some blank maps, so that you can fill them in yourself with
information from the book. And, as always, if we don’t have the visual
reference you need, there’s a good chance you can find what you’re looking for
online or at the library.
 ART AND CULTURE IN NORTHERN AFRICA
Almost half a million years ago, our ancestors in Morocco were crafting
sculptures and producing artwork. Of these, we have one surviving example, the
Tan-Tan Venus figurine, which dates back to between 300,000 and 500,000
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years ago. Human remains are found in the area dating back to 160,000 years
ago. Later in the region, we find the world’s first jewelry – 82,000 years old.
Clearly, northern Africa was not a barren desert. In fact, North Africa and the
Sahara Desert were once home to thriving sites of prehistoric Black civilization.
As you may remember from The Science of Self, Volume One, the Sahara – currently
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the world’s largest hot desert – was not always a desert. For hundreds of
thousands of years, climate changes on Earth have shifted the Sahara from
desert to fertile soil and back to desert again. During periods of a wet or “Green
Sahara”, the Sahara (along with Arabia) become grassland and was full of life.
Proof of this can be found in the human settlements that once occupied the
area, cave paintings depicting animals that haven’t been in the Sahara for over
20,000 years, and traces of plant and animal life that were once everywhere.
In fact, the Nile River – currently the longest river in the world – was once even
longer, because the present-day Nile is relatively new, having been around for
only 30,000 years. Before that, underground imaging reveals that at least four
different Niles (the first being over 5 million years old) flowed through Africa,
and then disappeared. At least one of these rivers, much longer than the
present-day Nile, travelled through the Sahara.
About 2 million years ago, this river dried up and the Sahara became a desert.
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This is when (and apparently why) Homo erectus left Africa. Then the Sahara
became green again, and life returned. This is the era that produced the Tassili
cave paintings and other elements of prehistoric civilization that are being dug
up in the Sahara today.
Then it happened again. The tilt of the Earth’s axis changed and the Sahara
region began receiving less rain. Rainfall levels were critically low by 7,200 years
ago, but people continued making use of local resources. This would only make
things worse. This was the last time the Sahara was rich, fertile, and heavily
populated. Settlements survived in the Sahara until its final desertification
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around 3,500 BC.
In 1926, Black historian Drusilla Dunjee Houston wrote:
The Nubo-Egyptian desert was once abundantly watered and a well timbered region. With the
exclusion of the narrow Nile valley, all of this is generally a barren waste today. Geology reveals
 that in the primitive ages, this country had a moist climate like the Congo basin; but these
conditions prevailed in remote geological times, probably before the creation of the delta. The
changes that turned the Sahara into a burning waste in time made Upper Egypt dry and torrid.
Keane describes its climate as often fatal to all but full blooded natives. Under those brazen skies
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the children of even Euro-African half castes seldom survive after the tenth or twelfth year.
DID YOU KNOW? During all of these fertile periods, the
Interested in learning more about prehistoric cultures people of this region were Black, yet
in Africa? Hit Wikipedia and search for the following
cultures: Wiltonian, Capsian, Magosian, Ibero-
they were also diverse. They came
Maurisian, Sangoan, Aterian, Lupemban, Sebilian, from many places, for many different
Stillbay, Micoquien, Mousteroid, Halfan, Acheulean, reasons. Like we’ve already noted
and Oldowan. You can also search for the category about Africa in general, north Africa
“African archaeology.”
was linguistically, physically,
genetically, and culturally diverse. This is why Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures
149
across northern Africa, from the Nile Valley to the Maghreb, show many
similarities, but also great diversity.
Many of these sites haven’t been dug up because of the forbidding desert
climate of the Sahara. But it’s not a total mystery. For example, in the mountains
of Algeria, you’ll find some of the most important of prehistoric cave art in the
world. Some of these paintings, depicting Black people hunting and partying, are
over 13,000 years old. Evidence from the Tassili Mountains suggests that the
people of the Sahara influenced the cultures of both the Nile Valley and of West
Africa. They may have developed the science of pastoralism, in the form of
domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle.
DID YOU KNOW? You see, cows didn’t start out as cows.
A recent discovery of a prehistoric species of bull in They started out as giant beasts known
Eritrea suggests that we had established
relationships with cattle over a million years ago. The
as aurochs. Bos africanus was a species
bull, named Bos Buiaensis, is a “missing link” of aurochs, so big its curved horns
between modern cattle and their African ancestors. were up to three feet long! Julius
Although there is no evidence that early hominids Caesar described the aurochs of
were actually herding early cattle 2.5 million years
ago, we were definitely hunting them. “One way or Europe in The Gallic Wars:
the other, hominids are associated with these These are a little below the elephant in size,
creatures,” said Sandra Olsen, curator of and of the appearance, color, and shape of a
anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural bull. Their strength and speed are
History in Pittsburgh. There are even similarities extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild
between the newfound Bos and depictions of bulls in beast which they have espied. These the
ancient petroglyphs (rock art) found in western Saudi Germans take with much pains in pits and kill
Arabia – along the route we took out of Africa. The 151
them.
ancient pictures also include depictions of some of
the other animals known to have left Africa by the Just picture that! Given this passage,
same route: lions, cheetahs and hyena, she said. it’s no surprise that the aurochs went
Olsen notes that several other animals, including extinct in Europe, where they were
 horses, can be traced back to African origins, and
never domesticated. On the other
connects with prehistoric African people. “We’ve seen
hand, our ancestors – who had been
over and over again,” she said, “that these are very
long relationships.”
150 tracking and hunting the Bos across
Africa for over a million years – were
not only able to domesticate these giant beasts into cattle, but to herd them
from the Sahara to the Horn of Africa.
They also used the science of cattle breeding to introduce domestic cattle to the
Near East, then into Europe, and as far east as ancient India and China. In other
words, all the cattle on the planet today can be traced back to the hands of our
ancestors.
Around 4,500 BC migrations from the drying Sahara brought diverse groups of
Neolithic Africans into the Nile Valley, bringing with them the sciences of
agriculture, ceramics, and animal domestication. The population that resulted
from this cultural and genetic mixing developed a social hierarchy which would
later give rise to the dynasties of ancient Egypt.
Still in the Sahara region, but further east, there is Nabta Playa, an important
center of the Neolithic world. It is situated just to the west of the Nile Valley.
When their land started becoming desert, Saharan people, including those in
Nabta Playa, moved east to the Nile Valley. Other Saharans went west. Between
10,000 and 7,000 years ago, western Africa was becoming increasingly favorable
to human settlement. In Part Two, we’ll tell the story of the Neolithic Sahara,
Nabta Playa, the formation of Nile Valley civilization, and the story of West
Africa.
A UICK NOTE ON PAN-AFRICANISM
What’s better than a few intelligent people sharing a common cause and collective identity? How
about a million? Ten million? A billion? It can happen.
One of the goals of this book is to provide readers, educators, and activists with a substantial
“database” of historical information that supports the premises of Pan-Africanism and other
movements to unify the Global Diaspora of Original People. In other words, we’re working to
show people how and why they should come together.
There are many such movements, each of them seeking to bring together diverse groups of
people under a single banner and shared platform. Some are focused on the indigenous people
of the Americas (like the American Indian Movement), while others have concentrated on a
unified front for the Dalits and “tribal” people in India (like the Adivasi movement).
In Africa, leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, and Muammar Gaddhafi sought to
bring together African people under the banner of Pan-Afrikanism. Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X
and others in the West have attempted to bridge the gap between Blacks in the Americas and in
Africa. Naturally, all of these movements have been met by considerable resistance.
There have also been movements and organizations dedicated to bringing together Africans and
Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, and Africans and Native Americans. Marcus Garvey, W.E.B.
Du Bois, Elijah Muhammad, Paul Robeson, Robert F. Williams, Huey P. Newton, and several
others worked to make such unions a reality. It is also our contention that the world cannot
change until Original People come together and confront the problem that oppresses and
dehumanizes us all.
However, we also understand that unity begins best at a local level. The word community bears
testament to this fact. It makes sense that African nations should seek solidarity in the face of
continued Western imperialism, puppet governments, and manufactured conflicts. It makes
sense that Blacks in the Diaspora would first seek to connect with their most immediate kin in
Africa. Especially when there are African nations anxiously awaiting African-American investment!
They WANT you to come back.
But there are others who will attempt to bridge the divide between the Black and Latino
communities in America. Or who will attempt to ensure that modern Chinese commitments to
African prosperity are honored as promised. Or who will introduce the struggles of the Black
people of Papua to those of us who are unaware in the U.S. Or who will work to inspire the dark-
skinned people of the Middle East to align with their neighbors in Africa. These are all important
causes. I am soundly convinced that the world will not change until the Original People of the
world reach a critical mass.
Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. It only takes a few. As Wesley John Gaines wrote in
The Negro and the White Man in 1897, “No man can estimate the influence even of a few
cultured, intellectual men.” Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book The Tipping Point that a small
minority of influential people – as few as 5% – can set off a tidal wave of change.
These changes are rarely political nor are they institutionalized or organized. They are cultural
movements that spread among people with the efficiency and reproduction rate of a virus.
Except in this case, what’s spreading is the cure. When the idea of Pan-Afrikanism spread
through Africa and Black America, it infected the hearts and minds of millions of people who had
– just yesterday – been under the spell of European colonialism.
The shackles may not have broken overnight, but the process of change had begun. Today,
Original People are not as deeply asleep as you may think. The seeds of rebellion remain. The
desire for unity remains. The want for awakening remains. We are now what we were then, and
we can become all that we were meant to be. It’s only a matter of providing our people with the
spark that sets them in motion, and the tools to make these movements effective. This book is
part of our contribution to that process. Please help us spread the word.
THE JOURNEY OF MAN
EVERY SQUARE INCH OF THE PLANET
“I only made passing reference in the work to Blacks
scattered outside of Africa over the world, not from the slave
trade, but from dispersions that began in prehistory. This fact
alone indicates the great tasks of future scholarship on the
real history of the race. We are actually just on the threshold,
gathering up some important missing fragments. The biggest
jobs are still ahead.” – Chancellor Williams, The
Destruction of Black Civilization
If you were alive 100,000 years ago, what could cause you to leave your
homeland? You could found yourself in conflict you’re your community, and
decide to leave, taking your family and followers with you, ready to start anew
somewhere else. Or a rapidly changing climate could turn your pristine paradise
into a desolate desert (or a flooded valley), forcing your community to relocate
while others stayed behind. A more powerful group of people could even
expand their territory, encroaching on yours, until ultimately you find yourself
living on the fringes of your old stomping grounds. Or you simply find your
homeland becoming overpopulated, and decide you need to find somewhere
less populated to expand your family.
And these are exactly the kinds of things that happened to our ancestors. In this
chapter, we’ll explore the human migrations that carried our ancestors across the
world, from East Africa to Easter Island, from the Nile Valley to northern
Britain, and from Japan to Peru. These were the journeys of Black people, the
foundational people of all the world’s oldest cultures and civilizations.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
Why we “explored” the world instead of remaining in Africa.
How genetics can help us understand the paths our ancestors took.
Why the world’s oldest genetic communities are under attack.
The first human “headquarters” established when humans began expanding out of
Africa.
Why our ancestors left the “root of civilization” to settle Asia and Europe.
 WHY DID WE EXPLORE THE WORLD?
Before we get into the “journey of man,” let’s get one thing clear: We didn’t
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travel the globe to “explore” like Europeans did. Original People, because we
have always understood the fractal nature of the physical world, didn’t get
excited about the “world beyond” because we knew it would be very much like
the world within.
Instead, we have typically migrated for one of two reasons: (1) social pressures
or (2) environmental pressures.
By environmental pressures, what we mean is either not enough food for all the
people currently in a region or some sort of environmental change or disaster
that forces us to relocate.
By social pressures, we can mean a variety of things, from growing intergroup
conflicts because of increased group size, changes in culture that compel one
group to ostracize the other, and a variety of other disputes that lead to people
leaving an area for greener pastures.
As Nicholas Wade notes, our ancestors were “expanding into new territory as
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communities split, not exploring for the sake of adventure.” Almost every
time a successful settlement grew too large, there was a split. Some people
stayed, some left. But everyone knew that too many people in one place could
not continue foraging for the same food. Of course, not all splits were amicable.
Among hunter-gatherers, larger groups require people to work harder to bring
in food, so disputes were more likely to break out in large camps than in small
154
camps. Sounds familiar. Nicholas Wade adds:
Because !Kung [San] groups are strictly egalitarian, there is no authority to resolve conflicts and
keep order. !Kung groups do have leaders, but they are informal, with no authority other than
personal persuasion. The usual method of expressing disagreement is to vote with one’s feet and
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leave camp along with one’s family and followers.

WHEN AND WHY WE EXPANDED BEYOND

AFRICA
As we explained in Volume One, we don’t know exactly when the first Homo
sapiens emerged in East Africa, but we can be certain that it was no later than
200,000 years ago. We also know that we split into many tiny, separate bands
that developed unique genetic lineages and communities, making Africa the
most genetically, phenotypically, linguistically, and culturally diverse place in the
world.
Population splits are typical of human communities. Our lineages have diverged,
evolved independently, and then met again countless times. To understand these
population splits, and how we can track the movement of all the different
groups that developed, we need to understand the science of human genetics.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS
As a child, you may have wondered how your physical features turned out the
way they did. Or maybe you have an inherited condition that can’t be seen on
the outside. These matters all relate to the study of genetics. A major branch of
biology, genetics is the science of genes, heredity and variation in organisms.
I used to hear elder Five Percenters say the book of Genesis is the “Book of
Genetics” or “Genesis is where the ‘genes is.’” It sounded like wordplay, but
that’s the real etymology! “Genetics” comes from the Greek genetikos “genitive,”
which come from genesis meaning “origin.” And, indeed, the book of Genesis
does attempt to tell the origins of man, particularly by tracing all people (at least
those known to its writers) back to the three sons of Noah: Ham, Shem, and
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Japheth.
For centuries, historians attempted to continue using this framework to explain
the origins of different ethnic communities and nations. Today, we can use the
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actual “genetics” of people to trace back their origins. Genetics is based on
the study of human DNA.
AN INTRODUCTION TO DNA
As we explained in Volume One, DNA is the language of life. All humans have
23 chromosomes, which effectively write your body’s past, present, and future.
Your first 22 chromosomes contain autosomal DNA contributed by your
parents. It identified you uniquely (which is why it is used in forensics), but
can’t be used to trace your ancestry because it’s all mixed up. Your 23rd
chromosome determines your gender, and contains mtDNA and (if you’re a
male) Y-DNA.
We all get mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA from the X chromosome) from our
mothers, and men get Y-DNA (Y Chromosome DNA) from their fathers.
These DNA records can tell us the history of our ancestors. The “trunks” of
our family tree (via DNA) are known as DNA haplogroups. Haplogroup simply
means “blood group,” as in the people you are related to by your mother’s
blood or father’s blood. All people living today can trace their maternal ancestry
back to one of 26 core mtDNA haplogroups. All men living today can trace
their ancestry back to one of 20 major Y-DNA haplogroups.
Over time, the descendents of each haplogroup formed further subgroups,
called “Subclades.” By discovering which haplogroup “family” you belong to,
you can then trace even further which sub-branch of your haplogroup you
belong to through “Subclade” analysis. This is what those DNA ancestry
158
companies do.
Throughout this book, we’ll talk about mtDNA and Y-DNA Haplogroups to
trace the migrations of our ancestors. It may sound technical and difficult at
first, but DNA is one of the most effective ways to identify who was where
50,000 years ago. We’re using DNA evidence because critics of ancient Black
history say that we only cite “appearance” and that doesn’t establish solid links
between groups of people who just might “look alike.” So we’re tracing
populations back to their African origins using genetics. It needs to be done, or
else the story begins to sound flimsy in the modern era. Sometimes it’ll be
tough but I’ll try to make it as straightforward as possible. I’m even including
maps and diagrams to help make it easier to follow.
 THE EXTERMINATION CAMPAIGN
“If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in
danger of being exterminated.” – Carter G. Woodson

THE SCIENCE OF GENETICS

One of the most effective tools we can use to piece together the prehistoric past
is the science of genetics. Our personal genetic data presents a record of our
ancestors that – when studied properly – can reveal where our people come
from, and where they’ve been, going back as far as the ancestors of all humans
today.
To recap: In human genetics, people can be identified by haplogroups that
connect people who are related by paternal or maternal blood. Maternal lineage
is more stable and thus easier to trace, but paternal lineage can tell us more
about the paths people took. Paternal lineage is described by Y-DNA
haplogroups, which are named by the letters of the alphabet. When a lineage
undergoes some small genetic mutation, there’s a genetic marker that allows
scientists to identify it and see where its branches went next. Those branches
will be assigned to a new letter or group. Think of it like a family tree, coded by
letters instead of names.
DID YOU KNOW? So you can imagine that the first, the
There are many reasons why mtDNA is more stable oldest, the most ancestral Y-DNA
than Y-DNA. For starters, if a man only has haplogroup is known by what letter? A,
daughters, his lineage ends, because daughters don’t
carry Y-DNA. But if a woman only has sons, her of course. And can you guess where
lineage continues, because both males and females the people of the A haplogroup are
carry mtDNA. Also, polygamy is a powerful reducer of found? Correct again, Africa. In fact,
diversity in male DNA. A man with multiple wives will
result in the founder effect (many mtDNA lineages, both A and B people are almost
but only one Y-DNA lineage). exclusive to Africa. The descendants of
C are the ones who ventured off into
Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas.
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF AFRICA
The people known to geneticists by Haplogroup A are essentially the direct
descendants of the Original People of the planet Earth. And there’s not many of
them left. Africa isn’t entirely A and B people, you know. There have been so
many migrations back into Africa (going back 50,000 years or more) that A is
found in various levels throughout the continent, but only three groups of
people present the highest frequencies of haplogroup A.
Those three are the Khoisan of Southern Africa, the Afro-Asiatic Ethiopian
Beta Israel (sometimes called the Falasha Jews), and Nilo-Saharans from Sudan
(also known as Nilotic people). You may know about the threats to the survival
of the original people of Southern Africa and the Sudan. They’re both being
wiped out by territorial disputes and manufactured famine. But the Beta Israel is
an especially disturbing case.
THE ORIGINAL JEWS?
Nearly all of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, more than 120,000 people,
reside in Israel under its Law of Return, which gives Jews and those with Jewish
parents or grandparents, and all of their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and
obtain citizenship. In what seemed like an unprecedented act of
humanitarianism, the otherwise xenophobic and repressive Israeli government
mounted “rescue operations” for them, most notably during Operation Moses
(1984), Operation Sheba (1985) and Operation Solomon (1991).
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Why not, right? They are, after all, who Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan and
160
Rudolph Windsor called “the ORIGINAL Jews.” These indigenous Ethiopian
people were among the first to adopt the laws of Judaism, long before Judaism
became overwhelmingly white. And, with such a high frequency of haplogroup
A, they represent the Original People of the planet itself.
ALL PART OF THE PLAN
So why did Israel relocate them? To exterminate them. Israel recently enacted
sterilization programs to promote the decline of the growing Beta Israel
population. If this continues, within a few decades, there will be no more Beta
Israel. All part of the plan.
And that is a major part of why this book is written. The Original People of the
planet are being written out of history. Not in merely a literary sense, but in a
literal sense. We should know very well that European historians spent hundreds
of years hiding or distorting the Black contribution to world civilization. Were it
not for the efforts of a few honest white historians and hundreds of tireless
Black scholars, we would not know that this “contribution” was no more
“contribution” but essentially the foundation of world civilization itself.
Yet the attempts to undermine the Black role in history continue into the
present day. Western scientists use new language and theories to transplant –
out of Africa – the origins of everything that matters. To where? It doesn’t
matter, so long as it doesn’t come from Black people. If you’re not familiar with
this history, you’ll learn more about it when you read the section titled “They
Said We Were Savages.”
But the campaign to destroy Black history in text pales in comparison to the
campaign to destroy Black history in person. The survival of nearly every
indigenous Black people who settled the globe is threatened daily. Thousands
are already gone. Others, like the Black men and women of the Andaman
Islands, are on the verge of extinction. The Andamanese are no insignificant
tribe, either. They are the oldest lineage in all of Asia, the pure descendants of
the original Black people to settle outside Africa. We discuss their history – and
the attempts to make them disappear – in the chapter on India.
SO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PEOPLE
DISAPPEAR?
Their history disappears along with them. With no one left to speak their
language and tell their story, another segment of Black history is unwritten. This
empowers those who seek to “whiten” the history of the world to tell their
version unchallenged, because the evidence that proves them wrong is steadily
vanishing.
This is why so many archaeological artifacts from the global Black Diaspora
have been hidden in museum basements, or personal collections, never to be
seen by an inquiring public. Some that were once on display have since been
removed from view. Others are found only in foreign museums that most of us
will never travel to see. And how many have been disfigured, bleached, or
repainted? Just consider how many Black statues have lost their distinct noses to
unknown factors, and the campaign becomes clear.
That is why this book has been written.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
In a sample of 5,000 African men, 5% carried Haplogroup A. Considering that
Original People throughout the Diaspora descend from the same ancestral
population as these 5,000 men, I wonder how many of the “true and living” 5%
descend from Haplogroup A. Is Haplogroup A, being the “Original” DNA
blueprint, some sort of primordial maintenance system built into humanity’s
hardware?
That is, are the direct descendants of the “first man” somehow coded to
preserve something great? After all, whoever the “African Adam” was, he must
have had something significant in his character to engender every lineage that
has survived over the past 200,000 years, while so many others have failed and
died out.
What was he like? What did he have within him? And do the carriers of
Haplogroup A still carry that special quality? If they are 5% of the indigenous
Black population, could a representative number of them have been brought to
American shores, mixed in with the people of Haplogroup E? Were these the
people who West African griots said had boarded the slave ships voluntarily, so
they could one day (presumably through their descendants) liberate their people?
 THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION
Using genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data, we can trace the migrations
that not only took modern humans out of Africa, but also the migrations that
went on within Africa during this early period of modern human history. We are
certain that all human populations on Earth today can trace their ancestry back
to Africa. There’s no evidence you can use to trace the human record back to
any other location.
We can trace all human Y-DNA back to a single male who scientists call the
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“African Adam” who lived about 142,000 years ago. Because mtDNA is more
stable and can be traced back further than Y-DNA, we can look back further
through the maternal line. The mtDNA group at the root of the human
mtDNA tree is called macro-haplogroup L. L represents the most ancestral
mitochondrial lineage of all currently living modern humans, and can be traced
back to a single African woman known to scientists as the Mitochondrial Eve,
who lived about 200,000 years ago.
Between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, macro-haplogroup L split into several
major sub-groups, known as L0, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5 and L6. There may have
been even more, but those lineages have not survived into the modern day. Out
of all the L haplogroups, only one of these lineages expanded (and survived)
outside of Africa. This group is known to geneticists as Haplogroup L3. They
are the ones who led the expansion from East Africa into Southern Arabia
about 130,000 years ago.
It’s clear that Africa, and East Africa in particular, is where modern man made
his first moves, and the Rift Valley of East Africa was the Original “root of
civilization.” But since the emergence of anatomically modern humans, we’ve
established several “base camps” throughout the world, each representing a
“root of civilization” for that particular period in history. In a sense, we shifted
our headquarters a few times. So where were the headquarters of the Original
People who led the expansion out of Africa?
THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION – 200,000
YEARS AGO
From the days of the earliest hominids until about 130,000 years ago, human
activity was “headquartered” in East Africa. Then, for the first time since Homo
erectus sailed across the Red Sea two million years ago, we – as modern humans –
ventured out of Africa about 130,000 years ago.
Why leave? Around this time, Africa was going through a period of climate
change that made it increasingly difficult for hunter-gatherer communities to
thrive. As we explained in The Science of Self, Volume One, the results weren’t
pleasant:
What was life like for us 200,000 years ago? Through the work of archaeologists and
paleoanthropologists, we know that we were hunters and gatherers living in tiny, separate bands.
Now geneticists have found that these bands remained separate for over 100,000 years,
developing unique genetic lineages and cultures, until environmental changes brought us all to the
brink of extinction. A recent genetic study examined our evolution from 200,000 years ago to the
point of our near-extinction 70,000 years ago, when the human population dropped to as little as
2,000. Paleoclimatological data suggests that our homeland, Eastern Africa, went through a
severe series of droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago. These droughts may have
contributed, at first, to the population splits, but, by the end, they were leading to our near-
extinction. That’s right. We almost died off entirely. But, apparently, we realized the tribalism
thing wasn’t working to our advantage, and we did something different. We came together. This,
162
you’ll see, is a recurring lesson we keep learning and forgetting.
163
In other words, we HAD to come together to survive. This migration left
Africa via the Bab-el-Mandeb The Bab-el-Mandeb, also known as the Mandeb Strait,
is a strait located between Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia, in the Horn of Africa
and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. Essentially, it’s where the tip of East
Africa gets closest to the tip of Southern Arabia.
THE ROOT OF CIVILIZATION – 130,000
YEARS AGO
“Arabia was indeed the first staging post in the spread of modern humans.”
164
– Geneticist Verónica Fernandes
In other words, the first stop out of Africa was Southern Arabia. As Hans-Peter
Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen writes in “The Southern Route Out of
Africa,” 130,000-year-old stone hand axes found at the Jebel Faya site in Arabia
(in the United Arab Emirates to be exact) are not simply similar to African hand
axes of the period, they’re the same. They constitute clear evidence that Africans
settled this region more than 50,000 years before the accepted “Out of Africa”
165
timeline that traces all moderns back to a dispersal 75,000 years ago.
130,000 years ago, the Arabian Peninsula was lush, fertile land with heavy rainfall and an easy
commute from East Africa, thanks to the southern Red Sea’s levels dropping to only 2.5 miles
166
wide.
At site resembling Jebel Faya in Oman, there’s archaeological evidence for “a
distinct northeast African Middle Paleolithic technocomplex in southern
167
Arabia.” Archaeologists call this culture the Nubian Complex. Archaeological
sites belonging to the Nubian Complex occur throughout:
 the middle and lower Nile Valley,
the desert oases of the eastern Sahara,
across southern Arabia, and
the Red Sea hills.
DID YOU KNOW? The ages of these Nubian Complex
Interested in learning more about prehistoric cultures sites fall within a range of 130,000-
in the Near East? Hit Wikipedia and search for the
following cultures: Kebaran, Natufian, Mushabian,
74,000 years ago. Some of the oldest
Antelian, Jabroudian, Emirian, Zagros, Pre-Ceramic settlements are now buried
A, Pre-Ceramic B, Kebaran, Athlitian, and 168
underwater, but many of the sites
Aurignacian.
further inland have survived the rising
sea levels.
“[T]he negroid element permeates the low-caste or outcast “pariah” tribes of Western and Eastern India, and penetrates through the coast
169
tribes of Southern Persia to Eastern Arabia.” – Harry Hamilton Johnston
Based on the trail of evidence associated with the Nubian Complex in East
Africa and Arabia, it appears that humans left Africa about 130,000 years ago
and developed a techno-cultural complex in southern Arabia that would later
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disband and expand to populate the globe. These people would become us. In
other words, the “Afro-Arabian” Nubian Complex could be considered the first
human “root of civilization.”
THE ORIGIN OF THE NUBIAN COMPLEX
“A baby is not born in or from a cradle. A baby is only subsequently deposited there. Arabia as the Cradle does nothing to dethrone
Africa (west of the Red Sea) as the Mother.” – Dr. Wesley Muhammad
Several studies trace this complex back to East Africa, but there are also several
studies proposing that the “root” of the Nubian Complex was in Southern
Arabia. One study suggests:
As the late Nubian Complex at Aybut Al Auwal is dated…slightly earlier than the late Nubian
Complex in Africa, we remain open to the possibility that the late Nubian Complex originated in
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Arabia, and subsequently spread back into northeast Africa.
Eurocentric scholars focus on evidence like this to promote a non-African
origin for civilization, while Afrocentric scholars dismiss evidence like this
because it seems to take the “root” out of Africa.
For those of us who know the true story of the world, it doesn’t matter so
much, because we know who the founders of the Nubian Complex were –
Nubians! And since the Red Sea is barely a geographic boundary to begin with,
we know that Africa and Arabia (and Asia along with it) are about as “separate”
as Europe is from Asia.
In fact, the most distant/disconnected landmass may be the Americas (as
Australia was once “almost” connected to Southeast Asia). But think about that.
IS “THE WEST” A SINGLE LANDMASS?
White folks describe the Americas and Europe as one social entity: They call it
“the West.” Their empires in the Americas and Europe are collectively known as
the “western world” (and they sometimes include Australia!)…which is crazy if
you think about it, because North America and Europe are thousands of miles
apart. There’s an entire ocean between them. But that doesn’t stop them. They
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consider it one world for social purposes.
Meanwhile, Africa – which is physically connected to Asia, and Asia – which is
actually not separated from Europe in ANY meaningful way (besides maybe a
mountain range), are all considered separate entities. And we accept it without
question. That’s how deeply we’ve been affected by how they taught us to think.
It’s no surprise that the Arabic name for North Africa is Ifriqiyah, which means
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“to divide.” And it wasn’t the Arabs who divided it!
No matter who did the slicing, it’s up to us to bring it all back together. Thus,
we need to think about things in terms of the GLOBAL Black Diaspora. And in
doing so, we would love to speak of an Afrasia (as the Europeans like to do with
Eurasia now), but really…that is not enough. The entire planet Earth belongs to
the Black man – he simply chose the best parts for himself to call home. The
Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that, at one point, the whole planet Earth
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was called Asia, and thus the “Asiatic Black Man” was not a “local” identity
but a global identity.
So, when we talk about East Africa and Arabia, it’s because of political
boundaries, not real geographic separation. The people of southern Arabia were
just as Black as their brothers on the other side of the Red Sea. Failing to see
that leaves us short-sighted in our perspective of whose planet this is. It’s just
like saying Black people were no longer African once they arrived on American
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shores, as if geography somehow changes ancestry. It doesn’t.
A UICK NOTE ON CITING YOUR SOURCES
If you’re an author or speaker making claims about anything that isn’t common knowledge,
you’ve gotta cite your sources. Seriously. That’s like a fundamental. If you don’t you might be
plagiarizing, copying and pasting, making it up, or trying to keep people from digging into your
sources on their own. Or maybe you just missed a few. I’m sure I missed several opportunities to
cite all the sources I used in this book. Yet this book alone has over 400 citations. I’m really
talking about the folks who say twenty amazing, unbelievable things…and then their only source
cited is a webpage that doesn’t even pull up when you try to find it. Not cool. Meanwhile, if you’re
a reader, don’t be content accepting claims from people who don’t provide their sources. People
really do make stuff up. It doesn’t matter if the statement makes you feel good. If you continue
believing whatever people tell you without demanding some sort of evidence, you’ll still be just
as far from the truth as you were when you didn’t know anything.
WE ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT
PA S T T H R E AT S T O H U M A N S U R V I VA L
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have
accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the
teaching of biography and history.” – Carter G. Woodson
When geneticists study human ancestry, they find plenty of lineages more than
100,000 years old in Africa. These are the Original People, and they’re still here
(via their direct descendants). But outside Africa, it’s very difficult to find any
surviving lineages that go back that far. Thus, they’ve concluded that humans
only left Africa about 60,000-75,000 years ago. But there are human remains in
India and Australia that are older than this. And there are people in New Guinea
who have maternal lineages going back more than 100,000 years. So what gives?
In the last chapter, we established that human did, indeed, venture out of Africa
around 130,000 years ago.
But what happened to most of these people? Didn’t they migrate out of the
Nubian Complex at any point before 75,000 years ago? If so, why isn’t the world
full of lineages that old? Why do geneticists say that lineages outside Africa are
no more than 75,000 years old? What killed off the majority of humans who left
Africa before then?
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
How and when we began expanding out of the Nubian Complex.
How almost all of the people who left this area before 75,000 years ago were killed off.
What killed off most of our ancestors who took the southern route across Asia.
What killed off those of us who attempted to travel north into Europe and Central Asia.
The incredible scientific and cultural advances we made in response to these threats
(such as “making” dogs from wolves!).
How the survivors of these events came back together to overcome these extinction-level
challenges.
Who these two branches of survivors became, and the parts of the world that they went
on to settle, becoming the ancestors of all humans on the planet today.
Are these two branches different enough to be considered separate or are they still the
same people?
 THE EXODUS
From 130,000 to 74,000 years ago, the ancestral humans – who we call the
“Original People” – were headquartered in the Nubian Complex at the root of
civilization. During this period, the formerly lush grasslands of East Africa and
Southern Arabia became increasingly arid and inhospitable. We don’t know if
that’s the only reason why they left, but between 100,000 and 75,000 years ago,
many of the Original People seated at the Nubian Complex left Arabia, traveling
east. They took the coastal route, building settlements along the shores of
Southern Asia. As a result, many of the oldest settlements will never be
excavated, because they’re now underwater thanks to global warming and its
rising sea levels.
But all is not lost. Plenty of evidence can be found further inland. There are
dozens of sites scattered across Southern Asia and Oceania, providing intimate
details of their day-to-day lives, revealing much of how they lived…and some of
how they looked.
Why only some? Because the skeletal record is pretty sparse for this early period.
In fact, most of the skeletons are probably underwater. The ones we know
about, we’ll discuss throughout this book. Yet, it’s not as if all we have are
skeletons.
After all, these people had descendants. Like us. Most of these descendants,
however, don’t have “pure” lineages. Very few people do. Almost all, most of us
are the byproduct of these ancestors splitting into dozens of separate lineages
which evolved locally before meeting again and mixing things up some more.
Yet there are some people who are more “Original” than others. They are the
direct descendants of the first humans to settle the globe. They don’t have a
bunch of lineages in their ancestry. In some cases, their ancestry is as close to
“pure” as you can find.
We know this because DNA studies have shown that these people are the most
unmixed descendants of the oldest haplogroups. Do you remember what those
are? They’re A, B, C, and D (on the paternal side) and L, M, and N (on the
maternal side). These people are the Original People. They’re the ancestors of us
all. In this chapter, we’re going to study those people, looking at where they
went, what they did, and who they became.
 A RE-INTRODUCTION TO GENETICS
Still don’t understand genetics? Think of it like this:
We all have DNA that codes our unique genetic (and physical) profile. We get
this DNA from our mother and father. We all have maternal DNA (known as
mtDNA, or mitochondrial DNA) from our mothers, and all men have
paternal DNA (known as Y-DNA, or Y-chromosome DNA) from their
fathers. There are different families of DNA, and it’s just like a family tree.
Geneticists can use your DNA to tell what branch of the tree you belong to.
Technically, our ancestors go back to the beginning of life itself (and beyond,
if you want to get deep). But we can trace back the ancestors of all of our
mothers to one source who lived about 200,000 years ago. Think of her as
Mrs. L. That’s what geneticists call the DNA family (or haplogroup) she
represents. Mrs. L had plenty of sisters, but none of them had children who
survived. Mrs. L also had a few daughters, who became Mrs. L0, Mrs. L1, Mrs.
L2, and so on. All of her daughters stayed in Africa, except Mrs. L3. Mrs. L3
crossed the Red Sea, where she had daughters like Mrs. M, N, and R, all of
whom went on to have massive families all over the world. If you’re a woman,
you’re descended from one of the families named above.
Of course, Mrs. L wasn’t a single mother. But because of the way DNA works,
we can’t trace the “Mr.” in our family tree as far back. What we know is that
we can trace all of our men back to a brother who lived about 140,000 years
ago in Africa, who we’ll call Mr. A. His oldest sons, A0 and A1 stayed in
Africa, as did his grandson Mr. B. But his other grandson, Mr. CT, had other
plans. CT had two sons, DE and CT. Mr. DE was born in northeast Africa,
but his brother, CF, was born on the other side of the Red Sea, outside Africa.
DE had two sons, named D and E. Mr. D’s sons settled all of southern Asia,
marrying with the daughters of Mrs. M, N, and R. Mr. E’s sons spread back
into Africa, where they nearly took over, replacing many of their cousins who
had remained in Africa (the descendants of Mr. A and B). Meanwhile, CF’s
sons were headed east. They eventually populated Asia, Australia, Europe and
the Americas.
Of course, we’re simplifying things a bit, because these weren’t actual sons and
grandsons, but populations of people who split and became new populations
over the course of thousands of years. How did they split? Well, groups of
people split up all the time, but we know about these splits because of little
genetic changes (or mutations) that mark a group of people as different from
their parent group. These genetic markers are called SNPs. While there were
hundreds of splits over the past 200,000 years, some of the lineages remain
unbroken, even after all this time. Thus, for example, the African men who
still belong to Y-DNA haplogroup A are the direct descendants of the father
of all humanity.
Today, there are about 26 major mtDNA families (or haplogroups), each
classified by letters (but not in ABC order). And there are about 18 major Y-
DNA lineages (or haplogroups), also classified by letters of the alphabet. After
200,000 years of splitting up and developing new lineages, there are now
dozens of even smaller groups, and they’re called subclades. Geneticists use
numbers and additional letters to identify those subgroups (like R1b1a).
If you were kind of lost as you read the last few sections, and this explanation
helped a little, you might want to go back and re-read the sections that threw
you off.
GETTING BACK TO THE EXODUS
Beginning over 100,000 years ago, Original People began spreading beyond the
Nubian Complex and settling the globe. Again, we don’t know for certain what
led them to leave the root, but it appears that environmental pressures were
significant. The desertification of the Sahara region, followed by the
desertification of Southern Arabia, may have been what compelled several
thousand people to leave the root of civilization. This is interesting when you
consider that the people of the Nubian Complex were just recovering from the
droughts and desertification that eliminated most of their population in Africa.
In the coming chapters, you’ll see details of our travels across the planet. Our
ancestors settled just about everywhere and anywhere you can think of. When
the environmental conditions weren’t favorable, we still found a way to make it
work. Yet, for the most part, we preferred settling in places that were warm,
sunny, and full of fresh food and natural shelter.
When our communities outgrew the available resources, we split up and
relocated. And when the climate shifted and an old homeland became a little
less people-friendly, we left and settled somewhere else. By 20,000 years ago,
we’d literally seen all 196,940,000 square miles of the planet Earth. No
exaggeration (as you’ll soon see)!
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
When the ancestral human population left the Nubian Complex, the earliest
branch headed east along the southern coastal route across Asia. Thus one of
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the earliest human settlements in Asia (after Arabia) can be found in India.
These Black people would become the Original People of Asia. In The Evolution
of Human Populations in Arabia, Michael D. Petraglia and Jeffrey Rose say that the
people of the Nubian Complex had brought their African culture and
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technology as far east as Australasia by 70,000 years ago.
Thus, Australia and the islands of Southeast Asia are where we find some of the
earliest evidence of modern human settlement east of India. The Original
People took a coastal route, primarily because that’s where food and shelter
were easiest to find, but possibly also because the beach is just such a nice place
to live.
A UICK NOTE ON MIGRATIONS
Wait…you didn’t think we were walking all this way, did you? Nah, we sailed! Some historians like
to think that our early ancestors must have only taken land routes. You may not realize it, but
this is all based on the racist premise that seafaring was the domain of Europeans. In fact, this is
the theory posited by J. Macmillan Brown in his works on the settlement of the Pacific Islands.
Brown argues explicitly that “The negroid, we may conclude, has always remained in situ; he has
never become a migrant, and never mastered the art of navigation.” Brown says that no
“Negroid people” have ever been known for their maritime capabilities, and thus it must have
been Mongoloid and Caucasoid people who led the settlement of the Polynesian Islands –
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despite all the evidence to the contrary.
To be fair, sea levels were indeed lower in the past, and many places that are now separated
were once connected by land. But we’re talking about nearby islands once being connected to
the mainland – not a land bridge connecting Australia and South America!
For example, the Malay Peninsula, together with the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, once
formed a landmass known today as Sunda or Sundaland. Further south, Australia, New Guinea,
and Tasmania were connected as a landmass now called Sahul. But there was still at least 60
miles of water between Sunda and Sahul when the ancestors of the Australian aborigines first
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settled there over 60,000 years ago!
The truth is, there are mountains of evidence that our ancestors sailed wherever they wanted to
go, for as long as we have evidence of them going places. In The Science of Self, Volume One,
we present evidence of seafaring as early as the migrations of Homo erectus. Yet the idea that
HUMANS couldn’t travel to North America unless they walked across a frozen Bering Strait, or
they couldn’t settle the Pacific Islands until the past 3,000 years…it’s just racist. It’s not based
on the evidence; it’s simply based on the preconceived notion that we couldn’t do it until white
folks did it.
Now, all these coastal settlements mean we will have a hard time finding the remains of those
early cultures, because the sea level has risen and the oceans have swallowed up much of that
prehistoric shoreline. So those remains are mostly underwater now, and very unlikely to be found
anytime soon. We do, however, have underwater remains from more recent settlements, since
those were efforts of stone construction, rather than organic use of the available environment.
 THE TOBA EXTINCTION
The Southern branch of Original People were well on their way, and appears to
have settled everywhere from Southern Arabia to New Guinea (and possibly
South America) over 75,000 years ago. They may have started this wave of
expansion almost 100,000 years ago. But few (if any) of these first settlers have
surviving lineages. In the Americas, they may have been wiped out by new
settlers (or they are “uncontacted tribes” who haven’t been studied genetically).
We don’t know for sure.
But back in Asia, specifically in India and the surrounding areas, these people
were killed en masse, and we know this for sure. Yet it wasn’t another group of
humans who took them out. The Earth did it. 74,000 years ago, a supervolcano
erupted at Mount Toba in what is now Sumatra in Southeast Asia. This was no
ordinary volcano. The eruption and its accompanying clouds of volcanic ash
were so massive that they killed off most of the people in the area. As a result,
Southern Asia and Australasia were RE-populated after 75,000 years ago.
 TWO SHADES OF BLACK: AFRICOID AND AUSTRALOID
Throughout this book, we’ll talk about two important “variants” of the Original
People. They’re both Black, and they’re both direct descendants of the ancestral
human population, but they’ve been separated for almost 75,000 years.
When they first separated, the people of one branch weren’t very different from
the people of the other, but these two branches went through some very
different experiences. For over 50,000 years, they were shaped by the paths they
took, and – by 20,000 years ago – it was much easier to tell the descendants of
one group from the other.
Not only are they physically distinct, they’re genetically distinct. One branch can
be associated with Y-DNA lineages A, B, D, and E. This branch is described as
looking more “Africoid” (others call them “Negroid”). The other branch can be
associated with the C and F lineages, and looks more “Australoid.”
What does “Australoid” mean? Australoid people typically have wavy hair, large
teeth, strong brow ridges, prognathism, full lips, broad noses, heavy body hair,
and very dark skin. Many of these traits can still be found in the diversity of
Africa’s oldest people. Australoid people are distinct because of their receding
forehead and brow ridge topped by hair ranging from a straight to wavy texture,
traits only found “here and there” in modern Africa.
DID YOU KNOW? When you think of these traits, you
There’s archaeological evidence that humans had may think only of Australia, but people
made it into Asia (and beyond) before 75,000 years who looked like this were once spread
ago. The most notable finds are the spearheads and
scrapers buried below the ash of the famous Toba far and wide throughout the world.
volcano eruption of 74,000 years ago. The only Many of these features are still found
reason we know of these tools is because they were amongst the “Veddoid” people of
found inland (away from the shore) in an area that
was once much more comfortable for human India and Sri Lanka, the native people
settlement than it is now. Anything left along the of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands,
coastline at the same time is long gone. The tools and some Native Americans living
prove that Paleolithic era humans were in India more
than 70,000 years ago, although there are no
along the western coasts of California
surviving Asian genetic lineages that old. This and Mexico.
suggests that the people living in India during the time Australoid people came from Africa
of the Toba explosion died out and left no survivors,
or their genetic lineage was absorbed by later like everyone else, but they’re the
populations in a way that cannot easily be traced descendants of a migration that
today. evolved a little differently. The reason
their branch looks a little different from most African people is partly because
the earliest humans were quite diverse. If a small subgroup of those people
broke off and continued having children within their own community,
eventually most of the people would begin sharing a similar set of features.
These events are known as “population bottlenecks.” In the history of our
ancestors, one of the most significant bottlenecks since the exodus from Africa
occurred in the middle of southern Asia.
THE TOBA ERUPTION
When and how did Australoid people become distinct from other Original
People? There’s a good chance this separation happened because of the eruption
of the Toba Supervolcano in Sumatra. When Toba blew about 74,000 years ago,
it was devastating. Much of Asia was blanketed by a thick cloud of volcanic ash,
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which triggered an instant Ice Age lasting over 1,000 years. In an excellent
book titled The Real Eve, Steve Oppenheimer calls this event “the greatest
natural calamity to befall any humans, ever.”
The Toba explosion left a plume of ash over the entirety of India for
approximately five years, which Oppenheimer calls a “nuclear winter,” in which
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almost every living thing in that area would have been wiped out. There are
layers of ash in India up to fifteen feet deep. That’s pretty catastrophic.
DID YOU KNOW? Many of us died. It’s quite possible that
A craniofacial analysis of 1,802 recent and prehistoric many of the earliest human
crania reveals that: Australian aborigines show closer
similarities to African populations than to
populations in western India, Pakistan,
Melanesians; recent Europeans align with East and the Middle East (including lineages
Asians, while early West Asians resemble Africans; that might have been older than L3)
the Asian population shows strong regional were killed off within years. This left
differences between northern and southern members;
and that the craniofacial variations of major two remnants on either side of the
geographical groups are not necessarily consistent explosion’s epicenter: the people of
with their geographical distribution pattern. The Africa and the people of Australasia.
study’s author noted that this suggests that
evolutionary divergence in facial features had a Our ancestors eventually resettled
smaller role than the fact that all of these people India and the Middle East once the
diverged from a diverse ancestral population smoke cleared (no pun intended), but
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possessing all of these features. the Toba eruption caused something
known as a genetic bottleneck. Throughout Asia, only small groups of survivors
remained, and it is from these ancestral populations that many modern humans
descend today. This would explain why the Y-DNA marker known as YAP is
found among the oldest populations in the Near East, the Andaman Islands,
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Cambodia and Japan, but is entirely absent from India.
According to Sacha Jones:
This bottleneck would have greatly reduced modern human diversity as well as population size.
 With climatic amelioration, population explosion out of this bottleneck would have occurred…
Post Toba populations would have reduced in size such that founder effects, genetic drift and
local adaptations occurred, resulting in rapid population differentiation. In this way the Toba
eruption of ~74 ka would have shaped the diversity that is seen in modern human populations
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today.
In other words, the seeds of “racial differentiation” were first sown in Toba’s
wake. Toba expert Stanley Ambrose suggested decades ago that Toba could
have been responsible for human differentiation, producing the various “races”
and other signs of major biological and cultural diversity. But Ambrose believed
that this event occurred while all humans were still in Africa, where Toba’s
effects would have been negligible.
We now know that Toba struck in the epicenter of a human population
movement that was sweeping across Asia, from East Africa to the Pacific
Ocean. In fact, Toba literally hit dead center, cutting through the middle of this
movement, killing much of the early human population in India. It was
somewhere in this area that one part of the human population began developing
a stronger Africoid morphology, while the other part became increasingly
Australoid.
As Dr. Victor Grauer has noted:
For example, if only a few members of a particular migrant colony happened to have what we
would now consider [Australoid] features, and that group happened, by sheer chance, to survive,
while most of the others died or migrated elsewhere, then such a development could lead to the
establishment of a new “race,” with [Australoid] features exclusively. Thus, it’s not difficult to see
how an event such as Toba could have been the trigger for certain very fundamental changes,
cultural, genetic and morphological, which could explain the highly structured differences we
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now see among different populations in different parts of the world.
The Toba survivors who became ancestors of the Australoid people may have
looked somewhat Australoid, but not strongly so. We know this because the
earliest human remains in Australia are Australoid, but their features aren’t
nearly as strong as modern Aborigines. Modern aborigines have had over 60,000
years for their features to develop in relative isolation. Over time, their features
became more distinct and homogenous. In other parts of the world, Australoid
people evolved a little differently. This is why the Australoid people of Japan
don’t look “exactly” like the Australoid people of India.
This is also why we won’t find people who look “exactly” like Australian
aborigines in East Africa, but many of their physical differences are due to local
evolution, genetic drift, and the founder effect. When you look below the
surface (at the genes) you can see the shared heritage. At the 2005
Paleoanthropology conference, Sarah Tishkoff and Floyd Reed of the University
of Maryland connected the genetic dots between East Africans and their distant
 187
Australoid cousins as far east as New Guinea.
So don’t get the wrong idea. Australoid people are Black people. Australoid and
Africoid people are merely two “shades” of the same Black ancestral people.
Anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon saw such a connection between Australoid
and Africoid people that he called them, together, the “Austrafrican or black
race.”
WHAT DO WE CALL THEM?
It would be nice if we could distinguish Australoid people with an ethnic term,
but are again stuck with the same dilemmas as in the previous chapter. For
example, Koori is an indigenous name used by the Australian Aborigines of
New South Wales and Victoria. But, as with Twa, it is by no means a universal
name for all Australian Aborigines (other regional names include Murri and
Nunga).
The aboriginal people of the Australia’s western central desert call themselves
Anangu. Like Aka, it essentially means “person” or “human being” and has
come to denote aboriginal people in other areas, but it’s not a universal name by
far.
Yet the generally accepted umbrella name “Aboriginal People” doesn’t work for
the purposes of this book, where we are describing several branches of Original
People, including some who may have come into a region before (or after)
Australoid people. “Australoid” works as an anthropological classification, but it
doesn’t sound like a human community. At the same time, using an ethnic-
sounding name can makes people think THEY actually called themselves that.
And I don’t want to give off that impression. So, for the purposes of this book,
we will use Australoid People, simply to identify Original People who fit the
Australoid physical type.
Using linguistic evidence, skeletal remains, and genetic data, we can piece
together their travels out of Africa. Here’s what we know so far: Upon leaving
Palestine, one branch went into India, where their descendants can still be found
throughout the country, carrying many of the traits we described above. It
appears India became their homebase. From India, they went into Southeast
Asia, China, Japan, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. They eventually became
the earliest known settlers in the Americas. Another branch traveled into
Europe.
As early as 1915, Du Bois noted evidence of these prehistoric migrations in The
Negro:
The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward as well as westward.
 They entered on the one hand Burma and the South Sea Islands, and on the other hand they
came through Mesopotamia and gave curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian.
Ancient statues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face and close-curled hair,
and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia the Negroes may have divided, and one
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stream perhaps wandered into Europe by way of Syria.

AUSTRALOID CULTURE
As much as we’d like to say Australoid people such as the Australian aborigines
are culturally “just like” the people of Africa, that would be an
oversimplification. In fact, Australoid culture is quite different. For example,
Australian languages are not tonal. Australian music is not polyphonic nor
participatory like the music of Khoisan or “Pygmy” people in Africa.
Their cultures are still fairly egalitarian, but more hierarchical than you’d find
among DBP people in Africa. And this is all odd, because you can find all the
missing elements if you simply look a little further east in New Guinea or the
islands of Melanesia, where there are clear survivals of the egalitarian African
culture of the Original People. But why?
Of course, this cultural “otherness” isn’t exclusive to Australia. We can actually
find this cultural change among both the Australoid and Africoid survivors of
the Toba event. The only difference is that the Australoid survivors became a
population of their own in Australia, while the Africoid survivors headed back
west, ultimately “back-migrating” into Africa by 50,000 years ago.
These people can be identified by the M1 and E lineages that permeated nearly
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all African communities that survive today. In Africa, the Toba survivors did
190
eventually “take over” but they went through more of a “mixing” process
than the straight-up replacement/displacement process that happened in
Australia. In other words, Australoid people are Toba survivors, raw and uncut.
Dr. Victor Grauer believes that this fact profoundly shaped the culture of most
Australoid people. According to Grauer, after emerging from Toba’s ashes,
“they would have been faced with a world largely depleted of both vegetation
and wildlife.” He cites other examples, like that in Colin Turnbull’s The Mountain
People, where the Ik people of Uganda exemplify what happens “when a
particular population is suddenly placed under tremendous stress to the point
that the most basic cultural norms begin to break down.”
This could explain why Australoid culture shares many similarities with African
culture, but also presents us with many missing elements that are otherwise
typical of the Original People.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
If the Toba event drastically affected the cultural pathologies of surviving
populations (just as Central Asian survival may have impacted Mongoloid
culture), were these “more aggressive” pathologies exactly what was needed to
effectively terminate the Neanderthal onslaught? What were the costs to the
ancestral populations NOT affected by Toba, who retained a more pacifist
cultural tradition, and who were ultimately pushed to the fringes by Toba
survivors?
Further, were Australoid people born to be scarcity survivors? That is, does the
fact that Australoid people survived the Toba extinction (or emerged from its
ashes) suggest that they would always be a people who could survive when
resources were severely limited?
Similarly, were Mongoloid people born to be cold-weather survivors? Were
mtDNA lineages A, C, and D – which survived the trek through Siberia into the
Americas – better adapted, or more genetically likely to survive in cold
environments?
If there is any merit to these possibilities, what about the L3 lineage? Was L3
naturally selected to survive out of Africa, while L0, L1, L2, L4, and L5 were
better off in Africa? That is, was L3 the only population “fit” to make the
exodus? If not, why didn’t other populations leave with L3? Were there social
factors involved? If so, can we figure out any of those social factors by looking
at the earliest cultures established by L3 (Howiesons Poort, the Nubian
Complex, Paleolithic India, etc.)?
 THE WAR AGAINST HUMANITY
THE WESTERN BRANCH
While some humans left the Nubian Complex travelling east across the southern
Asia, others went north into the Near East and Europe. They eventually
established the Upper Paleolithic culture of Palestine, and these people later
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brought the first Paleolithic culture to Europe.
In The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia, Michael D. Petraglia and Jeffrey
Rose show how the African Middle Paleolithic cultures of the Near East (250-
50,000 years ago) transitioned into the Upper Paleolithic cultures of the Near
East and Europe (50-20,000 years ago) thanks to an influx from Arabia between
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70,000 to 50,000 years ago.
But they had been trying to get into the area for thousands of years before that!
The only problem was that everyone who tried…died. This is because, while
Toba eliminated the earliest members of the eastern branch, another deadly foe
was killing off the migrants who went north. In order for our ancestors to settle
the Near East and Europe, we’d have to conquer an adversary tougher than the
weather.
MORE NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES
100,000 years ago, Northern Arabia and the Near East weren’t the most
desirable places to raise your family. For beginners: deserts everywhere.
Southern Arabia and northeast Africa were a tropical paradise by comparison.
But you know how the Earth is, always spinning, always shifting, changing her
mind about what’s in and what’s out, what’s hot and what’s not. So naturally,
these areas began desertifying too, leading many of us to long for greener
pastures elsewhere. But if we wanted to expand past the Nubian Complex, the
barren deserts weren’t our only problem. Beyond these deserts loomed another
threat to our survival: the Neanderthals.
The Neanderthals weren’t a group of deranged mutants or anything. They
weren’t too different from humans actually. As we explained in The Science of Self,
Volume One, Homo neanderthalis evolved in Europe from Homo antecessor,
who had evolved from Homo erectus, who had settled in Europe almost two
million years ago.
By 200,000 years ago, Neanderthals were all over Europe. Skeletal remains from
Morocco show that we had expanded into the northern extremes of Africa as
early as 160,000 years ago, but – despite the short trip from Morocco to
southern Spain – the Neanderthal presence there kept us from making that
move. Meanwhile, the Neanderthal occupation of Palestine blocked our
expansion into southeastern Europe. And the worst part: they weren’t staying
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still.
The Neanderthals had been confined to Europe for most of their history, but
around 60,000 years ago, we begin to find their remains moving further south
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into the Levant and as far east as Siberia. In other words, they were expanding
over areas previously occupied by humans. And we don’t have any genetic
lineages that go back that far in these places. In other words, these humans
didn’t make it. The Neanderthals weren’t just spreading, but killing us off.
DID YOU KNOW? Yet survival demanded that we expand
Paleolithic Europeans (not white people) weren’t as well. But how? In other to conquer
eating the so-called “Paleolithic Diet” (which was
supposedly heavy in meat and fat) in the Paleolithic.
the Neanderthal threat, it would
Instead, they ate a mostly plant-based diet. There is require a multi-national campaign
evidence of them processing plants and grains and made up of Original People from
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even baking bread as early as 30,000 years ago. everywhere Original People were
Eating meat wasn’t unknown of course, but it didn’t found.
make up the majority of their diets. For more on this,
see “The Paleolithic Diet is Not for You” in Volume
Three.
 WHO WERE THE NEANDERTHALS?
In The Science of Self, Volume One, you learned that the Neanderthals were a
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bloodthirsty, carnivorous bunch of savages. Perhaps there were a few “good
ones” here and there, but most of them were not our friends. If you forgot, let’s
do a quick recap:
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They were apex predators, subsisting on a mostly carnivorous diet, which included
198 199
human flesh. (The “Paleolithic diet” for everyone else was plant-based. ) They ate
200
so much meat, they built their homes out of skulls and bones.
They were brutal warriors. They didn’t know how to use projectile weapons, but they
hunted and fought using handheld clubs and spears. Some Neanderthal remains are so
battered and bruised that it appears they fought all their life.
They produced almost nothing in terms of symbolic or cultural behavior (short of a few
isolated practices they appear to have copied from their human neighbors).
They weren’t Black, but they weren’t white either. As we explained in Volume One, they
seem to have bred out some very specific traits like barrel chests, massive arms, bigger
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heads, lighter hair, and possibly lighter skin, but they weren’t the ancestors of modern
Europeans.
Finally, they wanted us dead. Anytime we crossed paths, it was bad news. So the
Neanderthals basically “contained” the bulk of us within Africa and southern
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Arabia until about 70,000 years ago. Taking the southern route from East
Africa into Arabia allowed us to build the Nubian Complex, but getting any
further than that was difficult. As Nicholas Wade writes in Before the Dawn:
They had developed serious weaponry, including stone-tipped thrusting spears. They surrounded
or occupied the main exit point from Africa at the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean,
including the area that is now Israel. The human lineages evolving in Africa may have tried many
times to escape into the world beyond. But none had succeeded, and the Neanderthals’
203
encirclement of the exits from northeast Africa seems a likely reason.
So these Neanderthals had us practically confined, and – although they were a
relatively small population (by the end of their reign, they were outnumbered by
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humans 11 to 1) and constantly at odds with their environment – they were
one tough group of bullies blocking the school doors at the end of the day.
They’d been in the cold of Europe for 200,000 years, so they were well-adapted
to the harsh environment. In fact they’d already survived an entire glacial cycle
(or Ice Age). They even survived the Toba supervolcano’s explosion, with no
evidence of ill effects. Yet the Toba eruption and its aftereffects had killed off
most of the humans that had ventured out of the Nubian Complex before
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75,000 years ago.
It makes me wonder – perhaps these catastrophes weren’t meant to kill off the
Neanderthals (as they did humans outside Africa, who essentially experienced a
total “reset” around 75,000 years ago), but to make them stronger. But for what?
Perhaps to give us the challenge we needed.
If it weren’t for a brave group of our ancestors, the Neanderthals could still be
here today, and the whole Out-of-Africa exodus might not have ever happened!
So what did we do? We came together and we fought. Small bands of humans
became larger, stronger coalitions. New weaponry was developed. New
techniques emerged. For all of us, even including people who descend entirely
from Africa – this is how our ancestors were born.
 RISING TO THE OCCASION
GOING THROUGH HELL TO COME OUT
RIGHT
Consider the way we explained that man can “direct” his own evolution in
Volume One. It appears that we “made” the Neanderthals so they could provide
the necessary resistance to catalyze the next stage of our growth. Until our clash
with the Neanderthals, humans were relatively advanced, but this was a
competition that brought out the best in us – both genetically and culturally.
To defeat the Neanderthals, it took new strategies, technology, networking, and
resources. None of this was entirely new, however. By the Lower Paleolithic,
our Homo erectus ancestors had already pioneered:
the use of controlled fire (by at least 1.5 million years ago throughout Africa and Asia)
the construction of permanent homes (by at least 800,000 years ago in Israel)
the construction of maritime vessels (suggested by the settlement of islands like Flores
near Southeast Asia around 850,000 years ago and the islands of the Mediterranean
Sea around 300,000 years ago).
This tells us that we obviously had language, social structure, and the ability to
plan for the future. I mean, seriously, you can’t any of those above without all
that.
But war with the Neanderthals forced us to go beyond those basics. Thus, long
before Sun Tzu authored the Art of War or Hannibal conquered the Alps, our
ancestors were pitted in a battle for survival. Rising to the occasion, we extended
our trade and communication networks, effectively building coalitions against a
common foe.
THE ORIGINS OF LONG-DISTANCE
TRADE
The jewelry and other artifacts that were carried across long distances show us
that our trade networks had grown considerably. Before 200,000 years ago, we
typically only find items transported (or traded) across short distances. By
80,000 years ago, the average “zone” of trade was about 20 miles. By 40,000
years ago, this had grown to 500 miles!
Unless we want to think one person walked that far to do trade, we have to
assume that there was a serious network or economic system in place. This sort
of information-sharing also explains why Upper Paleolithic sites across Europe
and the Near East share so many cultural features, even when separated by great
distances. Even the artwork is pretty consistent. This is because there was a
common culture among the humans who ended the Neanderthal reign. This
culture would go on to take over the world.
The humans who populated the globe after the Neanderthal onslaught were the
smartest, fittest, and most ingenious folks humanity had to offer. Not only that,
but this struggle forced disparate bands to come together as a cohesive whole to
fight and survive. If there really was, as some anthropologists claim, a “spurt” in
brain development during this period, it wasn’t the result of us venturing into
Europe, but the result of us coming together as one.
DID YOU KNOW? And we’re not simply referring to the Original People of
Another development Africa and the Near East. There’s evidence to suggest that
that occurred when we
traveled north into
the campaign against the Neanderthals brought together
Europe was the invention diverse groups of Original People from as far east as India
of cold-weather clothing. and Central Asia. In other words, this period required
Of course, there’s Africoid and Australoid people coming together. We’ll
evidence of clothing long
before this, but we’d explore this history in our chapter on Europe.
never needed to wear
layers in Africa. Venturing
into Europe introduced us
to the coldest place we’d
ever been to. It’s tough to
survive in that
environment without
adapting your diet and
your attire. We hunted
more game than ever
before and wore clothing
sewn from fur, flax, and
leather, with bird bone
needles and thread made
from animal sinew or
plant fibers. (For more,
see “The Origins of Style”
in Black People Invented
Everything)
 MASTERING NATURE
While Neanderthals wrestled with the whims of nature and its many predators,
our ancestors had a mastery of the natural world. Although we could precisely
time the migration of game animals such as wild horses and deer to plan our
hunts, we realized we needed more protection for our settlements and help with
hunting, since the cold tundra of Eurasia wasn’t exactly full of nutritious natural
foods. So we made dogs.
WE MADE DOGS
Yes, we made dogs. To be technical, we bred wolves from the wild into
domesticated dogs, but that was no lightweight accomplishment. Can you
imagine breeding wild wolves to have all the features you’d desire in a guard dog
today?
For starters, wolves will eat you. Haven’t you seen The Grey? You have to know
what you’re doing if you plan on doing anything involving wolves. Second,
wolves will eat you. In case that wasn’t clear the first time.
Third, if you DO somehow get into the business of breeding wolves, you will
learn that wolves don’t bark. We bred out their ability to bark (to signal danger).
Think about that. How would you take a non-barking animal and make an
animal that barks? That’s pretty serious. Especially if you’re working with an
animal that wants to eat you. We also bred these dogs to be the only animals
that can respond to our eye movements. Experienced dog trainers know that
you can tell a dog where to go, with just your eyes.
DID YOU KNOW? There’s no other animal going for that.
A hearth is essentially a fireplace where you can cook None, not even with modern breeding
food. Our ancestors were assembling well-built techniques. But that’s how thorough
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hearths as early as the Middle Palaeolithic.
These hearths became pretty popular in the cold
we were, selectively breeding wolves
climates of Aurignacian Europe. Beginning about over several generations to become
28,000 years ago, the Gravettians of Dolni Vestonice man’s best friend, over 30,000 years
were using these fireplaces to do more than cook ago. There’s a possibility this wasn’t
food and heat the house.
Their domed clay kilns were used for firing the earliest our first time using this knowledge, as
ceramic figurines. A 2004 study said “the technology evidence from canine DNA collected
of Dolni Vestonice shows an advanced mastering of by Robert K. Wayne suggests that we
207
the raw material possibilities.” In other words, long originally domesticated dogs on a
before Anu people re-introduced ceramic traditions to
the world about 10,000 years ago, their ancestors smaller scale around 100,000 years ago
208
had pioneered this science. Of course, they also or earlier. As we’ll see in Volume
continued their stone-working traditions.
Four, this wouldn’t be our last time
 Gravettian artists carved hundreds of stone figurines,
either.
knife handles, and pendants, such as the dark
Oh, and these dogs weren’t no little
soapstone sculpture of a Black woman’s head known
as the Balzi Rosso Venus. punk dogs either. In 2008, fossil
material excavated from a Paleolithic
site at Goyet Cave in Belgium turned up evidence of a 36,000-year-old dog, a
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large and powerful animal who ate reindeer, musk oxen and horses. Yeah, we
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bred dogs that ate horses. In 2010, the remains of a 33,000-year-old dog were
211
found in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, and in 2011, the skeleton of
a 27,000-year-old dog were found in the Czech Republic. It was buried with a
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mammoth bone in its mouth. You might have a blue nose pitbull with a head
the size of a watermelon, but I’m pretty sure even THAT dog can’t handle a
mammoth bone.
ADVANCED WEAPONRY
The first long-range missiles were hand-thrown projectiles. 25,000 years before
the Greeks stole the idea of the javelin from indigenous people, we were bangin
on our enemies with wooden spears. According to a November 2008 article in
New Scientist magazine, “human aerial bombardments might have pushed
Neanderthals to extinction.” This theory is based on the bone shapes of human
arms from the period, compared to those of their Neanderthal enemies.
You see, in professional baseball players, frequent overhand throwing from an
early age permanently rotates the shoulder-end of the humerus toward an
athlete’s back, compared to people who haven’t spent much time hurling. Jill
Rhodes, a biological anthropologist, studied the arm bones of prehistoric
remains, and found evidence for projectile use in male humans living in Europe
around 26,000 to 28,000 years ago – around the time we were at the height of
competition with the Neanderthals. Changes in bone shape left by a life of
overhand throwing hint that Stone Age humans regularly threw heavy objects,
such as spears, while Neanderthals did not. Neanderthals typically fought and
hunted their prey with melee weapons like clubs and hand-held spears. It was
our Aurignacian ancestors who perfected the art of projectile aerodynamics to
outhunt and conquer their Neanderthal foes from a safe distance.
Of course, this science goes back further than our occupation of Europe. Stone
points resembling the tips of spears were used in Africa over 60,000 years ago,
as was the bow and arrow. In fact, there’s even some speculation that the
Acheulean hand ax, which remains a fixed feature in the Homo erectus tool kit
for over 1 million years, may have been aerodynamically suited for use as a
 213
projectile.
“DEATH RAYS FROM OUTER SPACE”
Then what happened? Would you believe that we summoned the forces of
Nature to help eliminate our enemies? Well, I don’t know if we conjured
anything up ourselves, but we know that something of celestial proportions did
happen. In a theory anthropologist John Hawks calls “Death Rays from Outer
Space,” researchers Jean-Pierre Valet and Hélène Valladas propose that
geomagnetic excursions at 40,000 and 32,000 years ago weakened the ozone
layer, thereby irradiating the Neanderthals with extra ultraviolet light from the
214
Sun, weakening their health considerably. Considering the possibility
Neanderthals may have been light-skinned, this makes sense.
Meanwhile, the Elbrus volcanic eruption (c. 38,000 BC) had negative effects on
the health of Neanderthals living in the caves of the Caucasus Mountains in
215
southeastern Europe. But they apparently recovered, making more weapons
and increasing their activity, until a second, larger eruption (c. 30,000 BC) finally
216
killed off Neanderthal populations from the Caucasus to Central Europe.
DID YOU KNOW? This cleared the way for us to forge
Calling this conflict a “war” may give you the wrong forward and take them off the planet.
impression. Before 15,000 years ago, there are no
known instances of “true warfare” anywhere in the
The “robust,” big-headed
world. Hunter-gatherers like the Aurignacians most Neanderthals were weak now, barely
likely “picked off” Neanderthals using guerilla warfare able to get enough food to survive, as
and long-distance weapons like spears. There are not only had the climate changed
some scenes resembling battles in cave paintings
from Spain, dating back to around the time of the considerably, but Neanderthals’ large
Neanderthals’ “last stand” there. For the most part, brains and body structures required
however, this was a battle for survival. The best more energy (and thus more calories
adaptation strategies won. Humans mastered the 217
environment and took better advantage of local per day) than ours. With the playing
resources, while the Neanderthals struggled to field leveled considerably, we could
compete. compete with the remaining
218
Neanderthals for resources, which finally led to Neanderthal extinction.
Though, of course, there’s also evidence we straight up killed them off,
sometimes removing jawbones from their bodies and wearing strings of their
219
teeth as necklaces.
NEANDERTHAL CULTURE, OR THE LACK
THEREOF
Oh cut it out. Don’t feel sorry for them. They fought to kill. And the remains
suggest that these creeps ate us whenever they could. While we could’ve ate the
Neanderthals we killed, it doesn’t look we did that. Even in the same
environment, we never adapted the lifestyle of our enemies.
The Neanderthals however, copied us quite a bit. Most of their rituals were
copied directly from ours. They still failed to develop much of a symbolic or
artistic culture, but they did pick up a few things. Fortunately for us, they didn’t
learn everything.
Our warriors used projectile weapons, such as bows firing arrows tipped with
poison, so they could kill from a safe distance. The Neanderthals mostly
220
attacked with melee weapons like clubs and spears. By at least 50,000 years
ago, we were killing Neanderthals with what scientists call “advanced projectile
weapons.” One Neanderthal body, impaled by a flying spear, may be the earliest
evidence of a modern human using a weapon against a member of another
221
hominid species.
And we kept developing newer, better technology. Areas where humans and
Neanderthals crossed paths present some of the earliest examples of the net (c.
222 223
27,000 BC), the bola, the spear thrower (c. 28,000 BC), and the bow and
224
arrow (c. 28,000 BC).
Finally, 28,000 years ago – after thousands of years of war – the Neanderthals
were themselves trapped in their final holdout, the Iberian Peninsula (now home
to Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar). Human populations from Central Europe and
Northern African converged, forcing the Neanderthals into their “last stand,”
facing settlements of Black warriors to the South and the East, and – on the
other sides – the Atlantic Ocean. And Neanderthals couldn’t sail. They were
doomed. There are cave paintings in Spain dating back to this time period
depicting some of the earliest battles ever recorded by man. Unlike the Moors
1300 years ago, when we took Iberia from the Neanderthals, we left none living
225
to rise up again.
But is “extinction” the right word? After all, I don’t mean a total disappearance,
226
since modern Europeans (and some Asians) have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA.
Why? How? We’ll get into that story in Volume Four. For now, if you consider
yourself Black, it’s more reasonable to consider the Neanderthals the enemy of
your ancestors than to consider them your ancestors.
WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT THE
NEANDERTHALS?
Still…no matter which way you slice the genetic record, the Neanderthals were
critical to human history. I’ll explain why. Scientists are still debating what
exactly led to the “rapid” development of humans in the years leading up to the
“Out-of-Africa” migration. Some say that humans didn’t become “advanced”
until they reached Europe, where we’ve dug most of the evidence of prehistoric
artwork and whatnot.
That racist theory has finally been disproven by recent discoveries of even older
artifacts in Africa, where modern archaeology has barely begun digging
seriously. Other scientists have credited our “rise” to the invention of language,
which is also flawed. Language has been useful, but we were doing a great deal
227
before there’s evidence we used written or spoken language of any kind. Still
228
others have looked at the “invention” of fire or stone blades, which they say
gave us some sort of competitive advantage over the animal kingdom.
Again, there’s clear evidence we had those things LONG before 50,000 years
ago. And there’s evidence that we didn’t need or depend on those things in the
way many anthropologist think. In fact, some societies gave “inventions” like
the bow and arrow a shot (no pun intended) thousands of years before they later
caught on. Obviously, we only used inventions when the demand arose on a
widespread level in our societies, not the other way around (the idea that we
“discovered” an invention and it changed the way our whole society worked).
So if it wasn’t language, fire, blades, or the magic land of Europe, what spurred
our rapid development from a people who lived almost too simply to measure
for over 5 million years…into a people that settled the globe and built urban
civilizations everywhere in less than 50,000 years? The Neanderthals. They
forced us to come together again. And that’s when all our greatness became
even greater. Lesson!
THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE
THE SURVIVORS
“The Pygmy was the first Homo [sapien]…From Africa
these little men spread all over the world, North, East, South
and West, until not only Africa but Europe, Asia, North
and South America and Oceania were populated by them.”
– Albert Churchward
As devastating as the events of the previous chapter may have been, there were
people who had left the Nubian Complex more than 75,000 years ago, but
somehow survived these threats and remained settled in Asia, Europe, and other
parts of the world. Of course, millions of others went on with their lives as usual
in Africa.
Of those who left Africa over 100,000 years ago, very few of these communities
have survived into the modern day. Some were later absorbed into more recent
populations, such as the Australoid populations who swept through Asia after
recovering from the Toba event, or the Mongoloid populations who spread
through the same regions much later on. Others were wiped out in recent years.
Wherever we find these people (or their traces), they have been marginalized
and pushed to the fringes of their old homelands. They live in the forests or
mountains. They have the darkest skin and the woolliest hair of any ethnic
group in that area, and they often speak languages unrelated to any language that
came into the area within the past 10,000 years. They have their own customs
and traditions, and they avoid unnecessary contact with most other people,
especially Westerners.
For many, their community’s continued survival is seriously threatened by the
expansion of those who now live in their homelands. With their isolation, it’s
clear that their distinctly African culture could not have come from outside
influences. These are the world’s oldest people. And throughout the world –
even in Africa – these people tend to be as small as children. But why?
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
How and when we began expanding out of the Nubian Complex.
How almost all of the people who left this area before 75,000 years ago were killed off.
What killed off most of our ancestors who took the southern route across Asia.
What killed off those of us who attempted to travel north into Europe and Central Asia.
The incredible scientific and cultural advances we made in response to these threats
(such as “making” dogs from wolves!).
 THE WORLD’S OLDEST PEOPLE?
In the chapter on Africa, we discussed the short-statured Mbuti and Mbenga
people of Africa, and how they carry one of the world’s oldest genetic lineages.
There are people with similar features in Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, the
Andaman Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea, and – in ancient
times – pretty much anywhere the world’s first settlers went. All of these people
tend to carry the oldest genetic lineages.
They all look Black...but there’s something unique about them. They’re small.
Adults are almost never taller than five feet. Some are only three feet tall.
Because of their size, they’re commonly known as pygmies, and sometimes as
“Negritos” (meaning “little Blacks”) in Asia, and (less often) as “Negrilloes” in
Africa. While the word “pygmy” isn’t meant to be offensive on its own, it can
make these people seem to be something “other” than man, when in fact they
are the Original People!
Albert Churchward called them “seed people,” meaning they were the “seeds”
of all humanity. Eminent historians like Yoseph ben Jochannan and Basil
Davidson referred to them collectively as the Twa, the ethnic name for one of
the oldest and largest pygmy populations in Central Africa. Non-Twa people
such as the Aka and Mbuti would naturally object to this term, however.
Aka-speaking people in Central Africa use the term Ba Aka (the plural of Aka)
to refer to themselves (one of the rare cases of an ethnic group being known by
a name it didn’t get from someone else), and this name is sometimes used in the
Central African Republic to refer to all “pygmy” people.
In fact, the name “Akka” has even been found in ancient Egypt, North Africa,
and Moorish Spain, always to describe people who match the description of the
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Central African Ba Aka people. Still, Ba Aka (or just Aka) are insufficient,
because not all “pygmy” people have Ba Aka features in common.
This is because – despite what white people have said – all Black people don’t
look alike! The Negritos of Southeast Asia have many features that distinguish
them from the Hadzabe of Tanzania. Yet they’re both over 100,000-year-old
human communities!
So what do they have in common? Two things, above all: They’re diminutive,
which is simply a technical way of saying short-statured. And they’re Black.
Wherever we find them – even if their hair isn’t entirely wooly (and it often is),
their skin is dark. These are clues to their origins and their history. Dark skin
reveals their origins because we know the first humans were Black and they
came from East Africa.
Their short stature reveals their history because these people didn’t start out so
short. We’ll explain that in a minute. For now, let’s agree to use a term that
covers all “pygmy” people throughout the world. We propose the use of
Diminutive Black People, or the DBP people,230 to refer to the diverse array of
human communities who fit the “pygmy” profile across the world. Everywhere
you find DBP people, you’re looking at quite possibly the oldest human
communities in that region.
We know that the Original People traveled east of Arabia, settling all of
southern Asia and beyond. Wherever they went, they came to be known by over
300 different names, such as the Khyeng of Pakistan, the Jarawa and Onge of
the Andaman Islands (near India), the Aeta of the Philippines, the Skraelings of
Greenland, and so on. All of these names refer to Diminutive Black People,
who are regarded as the “first” people of those regions.
And those are just the cultural names recognized by anthropologists; the names
used in mythological and oral traditions would raise this number to over 1,000!
Naturally, these people developed variations in language and culture over the
past 50,000 years, but you’d be surprised by how much they remained alike.
One thing is for sure: wherever they settled, they survived for tens of thousands
of years. This is why there are accounts of the DBP in ancient Greece, India,
China, the Americas, and just about everywhere in between, from ancient times
until now. For as long as there’s been written history, people have been writing
about these “little Black people.”
They are recorded as being respected (or feared) by everyone from Hercules, to
the Moors of Spain, to the early European storytellers who made them into the
subject of myth and legend. And many of the descendants of the DBP have
survived into the present day – although their continued existence is under daily
threat. Nowhere is this more the case than in the Andaman Islands, where the
oldest surviving DBP population – with an occupation history of over 50,000
years and genetic record to prove it – are at risk of extinction due to Western
“intervention.”
EARLY ACCOUNTS OF THE DBP
Bas-relief images of little Black people are sculpted on the tombs at Sakkara,
from the 5th Dynasty of Egypt (3366 BC). The important gods Bes and Ptah are
also depicted as DBP, for reasons that Gerald Massey attempts to explain in
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Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World. Egyptian king Pepi II (c. 2278 BC) sent an
expedition into central Africa and it returned with a dancing “dwarf” known as
Akka.
Small Black people are also depicted on Greek vases with Black skin, curly hair,
broad noses, and sometimes armed with lances. The Greeks have had a long
fascination with them, but, then again, so did everyone who encountered them.
In the Greek epic Iliad, Homer makes the first use of the word “pygmy” to
describe a race of tiny folk dwelling in a far southern land where cranes fly when
cold winters hit the northern shores.
Later writers usually place them near the sources of the Nile, where the cranes
were said to migrate every year to take over the pygmies’ fields. Hecataeus said
they cut down grain with axes, also suggesting they practiced some type of plant
cultivation. Aristotle and Pliny described DBP who inhabited the marshes of
Upper Egypt towards the sources of the Nile, who lived in caves and had
exceedingly small horses, suggesting they practiced animal domestication as well.
Herodotus reports how a party of Black explorers, while journeying through the
African desert, were gathering fruit when they were seized by a group of
pygmies who led them across forest marshes to their town, near a great river
which flowed from west to east containing crocodiles. This was probably the
Niger, and the people described were most likely the ancestors of the Ba Aka
that still live in central Africa. During his 6th century AD voyage through the
Red Sea, the Roman writer Nonnosus reported seeing them on the last of the
Farasan islands, which are situated between Ethiopia and Arabia. He described
them as…
…very short, black-skinned, their bodies entirely covered with hair. The men were accompanied
by women of the same appearance, and by boys still shorter. All were naked, women as well as
men, except for a short apron of skin round their loins. There was nothing wild or savage about
them. Their speech was human, but their language was unintelligible even to their neighbors, and
still more so to Nonnosos and his companions. They live on shell-fish and fish cast up on the
shore. According to Nonnosus, they were very timid, and when they saw him and his
companions, they shrank from them as we do from monstrous wild beasts.
Wild beasts, you say? It’s only later Europeans who described the DBP and
other Blacks as savages. Most ancient writers saw them as civilized and highly
ethical people. While some noted that the DBP avoided white people like the
plague, others suggested this was not due to fear. A strong example can be
found in Philostratus the Elder’s account of Hercules (considered by the Greeks
to be the strongest man in the world) venturing into Africa, where he is nearly
vanquished by an alliance of tall and short Black people. (See Volume Four for
more on THAT story.)
Although the Egyptians and Greeks offer us some of the oldest recorded
accounts of the DBP, there are records of them nearly anywhere people have
settled on the planet. If man has been there, they were there first. Artistic
renderings and oral accounts can be found in India, China, Australia, Northern
Europe, the Americas, and nearly everywhere the Original People settled.
Classic texts like David MacRitchie’s Fians, Fairies, and Picts describe their
presence in such unexpected places as ancient Britain. There are many others. In
1897, R.G. Halliburton published details on how even the Moors respected and
revered the pygmies of North Africa and Spain, considering them holier (and
232
more powerful) than themselves, and keeping them a secret from outsiders.
Other works include The Tasmanians by James Bonwick (describing DBP in and
around Australia), The Negritos of Zambales by William Allen Reed (describing
DBP in the Pacific), The Pygmies by Armand de Quatrefages (describing evidence
of DBP nearly everywhere in the world), and The Distribution of the Negritos in the
Philippine Islands and Elsewhere by A. B. Meyer (self-explanatory).
Most of these works are hard to get your hands on nowadays (and you can
probably see why), so – through Two Horizons Press – we’re republishing all of
them. We’ll cite more accounts of the DBP and their unique presence in the
world’s civilizations as we discuss individual regions in the pages that follow.
 THE GREAT MIGRATION
When the Original People first left the Nubian Complex, they spread from
southern Arabia into Pakistan, India, China, and Southeast Asia, then to
Australia and the islands of the Pacific (all of them!), ultimately sailing all the
way into South America. We know this because there are still traces of them in
these regions, and – wherever they still survive – DNA confirms they were the
oldest people there.
Throughout Africa the people who carry the oldest DNA lineages (like Y-DNA
haplogroups A and B) are sometimes tall (like the Nilotic people of the Sudan or
the Beta Israel of Ethiopia), but many of them (especially in Central Africa) are
much smaller than their neighbors, so they are called “pygmies.” Throughout
the rest of the world, people with the oldest lineages (like mtDNA haplogroups
M and N) are often the smallest people of that area. Both in Africa and beyond,
they are almost a mysterious people, because we know so little about them,
particularly their prehistoric past.
WHAT DON’T ALL DBP PEOPLE LOOK
ALIKE?
(WARNING! TECHNICAL STUFF AHEAD!)
As we’ve already discussed, DPB populations are typically the recent
descendants of the world’s oldest people. DBP adults are short-statured but
otherwise, their body proportions closely resemble those of African people. In
fact, as the DBP people are descendants of the world’s first human settlers, it’s
natural to assume they’d look distinctly Africoid. And if, by “Africoid,” you
simply mean “like Black people,” well then you’re right on target. However, if
you want to get specific – as many scientists do – there are some distinctions
that can be made.
You see, if it were up to me, I’d say there were all Black people, locally evolved
to carry small variations in their physical type. But modern anthropologists
would call me clueless. You see, they make sharp distinctions between the DBP
of Africa and the DBP of Asia. This is why they were called “Negrillos” in
Africa and “Negritos” in Asia. Anthropologists also make sharp distinctions
between the Africoid (or “Negroid” or “Congoid”) people and Australoid
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people who look like taller versions of these same people.
We know two things that help make sense of this mess. First, DBP people
weren’t always short-statured. We’ll explain that in a minute. For now, let’s just
say that DBP are the local descendants of the world’s oldest people. And the
world’s oldest people didn’t look “strongly” like African people or Australian
people, but more like a blend of the two. And these people were highly diverse!
These people had all the features where today’s races come from.
The fact that all of the Original People didn’t look alike, and may not have
looked (as a group) like any one particular race – together with about 75,000
years of localized evolution (especially after Toba) – provides a sufficient
explanation for why all of their DBP descendants don’t look alike today.
It should be noted, of course, that some DBP look like their neighbors because
of generations of mixture. This can be seen among the Aetas of the Philippines
and the “little Black people” found in ancient Chinese artwork. You can actually
look at old pictures of the Aetas or any other DBP population in Asia and see
people who look “pure” alongside those who look more mixed. Very few pure
people are still around in these areas.
There’s also a third scenario for the diversity in DBP people: Some populations
who arrived long after the first southern migration were ALSO pushed into the
forests, where they developed the same small stature as the original DBP people.
This can be seen in the pygmy people of South America. This is known as
convergent evolution, which simply refers to when two populations
independently acquire the same development or feature because they’re in
similar circumstances. Kinda like if you move to Alaska and your friend moves
to Antarctica. You’re both going to evolve into people who wear coats all the
time. Still seems complicated? Don’t worry, I’m about to explain everything.
WHY WERE THE DBP SO SHORT?
Scientists are still undecided as to why the world’s oldest populations tend to be
pygmies. Early historians believed that was simply how we started out. For
example, Albert Churchward, in his 1912 Origin and Evolution of Primitive Man,
writes:
The Pygmy was the first Homo [sapien]…From Africa these little men spread all over the world,
North, East, South and West, until not only Africa but Europe, Asia, North and South America
234
and Oceania were populated by them.
But were they? The earliest Homo sapiens skeletons aren’t diminutive. They’re a
little shorter than we are now, but they’re still within the range of “regular”
people, not “pygmies.” And there are plenty of people in Africa with DNA
235
lineages that are over 100,000 years ago, and they’re as tall as any of us.
Yet, throughout the world, many of the oldest human communities are
startlingly small. Why? In recent years, scientists have proposed that they
became smaller over thousands years of living in harsh conditions. Some of
those theories blame malnutrition, others blame living in constricted
environments of tropical forest, and still others suggest that diminutive size
allowed us to reproduce earlier, which was necessary given higher mortality rates
236
among marginalized people. But DBP people are not always malnutritioned,
and nobody has shown that they are able to have children faster than other
people.
DID YOU KNOW? Recent studies suggest that
Some “New Age” authors claim that the first humans environmental factors, particularly
were much larger, rather than much smaller, than
humans are today. This is mostly based on Biblical
living in dense forests, are what
mentions of Nephilim, or giants, on Earth in the first produced the change in stature. One
days of man. In his 1638 book, Discourses study found that after 60,000 years of
Concerning Two New Sciences, Galileo showed how separation from the people who
the Medieval idea of incredibly massive humans – an
idea popular in the “fantasy” literature of the time – became the taller Africans (who
was a scientific impossibility. In short, the bones typically don’t live in forest areas), the
required to hold up a human of giant proportions ancestors of the African pygmies
would have to be so wide and dense that such a
being couldn’t resemble a human at all. Not to
became small. Historian John Iliffe, in
mention that the increased distance in the neural his Africans: The History of a Continent,
pathways of a massive brain would not actually make suggests:
such a creature “smarter” but slower. The Pygmies who now occupy the equatorial
forests are possibly a Negroid sub-group, specialized to an extreme environment and showing
237
great genetic diversity between one isolated local group and another.
Iliffe is saying that there’s no universal, homogenous DBP population.
Genetically, there is no evidence that pygmies are entirely different from other
Africans. That is, there’s no “pygmy marker” that is common to all African
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pygmies and exclusive of all other Africans. And he’s right. There are tall
people in Africa who also have that original L1 or A haplotype. There are also
some “pygmy” people whose genetic lineages aren’t as old as others. What this
suggests is the following theory:
DBP people – wherever they are in the world – have been nearly pushed to the
brink of extinction by the people who came after them. It hasn’t always been
outright war and domination, but competition for land and resources has been
tough on the world’s first settlers. So, throughout the world, these people
moved into jungles and heavily forested mountain areas, where some are not
able to get the nutrition they need, and their mortality rates are high.
Migliano and colleagues have proposed a theory that their short stature is a
result of generations of choosing mates who can have children younger. Their
research fails to prove that DBP people have children earlier, but they provide
us with a theoretical model that suggests the ancestors of the DBP could have
consciously selected (or bred themselves, so to speak) for increasingly smaller
stature.
But why? All I know is that being pushed into the jungles would have created
the necessary cramped conditions to promote the development of increasingly
smaller body size. This happens both in nature among animals isolated on
islands (as in pygmy animals), and through manmade mechanisms like animal
domestication (as in massive wolves being bred into tiny dogs). However it
happened, these changes could have occurred within the past 60,000 years.
This makes sense, as the examples of pre-human survivals in Southeast Asia and
Southwest Africa show that the way for archaic humans to survive is by “living
239
unobtrusively” and “becoming essentially invisible to the new arrivals.” But –
as with any working theory – I could be wrong. Yet the historical (and genetic)
record is crystal clear that the DBP – despite being nearly forced into hiding –
represent the descendants of the Original People, the first humans to settle Asia,
Europe, Australia, and the Americas. The ancestors of the DBP populated the
entire globe, from its hottest locales to its coldest outposts. There doesn’t seem
to be a place where they didn’t go. In most places, the traces of their occupation
are minimal, so our understanding of the “Original Culture” may be limited.
Some things, however, are fairly obvious. For example, we know they were
hunter-gatherers, living off the land. They didn’t practice farming, but they
cultivated and tended to wild plants. They also taught other people how to farm,
which suggests they knew how to do it. Yet they didn’t! Their way of life may
have been as natural as it got. If they were, indeed, the first stewards of the
Earth, the populations who displaced them made a grave mistake. You’d have to
understand their culture to know just how important these Original People
were.
In so many ways, these were a people without vices. They didn’t lie, cheat, or
steal. They didn’t even tolerate egos and boasting. They had no leaders, no
property. The laws were natural. The culture was ethical. They lived
symbiotically with their environments, meaning they lived off the land without
disturbing the balance of nature. Yet they had all the knowledge! As we’ll
explain in Volume Three, these were the people who truly paved the way for all
the world’s cultures and civilizations, even when they didn’t adopt all of the
traditions or transitions they introduced to the world. Perhaps this is why so
many of the indigenous communities who settled areas after them would regard
them as gods or at least “semi-divine beings.”
Who should be included in the cultural community we call the “Original
People”? When we look at indigenous communities and we ask, “Are these
people Original People?” it’s easy to look at external features like dark skin and
woolly hair texture, but there’s so much more to the picture. Before white
people made us so self-conscious of our Blackness and our other physical
features, we determined who was “the Original People” by how closely a
community (or individual) observed the cultural fundamentals that have defined
Original People for at least the past two million years (and much longer if you
consider the arguments we make in The Science of Self, Volume One, where we trace
the above principles back to the origins of life and the universe itself).
These principles can be associated with the world’s oldest communities and
cultures. This is what other scholars have called a “natural way of life,” a way
that many of us are struggling to return to today. These are the principles we
explore in Volume Three of this series.
INDIA
T H E I N D U S VA L L E Y
“There can be little doubt that the “pre-Dravidian” tribes…
have a preponderating element of Negro blood.” – Sir Harry
Hamilton Johnston
Who were the Original People of India? There are many different communities
in India. Some look nearly white, many are various shades of brown, and some
are as black-skinned as the people of the Sudan. Actually not some, but MANY.
India today has over a billion residents, so there’s actually a LOT of Black
people there. In fact, all things considered, India has the largest Black
population in the world outside Africa. But what does this mean? What makes
these people Black? Who were the first Black people in India? And what did
they accomplish?
 WHO WERE THE DRAVIDIANS?
For those of us who have come across this topic before, we’ve probably heard
that the original Black people of India are known as the Dravidians. This isn’t all
wrong, but it’s not exactly accurate either.
For starters, Dravidian is a language family, not a race or “tribe.” You don’t
have to be Black to speak Dravidian. There are over 200 million Dravidian
speakers, most of them living in southern India. Others are scattered across
240
central India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. The largest
Dravidian-speaking groups are the Telugus, Tamils, Kannadigas, Malayalis,
Tuluvas, Gonds and Brahui. If you look at pictures of them, you’ll see the Black
genes.
But these people don’t all look exactly alike. They look different and there are
unique variations in each of their languages, some of which is a result of them
having different ancestral groups. This is because the Dravidians weren’t the
first Black settlers in India, or the last.
People – especially those of us in the business of explaining such things to
others – tend to reduce things to the simplest possible understanding. As a
result, some of us associate all the indigenous Black people of India with the
Dravidians, but there’s more to the story than that. You see, most Dravidian
people (like the Tamil) look Australoid, while some (like the Gond) look more
Africoid. Why the difference? This is because there was more than one
migration of Black people settling in India.
 THE FIRST BLACK PEOPLE IN INDIA
In his Short History of Civilization, Professor Lynn Thorndike described the
241
ancient people of India as “short black men with almost Negro noses.” There
is considerable agreement, even among Indian historians, that the first settlers of
India could be associated with “little Black people” or Negritos. As Vidya
Prakash Tyagi explains in the excellent Martial Races of Undivided India:
The aboriginal habitants of India belonged to an ancient population of unsure origins who mainly
populated the jungle environments of the subcontinent, much like the modem day Pygmies of
Africa and the Negritos of Southeast Asia. We can only presume that the morphological
features shared by these last two geographically diverse populations, such as very small-stature,
dark skin, woolly hair, scant body hair and occasional steatopygia, must also have characterised
242
the ancient Indian homunculi [little people].
Over 2000 years ago, Greek historian Pliny knew of “dwarf races” throughout
both Africa and Asia, while his colleague Megasthenes placed these people in
243
the center of India. Several other Greek writers mentioned Indian pygmies
244
living underground, east of the river Ganges. Around 400 BC, Ctesias
reported:
In the middle of India there are black men, called Pygmaioi (Pygmies), who speak the same
language as the other inhabitants of the country. They are very short, the tallest being only two
cubits in height, most of them only one and a half…They are snubnosed and ugly. Their sheep
are no bigger than lambs, their oxen, asses, horses, mules, and other beasts of burden about the
size of rams [suggesting, again, that they knew how to breed animals].
Being very skilful archers, 3000 of them attend on the king of India. They are very just and have
the same laws as the Indians. They hunt the hare and the fox, not with dogs, but with ravens,
245
kites, crows, and eagles.
In other words, these little Black people had a rich and dynamic culture. They
stuck around as a distinct population long enough for the ancient Greek records
to be full of references to “little Black people,” and for more recent European
and Chinese accounts to cite a “Negrito” presence in India’s forests. According
to George Weber, at least eight DBP populations are still living in India.
These were all “pre-Dravidian” people, or Black people in India before the
Dravidians came. In The Negro in the New World, Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston
writes:
…there can be little doubt that the “pre-Dravidian” tribes of the Nilgiri Hills (the Kota,
Kurumba, Irula, and Badaga) and of the forests south-west of Madras and of Maisur, Cochin, and
Travancore (the Kader, Paniyan, Pulaya, Puliyar, and Kaniyan) have a preponderating element of
negro blood. Many of these people are dark-coloured, with kinky or curly hair, are prognathous
246
and flat-nosed, with thick, everted lips.
 DID YOU KNOW? Then what happened? According to R.
In Anacalypsis, British historian Godfrey Higgins Thapar’s textbook, A History of India:
suggests that Buddha descended from the aboriginal
Ethnological studies have revealed six main
“Negroes” of ancient India:
races in the Indian sub-continent. The earliest
“The mountaineers [of India] most resemble Negroes
was apparently the Negrito and this was
in their countenances and their hair. The natives of
followed by the Proto-Australoid, the
the hilly districts of Bengal and Bahar can hardly be
Mongoloid, the Mediterranean, and later those
distinguished by their features from the modern
associated with Aryan culture.
Ethiopians.” All this accords very well with my theory
respecting the black Buddha. It has been observed There is evidence of the Proto-Australoid, the
Mediterranean, Alpine, and Mongoloid in the
that the figures in all the old caves of India have the
appearance of Negroes. This tends to prove not only skeletal remains at Harappan sites. Presumably
the extreme antiquity of the caves but also the by this time (~1500BC) the first five of the
247 races mentioned above were well settled in
original Negro character of the natives.” India.
The Proto-Australoid were the basic element in the Indian population and their speech was of
the Austric linguistic group, a specimen of which survives in the Munda speech of certain
primitive tribes.
The Mediterranean race is generally associated with Dravidian culture. The concentration of the
Mongoloid people was in the north-eastern and northern fringes of the sub-continent, and their
speech conforms to the Sino-Tibetan group.
The last to come were the people commonly referred to as the Aryans. Aryan is in fact a linguistic
248
term indicating a speech-group of Indo-European origin, and is not an ethnic term.
In other words, most anthropologists recognize Africoid people as the Original
People of India. These people eventually became the DBP, through processes
we explained in a previous chapter. These Original People were followed by
Australoid people. Then there was a later influx of “Mediterranean people”
(probably the Anu, who we discuss in Part Two), Mongoloid people, and, lastly,
the so-called Aryans (who we discuss in Volume Four). In other words,
everybody was Black and dark brown until the Aryans came.
 THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS
Where are the “Negritos” of India found? Some may still live in the forests of
central or southern India, but these people are best survived in a group of
islands between India’s east coast and the western shores of Southeast Asia.
According to anthropologist J.H. Hutton:
[T]he Negritoes were the oldest inhabitants of India, but have left virtually no trace on the main
land of the subcontinent. Some of the representatives of the Negritoes are found in Andaman
249
and Nicobar Islands and among some of the Nagas.
In his 1937 work, Environment, Race, and Migration, distinguished anthropologist
Thomas Griffith Taylor identifies a group of “dwarf folk in the rugged hills in
the extreme south of India” with the people of the Andaman Islands.
B.S. Guha, former director of the Anthropological Survey of India, used
physical measurements carried out during the census of 1931 to devise a racial
classification that is “considered as the most authentic.” According to Guha’s
findings:
Most probably, the Negritoes were the earliest arrivals in India…Their representatives are the
Andamanese, Nicobaris, and the Irulas, Kadars, Kanikkars, Muthaiwans, Paniyans, Puliyans,
Uralis living in the hills of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka… Their arrival in the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands (Jarawa, Onge, Sentinelese, Shompen, etc.) is believed to be from the
Peninsula of Malaysia. In appearance, culture, and traditions, they are very close to the Semangs
250
and Sakais tribes of Malaysian Peninsula.
In other words, these Black people are descendants of the Original People to
settle India.
WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?
Guha says Southeast Asia, and we agree, for reasons we explain in a little later.
But ultimately, these people came from Africa. A 1999 Scientific American article
entitled “Out of Africa, Into Asia” opens with the byline “Controversial DNA
studies link Asian hunter-gatherers to African pygmies.” It reports on recent
studies that reveal how the earliest populations of Southeast Asia, including
India and China, were Black people most closely related to the indigenous
people of the Andaman Islands.
WHO ARE THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS?
They’re a nearly jet black-skinned DBP people living on the strip of islands
situated in the Bay of Bengal, about midway between India (on the west) and
Burma (on the east).. They look just like African DBP, peppercorn hair and all.
If you didn’t know how tall they were, you’d think you were looking at some
brothers from right around the corner and up the block. But the Andaman
people are the oldest unmixed Black population in Asia, having lived in those
islands for over 50,000 years without interruption! Well, at least until recently.
THE ANDAMANESE GENOCIDE
When Europeans “discovered” them in the late 1700s, they made it their
business to “study” them. One report on the Andamanese, found in Frederick
Starr’s 1901 text Strange Peoples, alleges: “The Mincopies [Andaman Islanders] are
true savages, living entirely on wild food.”
Starr follows this vile labeling with an odd disclaimer: “[But] they are gentle and
non-savage in disposition…Although savages, these little people know how to
build good houses.”
So you mean to tell me, these people are total animals, but they know how to
build good houses? Starr adds:
In the houses of the Mincopies fires are kept burning. It is said that these people do not know
how to kindle fire; if this is true, they are almost the only people who are ignorant of this
important knowledge. They are careful of the fires they have and feed them well.
Think about that. Do you really think a people could be too ignorant to know
how to start a fire, yet smart enough to know how to keep a few dozen fires
burning year-round, inside thatched huts, in all types of weather – including
monsoon season? I mean, could YOU do that?
As we noted in The Science of Self, Volume One, the Andamanese were people who
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upheld traditions that were thousands of years old. They refused to accept
fire-making tools from Westerners. In fact, they refused almost everything white
people offered them. But some communities allowed whites to come and study
their ways.
Before long, entire communities were dying off, thanks to Western diseases,
something like the smallpox epidemics that killed off many Native Americans
and East African Maasai. Those islands that were most receptive to foreigners
(which later included Indians under British rule), were the quickest to die off.
As of 1858, there were 13 different “tribes” comprising several thousand
Andaman Islanders. Now, there are only three:
Jarawa – 250 to 400 people
Onge – less than 100 people
Sentinelese – 100 to 200 people
Disease did much of the dirty work, but the rest was accomplished through a
government relocation program that moved the Andamanese to reservations
while the government drained their islands’ natural resources. Sound familiar?
People like the Onge are now confined to two small reservations on their island,
while the Jangil, who originally lived on Rutland Island, were extinct by 1931.
The only ones still living free are the Sentinelese on North Sentinel Island. Why
is no one bothering them? Because – as their name suggests – they are NOT
playin any games with you.
THE SENTINELESE WILL CUT YOU INTO
PIECES
DID YOU KNOW? The Sentinelese never accepted
From age 12 to about 18, Andaman children fast from
European interest. Among the
animal foods, where they eat no turtle, pork, fish, or
neighboring Onge and Jarawa,
honey. The Andamanese also demonstrate great
foreigners could make some headway
care and concern for their children. When one dies,
by bringing Western “treats” and
the funeral processes show that infant mortality was
not always high, and that children were prized
“trinkets.” The Sentinelese weren’t
members of their communities. After the baby is
interested. It was almost impossible
dressed in red ochre and bundled in leaves, she is
even to get a picture of one of them,
buried in the floor of the hut, under the fireplace, and
the fire is rebuilt over the grave. The group will then
even from a distant ship. They
mark the hut, and desert the entire village. After three
months of mourning, they can return.
wouldn’t come out of the jungle.
When boats or helicopters came too
close, even with food, the Sentinelese shot poison-tipped arrows with deadly
accuracy. And if any European “explorer” was foolish enough to actually step
foot on their island, they would make an example out of him by cutting off his
arms and legs, then propping his torso up on the beach and setting him on fire,
for all passing ships to see!
Yet the West remained undeterred. In 1974, a European film crew (along with
an Indian anthropologist) attempted friendly contact by leaving a tethered pig,
some pots and pans, some fruit and toys on the beach at North Sentinel Island.
They filmed from a boat, expecting a glimpse of the Sentinelese. Instead, one of
the unseen islanders shot the film director with an arrow. The following year,
another batch of European visitors were sent back to their mommas with a
flurry of deadly arrows.
On August 2, 1981, the ship Primrose grounded on the North Sentinel Island
reef. They’d been stuck there for a few days when crewmen on the ship
observed that “small Black men” were carrying spears and building boats on the
beach. The captain immediately radioed for help (an airdrop of guns, actually).
The Sentinelese were simply waiting for the seas to calm down before making
their move, but the crew of the Primrose was rescued by an Indian navy
helicopter before that could happen.
As recently as 2006, Sentinelese archers killed two fishermen who were fishing
illegally within range of the island. When a helicopter came to retrieve the
bodies, the archers hit the helicopter with so many arrows that they flew away
like they were under machinegun fire. To this date, the bodies remain
unrecovered.
Clearly, they are NOT trying to join the white world and die. In one of the first,
and only, photographs of a Sentinelese, we see a well-built Black man looking
up at the helicopter that takes his picture. He is grabbing his nuts, sending a
clear message that says, “Get the f*** outta here!”
Yet it seemed like all of the Andaman Islanders, even the Sentinelese were
doomed to extinction when the tsunami of 2004 struck. They even disappeared
for a while after the waters had receded. But later they reemerged. People like
the Onge had actually refused to get help when they heard the tsunami was
coming, saying their people knew about such things and were prepared. Again,
they wouldn’t come out of the jungle. Now, it’s one thing to see Original People all
over the world refuse to live in Western-style homes even when they are
provided for free – preferring instead to live in their traditional homes – but this
seemed extreme. To refuse shelter when a tsunami is coming?
Yet somehow, most of them survived. They were so in tune with the way nature
worked that they knew what was coming and what to do. This may tell us
something about how some people in the area survived the effects of the Toba
eruption.
Yet, while the Onge and Jarawa continue to struggle against Western disease
(and now Western diet and culture), the steadfast Sentinelese have lost so much
of their natural food sources that they’ve been forced to begin accepting
coconuts and other familiar foods floated to them from foreign ships. In recent
years, some foreigners have even brought the highly-prized coconuts on land.
DOESN’T IT MAKE YOU WONDER?
It should make you wonder why it is so important to Europeans to engage these
people, when they know they will die after contact. I think it’s clear that it’s not
out of some sincere desire to “help” a people who have survived just fine for
over 50,000 years (with no malnutrition or crime!). With the passing of Boa
Senior, the oldest surviving Bo woman, we have lost yet another ancient Black
language and the culture that comes with it. It may be only a matter of time
before the Onge, Jarawa, and even the Sentinelese, are gone too.
 BEFORE THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS?
You’d think that the Andaman Islanders – with genetic lineages over 50,000
years old – are representative of the very FIRST humans to pass through India.
Recent studies are starting to suggest that Black people were here even before
them. Beware: We’re talking genetics ahead!
Geneticists have found that one of the oldest mtDNA lineages, Haplogroup M,
is at least 74,000 years old in East Asia, but seems younger in India (60,000 years
old or later), which is odd, because it looks like the M lineage started in the East
and traveled backwards. That’s unlikely, because there is plenty of evidence for
M originating in Africa. So these people came from Africa, traveled all the way
into Southeast Asia (and beyond), and then began traveling BACK into India?
This means M left Africa (with sister lineage N) and expanded into India, East
Asia, and Oceania BEFORE the Toba explosion, which killed off most of the
M people in India, but left survivors further east. Later generations of M must
have “re-settled” in India and the Andaman Islands in the millennia that
followed. This suggests that even the oldest genetic lineages in India (M, N, and
R) are descendants of a “re-population” movement that settled in places
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previously settled by even earlier Black settlers. These people include the
Andaman Islanders. This explains why they are so genetically distant from
African people, and gives credence to Guha’s theory that they came from
somewhere near Malaysia, where they resemble DBP populations like the
Semang.
In 1937, Thomas Griffith Taylor concurred with other writers of his time that
“India shares with Africa Proto-negroid beginnings…and with southeast Asia
the superimposition on them of Proto-Australoid elements.” He explains:
There are now no negroes or negritoes on the mainland except in Perak (and perhaps in the tip
of India). But there are millions of Australoids (the so-called Pre-Dravidian tribes) in the eastern
hills of the Deccan in India and in Ceylon…Fewer went to the south-east and so ultimately
gained Papua and Melanesia. The Semang of Perak and possibly some tribes in Assam support
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this hypothesis.
These people may have started rebuilding from the East, progressing westwards
until they reached Africa again. In 1921, Carlton Coon identified an ancient
Australoid presence in Arabia, similar to the Veddoid people still inhabiting
parts of India. In 1929, anthropologist Grafton Elliot Smith identified a
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prehistoric colony of Australoid people in North Africa.
According to Dr. Victor Grauer:
 Toba would not only explain the discontinuity between India and points east, so evident on the
genetic maps, but also the gap I’ve been stressing, involving cultural practices found in both
Africa and greater Southeast Asia, but almost completely absent from the Middle East, Pakistan
and India. African-related cultural survivals can indeed be found in exactly those areas to the east
and northeast of Toba that would have been upwind from the eruption and thus relatively
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unaffected.
This would explain why the cultural traditions of Paleolithic India – both before
and after Toba – resemble Paleolithic Africa. As the authors of a recent study
have noted, the artifacts found in Indian sites that date before Toba and after
Toba both resemble “African Middle Stone Age traditions (such as Howiesons
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Poort).”
It seems clear now that the people who built the Nubian Complex 130,000 years
ago went into South Africa 70,000 years ago to establish the Howiesons Poort
and Still Bay cultures, while others went East to establish the same traditions in
India. Later, these cultural traditions are brought into Paleolithic Europe.
FROM INDIA TO THE NEAR EAST
Thomas Griffith Taylor said the Black people from India were later found
throughout the Near East:
We find much the same order in the zones of folk in Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and
Turkestan. All round the borders of the Indian Ocean there seem to be relics of a negroid or
negrito stratum. Husing (1916) suggests a race of negritoes as the most ancient population of the
coasts between India and the Persian Gulf. He thinks that elements of a Dravidian population are
found in the interior of Persia. Dieulafoy found negrito or negro people near Susa in southwest
Persia. While no negroes survive in Syria, there are many skulls…being found in the caves
hereabouts, which may well indicate the presence of an early negroid zone. Ruggeri suggests that
the brakeph [meaning broad-headed] Arabs of Yemen differ from the Arabs of Muscat owing to
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some of this negrito blood, which is also shown by their lower stature and curly hair.
One of the first destinations of this new movement was the Fertile Crescent.
There, they came together with other indigenous populations to build the first
civilizations in the Ancient Near East.
 AUSTRALOID PEOPLE IN INDIA
Who came after the earliest Black populations? Scholars on the subject have
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called them Australoid, Proto-Australoid, and Veddoid. In other words, they
were Australoid people. These people may have come from the east after the
Toba event. B.S. Guha agrees:
After the Negritoes, the Proto-Australoids entered the Subcontinent of India, most probably
from Australia. Their representatives are found among the Bhils, Chenchus, Hos, Kurumbas,
Mundas, Sandials, and Yeruvas. Their common physical traits are dark brown to black-brown
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complexion, broad nose, wavy to curly hair, short stature, and thick everted lips.
Thomas Griffith Taylor says that India’s original Africoid settlers were followed
by Australoid people, who are sometimes called Veddahs or Veddoid people:
Next, come the Veddahs, just where one would expect them, in the tropical jungles of the Island
of Ceylon…They are fairly closely allied to the Australian aborigines…Many other fragments of
tribes in India are allied to the Veddahs, such as the Santals, Mundas, Kols, etc., all of whom…
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have all been classed as Pre-Dravidians (i.e. Australoids).
J.H. Hutton says Australoid people followed the DBP into India. Hutton says
they came in large numbers and spread throughout the country, leaving modern
day representatives in the various aboriginal peoples of India. At some point in
our campaign against the Neanderthals in Europe, many Australoid people
traveled west to join forces with communities from Africa.
THE EXTENT OF AURIGNACIAN
CULTURE
In our chapter on Europe, we’ll explore the African roots of the Aurignacian
people. Black people from across Asia also constituted a significant part of the
occupation campaign that eliminated the Neanderthals in Europe. In turn,
Aurignacian culture can be found as far east as Siberia and possibly China.
According to James Brunson:
Skeletal remains from Neolithic period peoples similar to Austric Veddoid-types were found at
Anau (Turkestan), submerged regions along the northern Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Sea
of Azov. These Aurignacian Blacks eventually occupied a vast area extending beyond the Ural
Mountains [which “separates” Europe from Asia] to Lake Baikal [in Siberia]…The art of the
Paleolithic period connects Europe to Asia as far as Siberia, presenting an overall “uniformity of
pattern” which is an indisputable fact. A direct offshoot of a highly developed and distinctive
Paleo-African tradition, steatopygous figurines bear testimony to the artistic as well as physical
characteristics of their creators.

ALL THE WAY INTO SIBERIA?

DID YOU KNOW? The founders of the Aurignacian
 It took nearly 20,000 years (from 47,000 to 28,000
culture went everywhere the
years ago) for Europe to be fully colonized, and for
Neanderthals were. That meant
the Neanderthals to be fully “displaced.” Consider it
pre-historic gentrification. traveling deep into Siberia. This
explains why Upper Paleolithic sites in
And like gentrification, where residents of the hood,
who have been there for generations, are used to
Siberia (40-25,000 years old) are like
those conditions and better adapted – while new-
those in Aurignacian Europe. You can
comers have to struggle to adapt – the same
find the same flutes made from
happened in Aurignacian Europe. The Neanderthals
had been living in the cold for 200,000 years. They
delicate bones, the same kinds of
were adapted.
Venus figurines, and even the same
Tropically-adapted Blacks from Africa and Asia had to
genetic signatures in some of the
quickly develop new strategies, like layered clothing,
surviving populations.
to survive in this environment. Those who came from
Siberia may have provided some of this knowledge.
As Nicholas Wade reports, genetic
marker M173, which identifies some of the men who introduced the
Aurignacian culture to Europe, “is a brother to the M3 lineage that is found in
some Siberian populations and many American lineages.”
Wade notes that these two lineages originated from the same source, perhaps in
India, which suggests that India was a dispersal point for many prehistoric
population movements.
“In India there was a historic parting of the ways,” Wade explains. Some of the
Australoid population continued to expand and settle along Asia’s southern
coasts. Others, however, “pushed inland in a northerly direction, through the
lands that are now Iran and Turkey, and began the long contest with the
Neanderthals for the possession of Europe. Both paths tested the power of the
new modern people to innovate, survive in hostile surroundings, and overcome
daunting obstacles.” Those who went into Europe carried the R1b DNA lineage
first associated with the ancestors of the Anu people (beginning 18,000 years
ago), and much later with modern Europeans (beginning 6,000 years ago).
Yet another branch of India’s Australoid population found their way into the
Americas. They brought with the same kinds of dogs they had domesticated to
beat the Neanderthals in Aurignacian Europe. Despite all these movements out
of India, there’s no clear predecessor to Aurignacian culture in India.
The genetic evidence suggests a migration came from there, but the cultural
evidence points elsewhere, suggesting that the “brains” of this operation came
directly from the root of civilization (Northeast Africa/Arabia), while physical
reinforcements came from India and other areas, possibly as far as east as China.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
FROM VIETNAM TO INDONESIA
“But we have seen that in the Orient everything suggests that
the Negritos have preceded, on the soil were we find them, the
races which have oppressed, dispersed, and almost annihilated
them.” – Armand de Quatrefages, The Pygmies261
For thousands of years, Southeast Asia has served as a home and, in many ways,
a place of refuge, to those few Black populations to survive the Caucasian
invasions from the west.
Southeast Asia consists of the countries southeast of China, including
Cambodia, Laos, Burma (or Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei,
East Timor, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore.
In 1910, Sir Harry Hamilton Johnson reported on the “black belt” that reached
its final point (on the Eurasian mainland) in Southeast Asia:
The Negroid element in Burma and Annam is, therefore, easily to be explained by supposing that
in ancient times Southern Asia had a Negro population ranging from the Persian Gulf to Indo-
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China and the Malay Archipelago.
This “black belt” – a massive stretch of settlements and civilizations spanning
from Southern Spain and Northwest Africa all the way to East Asia – was real.
In fact, pockets of it have survived into modern times. Some of the Blackest
people in East Asia can STILL be found in Southeast Asia. These people are the
original people of this region, and have been there for thousands of years. In
Malaysia, for example, there are small Black people commonly known as the
Orang Asli, which means the “Original People.” Because of the protection
offered by its “jungles,” many of these people have survived without being
wiped out or absorbed, as has happened in so many other places. Yet this region
also presents us with a number of intriguing questions, which we hope to
answer in this chapter.
 THE DBP IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Armand de Quatrefages, author of The Pygmies, has documented an ancestral
“Negrito” presence preceding the tall Black populations that followed them
everywhere in Southeast Asia. Rene Verneau, the famed French
paleoanthroplogist who reconstructed the “Negroid” Grimaldi remains, also
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noted Black features among the oldest remains of Southeast Asia.
In southeast Asia, the DBP survive in the jungles, rural areas, and remote
regions in sizable numbers. As George Weber documents on his Lonely Islands
website, there are literally hundreds of “Negrito” tribes scattered throughout
southeast Asia who descend from the original DBP people. Weber devotes a
chapter to “The Negrito Race,” wherein he documents 53 populations of two
types:
Negrito and Negritoid [corresponding to the “dwarf” or “pygmy” populations], and
Vedda and Veddoid [corresponding to taller, usually coarse-haired, “Negroid”
populations].
Weber notes that although he thought the Negritos to be the earliest human
inhabitants of southeast Asia (dating back to at least 50,000 years ago), they
were, in most parts, superseded by waves of the Australoid and Melanesian
types during the later Paleolithic, who were themselves followed, still later, by
Austro-Asiatic peoples. The Mongoloid type was the last to make its way across
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southeast Asia.
CAMBODIA, LAOS, AND VIETNAM
Want to see some Black Asians for yourself? Visit Indochina. Where’s that? It
doesn’t exist anymore. At least not politically. When the French were in control
of Southeast Asia, they named the region Indochina. “Indochina” roughly
covers modern Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. G. Coedes, in his Making of South
East Asia, says:
Indochina was from the earliest times inhabited by a variety of peoples, some of whom were
related to the Negritos and the Veddas, some to the Australians and the Melanesian Papuans, and
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others again to the Indonesians. The Mongoloid strain…seems to be of much later origin.
George Weber has observed that archaeological traces of populations with
“Negrito-Papuan-Austro-Melanesian affiliations” have been found all over the
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ancient and prehistoric strata of Indochina and southern China.
And if you visit Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, you’ll still find plenty of Black
Asians. They’ve been there so long, it makes me wonder if the U.S. was
bombing that area just to wipe them out.
Francis Allen, in a paper presented before the Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland, spoke of the woolly-haired Moy people inhabiting the
region between South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Allen believed these little
Black people were driven into the mountains by the Kings of Tonquin in the
15th century. He quoted the report of Charles Chapman, an officer of the East
India Company sent to the region in 1778:
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The aborigines of Cochin China [South Vietnam ] are called Moys, and are the people which
inhabit the chain of mountains which separate it from Cambodia. To these strongholds they were
driven when the present possessors invaded the country. They are a savage race of people, very
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black, and resemble in their features the Caffrees. [Kaffirs, that is, the Dutch slur for Africans]
A.R. Colquhoun also described Black pygmies in the area (calling them Tra) in
his Amongst the Shans:
At the outset of their relations with the natives, the Chinese became acquainted in their new
country with tattooing populations, and with two races the characteristics of which are still
peculiar enough to still be wondered at by modern travelers. One was a race of pygmies, the Tiao,
who are still represented by the a) Tra, now located east of Bienhoa, in Cochin-China, almost the
shortest of men; b) the Hotha Shan, in southwest Yunna; c) the Mincopies of the Andaman
Islands; d) the Simangs of the Malay Peninsula and e) one of the races of Formosa, all diversified
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representations of one Negrito race.
According to Allen, the Tra may have been the same people as the Moy, as the
DBP have been called by literally hundreds of names throughout the world.
Sometimes the names used are similar enough to make inferences. Allen also
drew connections between the Moy of southeast Asia and the Chinese Mai. He
mentions, reluctantly it seems, “Negroid” features among the Mai, and possible
connections between them, Negroid depictions of the Buddha (as well as several
Hindu idols), and the traditions of the Chinese “respecting the earlier
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inhabitants of their country.”
MALAYSIA
There are some dark-skinned folks in Malaysia, the predominantly Muslim
country situated just south of Thailand, right before you can island hop into
Indonesia. This is because Malaysia has strong Black roots that survived well
into the modern day. And these roots don’t come from the Arabs and Africans
who brought Islam to the country centuries ago.
The foundations of Malaysia can be found among the Orang Asli, the generic
Malaysian term for the indigenous people of Malaysia. Orang Asli literally means
“Original People.” Officially, there are 18 Orang Asli “tribes,” categorized it
three groups according to their different languages and customs:
 Semang (or Negrito), generally confined to the northern portion of the peninsula
Senoi, residing in the central region
Proto-Malay (or Aboriginal Malay), in the southern region
All of these populations have survived – to some extent or another – into the
modern day.
In anthropologist George Weber’s comprehensive online documentation on the
Andaman people and other DBP populations, he provides some background on
these groups, noting that Malaysia was first settled by a “Negrito” population
known as the Semang people, who may be closely related to the Andaman
Islanders. Later there came “Veddoid groups with Negritoid admixtures as well
as remnant proto-Malay tribes.” We’ve referred to these people as Australoid
and Paleo-Mongoloid people, respectively.
Weber continues:
It also has some very ancient archaeological sites. At least one site at Bukit Jawa in Kelantan State
goes back more than 50,000 years. At that time, sea levels were much lower and much of what is
now sea between the Sunda islands was dry land. Beach and other prehistoric sites, therefore, are
now deep underwater and next to impossible to find and excavate. The stone tool technology
called Hoabinhian (so known from its North Vietnamese site) is known from all over mainland
Southeast Asia. It has tentatively been linked to Negritos but this has not been definitively
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confirmed and remains an open question.
Indeed, the hunting-and-gathering Hoabinhian Cultures of 10,000 years ago
were most likely the work of the Original People who first settled Malaysia and
later became today’s Semang, a DBP (or “Negrito”) people. According to
historian Peter Bellwood, these people had a “trade network along which
travelled shells, stone resources, forest products and social information. There is
no confirmed evidence that the population grew rice or practiced systematic
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agriculture, but encouragement of plant resources most probably took place.”
This refers to the “soft management” practices we discussed earlier.
During the Peninsular Neolithic (c. 4,500-2,500 years ago), the ancestors of the
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Senoi introduced field agriculture involving rice and foxtail millet. These
traditions came down from Thailand, but most likely originated among the Anu
people of India and China.
INDONESIA
South of Malaysia, Indonesia is another predominantly Muslim country in
Southeast Asia. It is known for the natural beauty of its islands (like Bali) and for
Lake Toba, the ancient site of the Toba Supervolcano. Indonesia also has an
interesting mix of folks.
Scholars have presented several theories about how Indonesia was settled:
 Birdsell suggested three waves of migration through the west Pacific to Australia: (1) the
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Negrito, (2) the Murrayian (Australo-Melanesoid) and (3) the Carpentarian (Veddoid).
Hooton saw five successive layers occupying Indonesia: the Proto-Australoid and Negrito,
the Indonesian, the Proto-Malay, and the Malay. Hooton groups these into (1) the Negrito-
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Australoid, (2) the Indonesian, and (3) the Malay.
Von Eickstedt presents six successive migrations: (1) the Australid, (2) the Palae-
Melanesid, (3) the Neo-Melanesid, (4) the Weddid (Veddoid?), (5) the Polynesid, and (6)
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the Palae-Mongolid.
And de Zwaan proposes four layers of populations: (1) the Negrito, (2) the Wedda-
Austromelanesian, (3) the Proto-Malay, and (4) the Deutero-Malay. Von Eickstedt grouped
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these last two into a single Palae-Mongolid race.
After reviewing these theories, Indonesian paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob
concluded:
Taking into account all of the above we are inclined to agree with Snell that there are only two
main racial elements to consider in Indonesia’s racial history, the Austromelanesian and the
Malay. Before other convincing evidences are put forward, only these two elements are important
in any racial differential diagnosis of archeological skeletons in Indonesia. Multiple synonyms, too
much emphasis on slight variations, and the ever present urge to create new terms, merely
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complicate the approach and obscure the problem.
We call these two types Australoid and Paleo-Mongoloid. They were the
foundational populations of Indonesia.
What about the “Negritos”? In The Pygmies, Armand de Quatrefages writes:
I have remarked that in this maritime world Sumatra and Java are the only large islands where
they (Negritos) have left no other traces than some doubtful mixed breeds and the remains of an
industry which appears not to have passed beyond the age of stone. It is in Java that the
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destruction has probably been the most sudden and complete.
It’s quite possible that there were people here before Australoid people settled,
but there are no “Negrito” remains in Indonesia. Also, recent studies suggest
that many (but not all) of the DBP populations in Southeast Asia descend from
Australoid people who experienced the “pygmization” process during the
Neolithic, possibly after being displaced by Paleo-Mongoloid people. This could
explain why many of the DBP in Southeast Asia resemble their Australoid
neighbors further south.
THE PHILIPPINES
The people of the Philippines tend to be some of the darkest-complexioned
East Asians you’ll encounter. In fact, that’s why they don’t even consider
themselves East Asians. They categorize themselves with Pacific Islanders, a
group that includes Samoans, Melanesians, and other near-Black people living in
the islands to the west of the U.S. And it’s not just a superficial thing. Most
Filipino people know that the original people of their island, their ancestors, are
Black.
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These people are most commonly known as the Aetas. They have been
around since the dawn of Filipino history. In The Pygmies, Armand de
Quatrefages describes the small people of the ancient Philippines and Java:
When the Spaniards began to settle the Philippines they met, in the interior of Luzon, by the side
of the Tagals of Malay origin, dark men of whom some had smooth hair, while others possessed
the woolly headcovering of the African Negroes. These last alone were true blacks, whom the
conquerors called Negritos del monte (little Negroes of the mountain) on account of their
remarkably little stature and their habitat. The local name of Aigtas or Inagtas, which seems to
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mean blacks, and from which is derived that of Aetas, is generally adopted.
In the beginning of the 13th century, Chinese author Chao Fu-Kua described a
tribe of DBP dwelling in the valleys of the Philippine Islands, calling them Hai-
tan, which most likely comes from Aeta.
In the 19th century, several European authors dedicated entire texts to the DBP
presence in these islands. In addition to the foundational The Pygmies by Armand
de Quatrefages, there are The Negritos of Zambales by William Allen Reed and The
Distribution of the Negritos in the Philippine Islands and Elsewhere by A. B. Meyer.
The Aetas aren’t simply an ancient presence on the Philippine Islands; they’re
the foundational people. Modern Filipino people are a mix of Aeta (or DBP),
East Asian (Mongoloid), and Spaniard, with the Black element being both
foundational and dominant. And they’re still around. There are between 32,000
and 120,000 living DBP people in the Philippine Islands today. However, many
of them are mixed and none speak their original languages. They now speak
Austronesian languages that came from Southeast Asia around 5,000 years ago.
Just as many of them are now mixed, there are also many Filipinos who carry
strong Black traits from this ancient DBP presence.
And they know where these traits come from. In fact, just as the Saisiyat do in
Taiwan, the people of Luzon hold a regular festival in honor of the “Negritos”
of the Philippines.
 AUSTRALOID PEOPLE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
From India, the Australoid people appear to have traveled into Southeast Asia
before many of them returned to India. Others remained, where they survive in
small populations across Indonesia, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia,
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all areas that George Weber says they “formerly inhabited at large.”
Still others used outrigger rafts or other vessels to navigate the oceans, settling in
Australia and various islands along Southeast Asia. It wasn’t long before they
went deeper into the Pacific, settling New Guinea, and other islands along the
Pacific.
According to G. Coedes, there were three successive waves of migration into
southeast Asia, all originating somewhere in the south of China. Coedes believes
the first wave was of the Australoid type, followed by Melanesians, whom he
associates with pygmy types (linking them to the DBP). More recent research
suggests that the Melanesian people were a composite society, resulting from
mergers between an older DBP migration and the Australoid people who came
after.
The 1962 finding of the Tabon Man remains in the island of Palawan confirmed
that Australoid people had reached the Philippines by 22,000 BC. This was
amazing enough, but findings from the cave where Tabon Man was discovered
revealed that he actually belonged to a later group of inhabitants, and was
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preceded by people who populated the area as early as 50,000 years ago. These
must have been the Original People.
In Java, the Wadjak Man (dated to around 8,500 BC) represents the Australoid
presence in Indonesia. The Wadjak 1 skull is described as “proto-Australoid,”
looking like the stage between prehistoric Australians (and Paleolithic Chinese)
and modern Australian aborigines. A companion skull, Wadjak 2, had
prognathism like that of an African. The oldest skulls from Thailand – Tabon,
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Niah, Gua Gunung – all look like Australian Aborigines or Melanesians.
In Vietnam, it’s the same way until about 1200 BC when Mongoloid types start
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dominating. In Malaysia, a well-preserved skeleton dated to 12,200 BC has
been described as “a late representative of a non-specialized morphology, similar
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to Australian Aborigines.” Archaeologist Peter Bellwood claims that the vast
majority of people in Southeast Asia, the region he calls the “clinal Mongoloid-
Australoid zone,” are simply Southern Mongoloids with a high degree of
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Australoid admixture.
Australoid people certainly passed through southeast Asia, but for some reason,
they seem to have left the area to the DBP and others. Some appear to have set
sail for Australia and New Guinea. Others headed for the Americas. Still others
returned to India. What made them leave the area? We simply don’t have
enough evidence to know.
EPILOGUE: THE EVOLUTION OF LIGHT
SKIN IN THAILAND
When I visited Thailand in 2001, I was surprised by two things:
First, several Thai people were brown-skinned and had curly hair or other Black
features, but most of them were people that lived outside the big cities. I also
saw that there were “tribal” people who wore rings around their neck like some
African groups, others who had giant earrings and stretched-out earlobes, and –
perhaps most notably – they had more statues of the Buddha as a Black man
than Atlanta had statues of Jesus as a white man. These were clear signs as to
what the Original People of Thailand looked like.
At the same time, I also noticed that many of the people living in the big cities,
like Bangkok, were considerably lighter-complexioned, with less of the features I
noted above. Then I dug into the history. Turns out Bangkok was becoming
overwhelming Chinese. Not only were Chinese people the majority of its
residents, there was an ongoing campaign to promote “light skin” as beautiful
and desirable. As a result, the Thai people – even those who weren’t Chinese –
were “making themselves light.” This happened through two mechanisms:
The cosmetics industry thriving on skin-lightening creams, while the media promotes
light-skinned people, and
A process I called “subconscious eugenics,” which refers to how a dark-skinned
population can become light over several generations because they choose lighter mates
over darker mates.
These two processes have happened all over the world. As we explained in The
Hood Health Handbook, Volume Two, skin-lightening creams are a billion-dollar
industry throughout India, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and
among Black communities in the U.S.! Meanwhile, all of these communities tend
to have a “color complex” about what complexion is most beautiful, resulting in
subconscious eugenics.
 SOUTHEAST ASIANS IN INDIA
Throughout Eastern India, many indigenous people have traits that suggest a
mix of Africoid (or Australoid) and Mongoloid ancestry. For example, some
Orissa people look just like Africans, while others look more like Cambodians.
One of the most well-known of these populations are the Nagas.
WHO WERE THE NAGAS OF INDIA?
The Nagas of East India and the Shompen people of the Nicobar Islands are
predominantly Mongoloid. Hutton said some of them have traits suggesting
Negrito ancestry, and Guha said, “The Angfuni-Nagas have also been
considered as having some of the traits of the Negritoes.”
The Nagas may have once been an Africoid people, but there’s very little
evidence to suggest this, except perhaps that they tattoo their faces black,
perhaps in reverence to Black ancestors or cultural leaders that had significant
influence on this community. What’s likely is that the bulk of the Nagas and
Shompen people came from further east within the last 5,000 years.
BLACK EAST ASIANS HEADED BACK TO
INDIA?
India is incredibly diverse. Some Indian populations have been identified with
the Munda languages, which are unrelated to either the Indo-European or
Dravidian languages. The Munda languages, as part of the larger Austro-Asiatic
language family, are thought to have come into India from the east, possibly
from the area that is now southwestern China.
In other words, Munda-speaking people in India may descend from people who
worked their way into Southeast Asia, and then back westwards into India (while
other members of their group traveled further into Oceania, the Pacific Islands,
and eventually the Americas). These people could have been Australoid, but
there are strong indications that the first Munda speakers were Paleo-
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Mongoloid, or a mix of the two. Perhaps now is a good time to explain who
and what we mean by “Paleo-Mongoloid.”
 WHAT DOES MONGOLOID MEAN?
Mongoloid is one of the three essential “identity types” or “races” that
anthropologists use to classify present-day people and historical remains, based
on anthropometric traits. At one point, there were five or more such
classifications, including Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, and
others, many of which were used to further subdivide Black classifications (such
as Negritoid, Capoid, Khoisanoid, etc.).
Since then, anthropologists trimmed these distinctions down to the first three:
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Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid. None of them sound pleasant. In fact,
Mongoloid is offensive anywhere outside of an anthropological context, because
its early use derived from calling people “Mongols” because they had features
that white people associated with Down’s Syndrome (known as
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“Mongolism”).
But, as we’ll explain, the origin of the Mongoloid complex of features begins
with Australoid people. In other words, the “East Asian” look is just one of the
major variations of the features found among the Original Black people of Asia.
But it seems like a stretch doesn’t it? To say that Chinese or Korean people
come from Black roots…it seems counterintuitive because the features are SO
different. The problem is that we associate “Mongoloid” with a very
stereotypical or extreme set of features, ignoring the fact that all Mongoloid
people do not look alike (despite what the uninformed may think).
Anthropologists generally agree that typical Mongoloid traits include
bracycephalism (or round-headedness instead of a long skull), sinodonty (or
shovel-shaped incisor teeth), an epicanthic fold (the way East Asian eyelids tend
to be shaped), coarse straight hair, and light, often yellowish, skin. But do all
East Asians have these traits?
TWO TYPES OF MONGOLOID
As early as 1900, Joseph Deniker recognized that there was a sharp division
among Mongoloid people. Noting the strong differences between different
populations, he said the “Mongol race admits two varieties or subraces: Tungese
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or Northern Mongolian...and Southern Mongolian.” Northern Mongolian
would include the indigenous people of Siberia, the Manchu of China, and
others who have the typical Mongoloid look.
The Southern group looked, well, a little more like Black people. Their skin was
darker, their lips fuller, their jaws stuck out more (known as prognathism), their
noses broader (known as platyrhinny), their heads longer (known as
dolichocephalism), their hair coarser, and their eyes lacked that familiar feature
(known as an epicanthic fold).
But why? Was the southern group simply a more “mixed” group of Mongoloid
people? Or were they representative of the Original Mongoloid population? The
evidence suggests the latter.
Akazawa Takeru, Professor of Anthropology at the International Research
Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, also splits the population in two. Neo-
Mongoloids, or “new Mongoloids” have “extreme Mongoloid, cold-adapted
features.” Examples include the Chinese, Buryats, Eskimo and Chukchi of
Siberia. On the other hand, Paleo-Mongoloids look less Mongoloid because they
are less cold-adapted. Examples include the Burmese, Filipinos, Polynesians,
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Jōmon and the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Paleoanthropologist Peter Brown of the University of New England has
concluded that the “Mongoloid” look doesn’t show up in China until 5500 to
7000 years ago. The light complexion of many East Asians may not have come
until thousands of years later, when the foreign Zhou conquered the Black
Shang dynasty.
Roland B. Dixon, in his 1923 Racial History of Man, says the predominance of
platyrrhine (flat-nosed) and dolichocephalic (long-headed) factors among
otherwise “Mongoloid” populations suggests the “remnants of an earlier Proto-
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Australoid and Proto-Negroid type.” For example, the skulls of Tibeto-
Burman speaking Shan people were, in the earliest period, both dolichocephalic
and platyrrhine. In other words, the faces of Asia changed over time, through
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various processes of “small regional evolution.”
To be fair, some of these traits may have come directly from Black ancestors,
without any regional evolution. For example, some typical “Mongoloid” features
can be found in the diversity of Africa’s oldest people. In Before the Dawn,
Nicholas Wade notes that the Khoisan of Africa look so similar to Asian
populations that “both lineages may have inherited these features from the
ancestral human population.” He explains:
Many Khoisan speakers have yellow skin, the epicanthic folds above the eyes that give some
Asian eyes their characteristic shape, shovel-shaped incisors (front teeth hollowed out on the
tongue side of the mouth, found commonly in Asians and Native Americans), and mongoloid
spots – a bluish mark on the lower back of young infants. The !Kung San themselves apparently
recognize this similarity since they assign Asians to the category of Real People like themselves, as
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distinct from !ohm, the category of non-San Africans and Europeans.
Historian James Brunson adds the Madi, Nuba, Nyanja, Yao, Ngoni, Tong, and
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Wemba to the list of African populations with some Mongoloid features.
THE EVOLUTION OF MONGOLOID
FEATURES
However, it is more likely that the bulk of Mongoloid morphology came about
after a long-term resettlement of Australoid people. That is, Mongoloid people
are simply descendants of Australoid people who are much more cold-adapted
because of generations of settlement in colder, wind-swept climates. The more
their features adapted to this environment, the more Mongoloid (and less
Australoid) their features.
This is why many Paleo-Mongoloid people – particularly people who didn’t stay
in this climate as long – retain Black features. And this is why J. Lawrence Angel
reported that the “eastern Asiatic proto-Mongoloid norm” looked JUST like the
Black Australoid people who settled Palestine 45,000 years ago, JUST like the
Black Australoid people who first settled the Americas, and JUST like Black
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Australoid people elsewhere throughout the world.
Where and when did these traits emerge? Evidence from genetics, linguistics,
and physical anthropology suggest a large community of Australoid people –
associated with lineages like Y-DNA Haplogroup Q – left India around 16,000
years ago. They traveled north, settling in Central Asia. Some may have gone
west into Europe, but most remained settled in the area now known as
northwest China and Mongolia. Here, they could have easily evolved the set of
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traits identified with Paleo-Mongoloid people by 10,000 years ago.
Some of these people left and headed west. Between the northern fringes of
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there is evidence of Mongoloid migrations
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between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. Some of these people became a part of
Paleolithic Europe, enduring many of the changes of the Neolithic, and
surviving into modern times as the indigenous Saami people (also known as the
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Lapps) of Scandinavia.
Another branch of these Paleo-Mongoloid people took the coastal route across
China’s eastern shore before settling in Southeast Asia. At this point, the
movement of some genetic lineages and languages like the Munda suggest that
some Paleo-Mongoloid people went back to India, where they became the
ancestors of the Assam, Nagas, and Nicobarese.
Meanwhile, others took to the waters, traveling via the Pacific Ocean to the
earliest Polynesian sites. For example, the Samoans and Maori are considered
good representatives of Paleo-Mongoloid (or “Proto-Mongoloid”) types. In fact,
the Maori tell of fleeing a war with Black-skinned people in India before arriving
in New Zealand. Some of the Mongoloid seafarers ultimately arrived on the
western shores of South America.
While all this was happening, some of the Paleo-Mongoloid population in
Central Asia had moved further north into Siberia. Here, they developed the
Yeniseian languages which ultimately found their way into the Americas. They
also developed a more cold-adapted set of features, which Takeru calls the Neo-
Mongoloid complex. These features are found in skeletal remains throughout
Siberia, Beringia, and the Americas.
In other words, another branch of Mongoloid people had taken the land route
into the Americas. Some communities would remain settled at the northern
extremes of Siberia for thousands of years before they ventured across the
Bering Strait into Canada. Yet not all of the Neo-Mongoloid people went north.
Some went south, traveling through Mongolia into Northwest China, Japan, and
Korea. This is when the first “true” Mongoloid remains show up in China, long
after the Australoid remains that typified the earliest human settlements.
These two waves of Mongoloid migration were confirmed by Indian
anthropologist B.S. Guha, who identified a long-headed, brown-skinned Paleo-
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Mongoloid people entering India in the ancient past. These people are
followed by a later Mongoloid people having a “light yellow colour” and “flat
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face.”
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Elijah Muhammad taught that the ancestors of the Indians of the Americas were
“exiled” from India 16,000 years ago. We may never know exactly why so many
people left India, but it does seem that the ancestors of Mongoloid people in the
Americas did leave India, settling in Central Asia (either the deserts of Mongolia
or the tundra of Siberia) before arriving in the Americas (via sea and land). The
Maori people are explicit that they crossed the Pacific after being exiled from
India. In fact, the Maori say they started out in the Near East, which happens to
be where Haplogroup Q may have originated. So were the ancestors of these
people forced to leave India? And, if so, why?
If so, it wasn’t a Mongoloid population who was sent out of India. Before they
developed these traits in Central Asia, they were Australoid people. So were
Australoid people somehow compelled to relocate to the Americas? We should
note that there wasn’t just one such migration. Beginning about 16,000 years
ago, there were several population movements that ultimately arrived in the
Americas, many of which can ultimately be traced back to India or the Near
East.
Some Australoid people went directly to the Americas via the Pacific Ocean,
while others – mostly those who had first settled in Central Asia and developed
the Mongoloid complex – appear to have arrived much later. Some went
northeast via Beringia, others went northwest into Europe and then across the
Atlantic, and others traveled across the Pacific Islands.
As an interesting piece of this puzzle, Fard Muhammad taught that exiled people
were often accompanied by escorts. This was noted in regards to early whites
being led through Europe, but the data suggests that Mongoloid people were
either preceded or trailed by Australoid people making accompanying
migrations.
There’s no other plausible theory to explain why the Mongoloid people who
traveled by land from Siberia, across Beringia, and then into North America…
were accompanied by a coastal migration of Australoid people who sailed from
Japan, along Beringia’s southern shores, to Northwest Canada (where they
settled as the Haida), and ultimately to the western shores of Baja, California…
nor why the Polynesians were “followed” by a migration of Black seafarers, all
the way into the Americas. Why would two groups of people seem to walk
hand-in-hand…yet remain distinct culturally and genetically?
In any case, even if the ancestors of Mongoloid people were somehow “exiled”
from a prehistoric Black settlement in the distant past, this would be just one of
many periods where our ancestors have developed historical rifts, only to reunite
at some point in the future. In fact, the earliest rifts go back to the Rift Valley,
where the first humans separated into dozens of tiny bands scattered across East
Africa, until environmental change forced them to come together to survive.
Thus it is not surprising that the past 2,000 years have witnessed several phases
of reunification between “Black and Yellow people.” We’ll cover some of these
episodes (as well as the early conflicts) in our discussions of North America and
the Pacific Islands in Part Two.
THE FAR EAST
C H I N A , TA I WA N , J A PA N , A N D K O R E A
“The Eastern blacks are found mainly in the archipelagoes
lying between the Asiatic land-mass and Australia. They are
the Oriental survivors of the black belt which in very ancient
times stretched uninterruptedly from Africa across southern
Asia to the Pacific Ocean.” – Lothrop Stoddard, 1920
 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “CHINESE”?
What does it mean to be “Chinese”? Li Chi, in his Formation of the Chinese People,
offers the following definition:
[The Chinese are those] who are found in, or whose origin is traceable to, the land called China
proper, and who acknowledge their association with the making of Chinese history from the
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beginning.
So when was the beginning? Who originated there? And who were the first
authors of Chinese history? In this chapter, you’ll learn why even China is rich
with Black history.
China may look homogenous to some outsiders. That is, everyone looks the
same. You may think everyone shares the same shade of skin and similar facial
features. Now, to be honest, China may be more homogenous than many other
nations, but there’s quite a lot you may not be seeing.
China today, with over one billion inhabitants, is the product of several
thousand years of semi-continuous history wherein several groups have
contributed, at one time or another, to its development into what it is now.
Today, 92% of the people of China are descendants of the Han, which is why so
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many of the people share similar features.
However, in the “beginning” the Han peoples, or their type, were not so much
the majority as they are today. Instead, China – in its earliest stages – was driven
by populations that have now been pushed into the fringes. The original authors
of Chinese history are either displaced from the continental mainland, isolated
atop lonely hill and mountain stretches, entirely extinct or vanished, or absorbed
into the dominant population, but ignored by their descendants.
Kenneth Scott Latourette, Professor of Oriental History at Yale University,
dedicates a chapter of his two-volume work The Chinese: Their History and Culture
to the subject of “Racial Composition.” He begins the chapter clearly enough,
declaring: “Racially the Chinese are a mixed people. That much we know.”
Latourette claims no certainty about who contributed to this mixture, or how,
but asserts that any observer who has actually traveled through China would
know that there is a racial difference among the people there. Latourette finds
the greatest evidence for this racial difference between the people of southern
China and northern China. The people of the south, he notes, are generally
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darker, shorter, with broader noses, and a less conservative disposition. He
also sees “the sharp division between commoners and aristocrats in ancient
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times” as evidence of a racial difference.
When we want to research a question that hasn’t yet been properly explored, it’s
almost as if we’re following clues like breadcrumbs on a trail. We follow leads
and see where they lead us. We then assess everything we’ve found to arrive at a
working theory. Then we compare the theory against any evidence that could
support or, more importantly, refute, our theory. So let’s start by looking at
some of these “different” people – the “dark” people of China.
 THE DARK PEOPLE OF CHINA
There are dozens of ethnic groups in China, both past and present, who don’t
fit the stereotypical look associated with modern Chinese people. In Part Two,
we’ll discuss the Black people who were responsible for founding ancient
China’s first dynasties and essentially establishing Chinese civilization. In this
book, we’ll discuss some of the ethnic groups who were settled in China before
the Xia and Shang dynasties were founded.
As early as the Shang dynasty (the first dynasty from which we have written
records), there are people known as the Miao. The Miao of southern China were
also called Man, which some scholars say meant “barbarian” (as in foreigner).
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Other say Man was simply a generic term for southern ethnic groups, but
some of the Man populations mentioned in the early sources were located
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towards the east.
This would suggest that calling someone Man was like calling someone
“African.” In other words, it wasn’t about where you were at, but where you
were from. These were the pre-Chinese people of China.
The Miao may have originally been settled in southeast Asia, where they are
known as the Hmong. Tripitaka, a Chinese monk who surveyed southern China
and southeast Asia, observed that “the Cambodians remind me of the Man, our
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southern Chinese barbarians; they are coarse featured and very dark.”
Scholars think the Miao, Moi (Moy), Mai, Mon, Min, Meng, Hmong and Muong may
have all derived from one parent-group, which originally fell under the Man
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designation. Chai Chen Kang suggested these people were related to the dark-
skinned aborigines of Taiwan, whom he proposes may have come from a mix of
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the Miao and the Malayans.
Thus it makes sense that the modern-day Hmong (descendants of the Miao, or
Man people) are one of the darkest-complexioned, and most socially-repressed,
ethnic groups in every country in which they live. But the Hmong fare better
than many of their kin. There are still thousands of “non-Chinese” peoples
living in the hills and mountains of China as a result of the conquering Chinese
driving them out. They often represent some of the last surviving vestiges of
China’s indigenous people. Latourette has said of these peoples:
They are divided into numerous tribes, such as the Chung Chia, the Miao, Miao Tzu, or Miao
Chia (made up of several groups, among whom are the Hei Miao, or “Black Miao,” presumably
so-called because of their dark-colored clothes, and the Hua or “Flowery” Miao), the Kachins,
the Kah-lao, the Loi (on Hainan), the Lo-lo, the Yao, the No-so, and the Man Tzu or Man
 Chia…The Chinese have exploited them, have driven them out of desirable lands, and have held
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them in contempt.
Almost all the people named above were once Black, and many remain dark-
skinned and coarse-haired to this day. LaTourette’s silly claim that such “Black”
designations referred to “dark-colored clothes,” makes sense if you look up the
Black Miao and see pictures of them looking like “regular” Chinese people
wearing dark turbans. But the lie falls apart when you dig up (as I did) a Chinese
artist’s 18th century painting of the Hei Miao, wherein they are clearly not
wearing much of anything dark, except their skin. They have every feature you’d
expect to find in a Black population, including the woolly hair texture.
THE BLACK COMMUNITIES OF CHINA
As you’ll see, many of these ethnic groups were originally described as “Black.”
Many of these people are the “Black” minorities of an already small minority
group.
For example, as with the Black Miao, there is also a “Black” subgroup of the Lo-
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lo (the Hei Lo-lo) , as well as a “Black” Tai. The Lipo tribe of He Lisu, or
“Black Lisu” is a minority in east Yunnan. Their language is very different from
the rest of the Lisu group to whom they belong. They also use a different script.
The name of the Lisu themselves, who are also known simply as Li, derives
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from Li tzu (or “black son”).
Russian-born Peter Goullart lived among the Nakhi people and became
immersed in their culture. In his classic memoir, The Forgotten Kingdom, Goullart
connects these groups with the Nakhi:
The Nakhi, Burmese and Black Lolos, along with the Tibetans, belong to a racial subdivision
called the Burmo-Tibetan stock. They do resemble each other to a degree, their languages and
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dialects have a common root…
According to a 1933 study by Dr. Joseph Rock, The Ancient Nakhi Kingdom of
Southwest China, the Nakhi people of China were once an unmixed “Negro”
population, numbering over 200,000, who inhabited the region for several
millennia. According to Frank LeBar’s Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia,
the name Nakhi means “Black man” (no: black; khi: man) and was given to these
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people because of their dark complexions. The Nakhi still retain a
hieroglyphic-like style of writing, known as dongba, which is primarily used by the
shamans who preserve their oldest traditions.
In The Forgotten Kingdom, Goullart describes similar traditions among the Black
Lolo [no relation to Shawty Lo], such as their secret libraries of manuscripts
written in a hieroglyphic script made of “circles, half-moons, swastikas and
rhombs [diamonds].” The Black Lolo rarely let outsiders gain similar access to
their culture. Thus, Goullart’s notes as especially enlightening. He writes:
The Black Lolo always means the Noble Lolo or, as they call themselves in Chinese, Hei Kuto
(the Black Bone). Actually the word Lolo is derogatory and should never be used to their face. It
is best to refer to them in conversation as Hei Yi (the Black Yi), for an unwary choice of the
word may mean instant death. I prefer to call them the Noble Lolos because they were, as a
whole tribe, the most noble-looking people I have seen in my life. They are very tall and are
of regal bearing. Their complexion is in no wise black but, like certain mulattoes, of a
chocolate and cream tint. Their eyes are large and liquid, with a fire always burning in them,
and their features are aquiline and almost Roman. Their hair is black, slightly wavy and very soft;
and its arrangement is a distinctive feature of all Lolos. It is gathered through a hole at the top of
their dark blue or black turbans and hangs as a limp tail or, more often, springs up like a
miniature palm-tree, supported by a sheath of black strings. The hair of the Lolo is sacred and no
one is supposed to touch it under the pain of death. They believe that the Divine Spirit
communicates with man through the exposed lock of his hair which, like upstanding antenna or
the aerial of a wireless set, conveys the spiritual impulses, like waves to a receiver, to the brain.
Goullart goes on to describe how the Black Lolo (or Hei Yi) love nothing more
than to engage in guerrilla warfare against the ruling Chinese, luring their
soldiers into ambushes. No battle against the Black Lolo, Goullart says, has been
a decisive victory. He continues:
Even at the present time, it is reported, the Lolos still remain unconquered. The new Chinese
regime has demanded the surrender of their arms and their submission to the new government.
Instead, the Black Lolos have arranged the withdrawal of all their clansmen and their families
who lived on the outer, exposed mountain slopes, to the main ranges of the Taliangshan. At a
great conclave a king was elected to lead them, a drastic and almost unprecedented measure
which is only resorted to in a very grave emergency, when the existence of the whole race
is at stake.
This sounds a lot like some of the cultural changes we’ll cover in Part Two.
These people observe a strict social code and place great emphasis on chivalry,
righteousness, honor, and etiquette. Goullart adds:
The White Lolos are not related racially to the Black Lolos. Originally they were of Chinese
and other tribal stock, captured and enslaved by the Lolos…No Black Lolo might marry a White
Lolo, and did so only under pain of death. Romances between the castes were strictly taboo,
because the purity of the Black Bone had to be zealously guarded. Punishment for
disloyalty, and even for a breach of discipline, was swift and just, irrespective of caste.
In other words, the “Black” and “White” labels weren’t based on clothing colors
or artistic conventions, but actual racial distinctions that have mostly faded with
time and intermarriage. People like the Black Lolo were able to remain
“chocolate” colored as late as the 1950s because of their strict marriage laws.
WHERE DID THESE DARK PEOPLE COME
FROM?
We began this section by talking about the “racial differences” found between
the light and dark people of China. So how do we explain the origins of this
difference? Some of these people, like the Nakhi and Black Lolo, have cultural
traditions and features that make them seem related to the Anu, the Black
travelers we’ll discuss in Part Two. Other clues suggest that these communities
are rooted in the ancestral Black populations that first settled all of Asia.
Geomorphologist George F. Carter once proposed:
Chinese history is that of the Mongoloid people from the northwest of China pushing out the
Negrito people of southeast Asia, who as late as the early centuries A.D. were still the dominant
people of south China. Indeed in a real sense they are still there, for the short, dark south Chinese
are pretty clearly the result of the mixture of the Mongols with the smaller, darker folk who had
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long been there.
In other words, foreigners came from the northwest and took over, changing
the face of China forever. Yet these outsiders, who the ancient Chinese called
“Western barbarians” weren’t the authors of Chinese civilization. Instead, it was
the dark people of China who should be associated, as Li Chi says, “with the
making of Chinese history from the beginning.” So let’s go back to the
beginning.
 THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF CHINA
China has been settled for quite a long time. There are Paleolithic sites in China
dating back to at least 20,000 years ago. But man must have been there long
before if he made it to the islands of New Guinea over 100,000 years ago.
I think it’s pretty clear by now who was making these kinds of moves during this
time period. But for a place like China, which has taken great pride in its
historical continuity and homogeneity – to the point of some Chinese scientists
trying to prove that the Chinese do not descend from Africa – I think it’s
important to flesh it all the way out.
What do we know about the oldest human presence in ancient China? We know
that the early record says very little, but the little that we have says a lot. Carl
Whiting Bishop, in discussing the scanty evidence of the very early human
occupancy at China has stated:
We have evidence that the southern and coastal portions of China were once inhabited by
Negritos akin to those still found in the Malay Peninsula and certain of the East Indian islands.
The last remnants of these “black dwarfs,” as an old Chinese record calls them, disappeared
during the early centuries of our Era; but unmistakable traces of their blood still persist in the
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present mountain folk of southern and western China.
In other words, the DBP were descendants of the first people to settle China.
G. Coedes, in his Making of South East Asia, attests to the fossil evidence:
Along the coast of the China Sea...the skeletons and skulls belong to a race of pygmies similar to
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the Negritos of the Andaman islands and to certain Papuans of Melanesia.
These DBP were the descendants of the original “Black belt” of Original People
that settled the world around 100,000 years ago. These people survived and
became the DBP, but also blended into many later populations.
Even the premier white supremacist author of the early 1900s, Lothrop
Stoddard, was bold enough to admit in his magnum opus The Rising Tide of Color
Against White World Supremacy:
Besides its African nucleus the black race has two distant outposts: the one in Australasia, the
other in the Americas. The Eastern blacks are found mainly in the archipelagoes lying between
the Asiatic land-mass and Australia. They are the Oriental survivors of the black belt which in
very ancient times stretched uninterruptedly from Africa across southern Asia to the Pacific
Ocean. The Asiatic blacks were overwhelmed by other races ages ago, and only a few wild tribes
like the “Negritos” of the Philippines and the jungle-dwellers of Indo-China and southern India
survive as genuine Negroid stocks. All the peoples of southern Asia, however, are darkened by
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this ancient Negroid strain.
According to Professor Chang Hsing-lang, the Jiu Tang Shu (Old Dynastic History
of Tang) makes mention of a people living to the south of the region of Linyi,
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who “have woolly hair and black skin.” In his Les Negritos de la Chine,
published in Hanoi in 1928, French anthropologist H. Imbert wrote:
The Negroid races peopled at some time all the South of India, Indo-China, and China…In the
first epochs of Chinese history, the Negrito type peopled all the south of this country and even in
the island of Hai-Nan, as we have attempted to prove in our study on these Negritos, or Black
Men of this island. Skulls of these Negroes have been found in the island of Formosa and traces
of this Negroid element in the islands of Liu-Kiu to the south of Japan. In the earliest Chinese
history several texts in classic books spoke of these diminutive blacks; thus the Tcheu-Li
composed under the dynasty of Tcheu (1129-249 BC) gives a description of the inhabitants with
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black and oily skin…

THE DBP IN LATER CHINESE HISTORY

Anthropologist Li Chi notes a reference to “blackish-colored dwarfs” in the
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Official History of the Liang Dynasty (502–556 AD), but comes up short for other
references to the DBP in early Chinese literature. I’m not sure how he missed it,
but the Chinese actually have a rich literary and artistic tradition centered on the
DBP.
For starters, Kunlun Nu (“The Negrito Slave”) is a popular Chinese romance
written during the Tang Dynasty around 880 AD. The hero of the tale is a
Negrito slave named Mo-lê, who has “supernatural” physical abilities. After Mo-
lê saves his master’s lover (who has now fallen for him), he finally escapes with
his dagger (apparently his only possession) and flies over the city walls to escape
apprehension. He is seen over ten years later selling medicine in the city, not
having aged a single day.
Later Taoist commentary says that Mo-lê’s gravity defying abilities and
agelessness suggest he was a Chinese Immortal (a myth popular in early Taoism
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and modern Kung fu movies). In fact, it appears that the “Immortals” of
Chinese tradition were inspired by stories of these “magical” Blacks, much as
the stories of the mythical beings of Europe’s “enchanted forests” were based
on the ancient Black presence there.
In his Formation of the Chinese People, anthropologist Li Chi documented, among
the Yunnan tribes, a people known as Hala, which means “the black.” Li wrote:
The description of the Hala given by the [Chinese] Encyclopedia, brief as it is, corresponds
almost exactly to that of the modern Sakai as given by Skeat and Blagden. If they do have any
affiliation, it would be more appropriate to call them Negroid rather than Negrito. Modern
writers on Szechuan and Kansu have found traces of both the Negroid and the Negrito in China.
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None, however, has found any pure type.
The modern-day Hlai inhabit the mountains (and some tropical forest areas) in
central and south central Hainan province in southern China. They are an
official Chinese minority known as Li (which means “black”), and are also
known by smaller tribal affiliations such as Li, Dai, Lai, La, Loi, and Le. While
they are traditionally hunters, and still polytheistic, many are now farmers.
One of their five major divisions is known as Ha Li, which may have derived
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from Hala. It is interesting, especially in regards to ancient Chinese religion, to
note that among the Malayan Negritos, who originally occupied China, the
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shaman was known by the name Hala. This takes us back to the connection
between the Black people of China and conceptions of the divine, a theme we’ll
explore in Volume Three.
THE DBP IN CHINESE ART
In early Chinese art, depictions of Black people are everywhere. Some are more
stylized than others, but many are so clear in representing Black features that
scholars have jumped through all sorts of intellectual hoops to try to explain
them away. For example, one bronze wine vessel from the Shang dynasty clearly
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depicts a DBP male embracing a large tiger. This has been described as a
“tiger eating a Negro baby” as if that was a typical occurrence in ancient China!
In reality, the tiger probably represents the Black male’s “alter ego” as the male
himself is a shaman. In fact, the very origins of Chinese religion begin with the
“shamanism” characteristic of aboriginal Black cultures elsewhere in the world,
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especially among DBP people.
In fact, early Chinese art is replete with motifs that represent the original Black
people of China. From the wide-eyed, full-lipped faces on the ritual mask and
stone cong used by Chinese shamans, to the jade sculptures of “squatting
barbarians” there are literally hundreds of representations of Black people,
most of them DBP people, in ancient Chinese art.
George Weber accounts for at least 53 distinct “Negrito” populations
throughout southeast Asia. Four of these groups can be found in or very near
China. Six other nearby locales (including Hainan and Taiwan) retain local
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legends or other evidence about extinct populations with Black traits. Weber
adds:
[S]o many cross-connections and similarities between the Negritos, Veddoids, Papuans,
Melanesians, Australians and Tasmanians have been noted that at the very least a long period of
common residence in tropical Asia if not a common origin must by assumed. Which brings us to
the second school of thought which holds that all these groups share a common ancestral origin
somewhere in southeast Asia or southern China...
[T]he hypothetical ancestral race of Negritos, Veddoids, Papuans, Australians, Tasmanians and
Melanesians once occupied, perhaps as much as 100,000 years ago...ranged from India through
Indo-China to Indonesia and from southern China through Taiwan to the Philippines, with New
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Guinea, Australia and Tasmania settled later by the same people.
 THE AUSTRALOID PEOPLE OF CHINA
According to Carl Whiting Bishop, a second wave of people “supplanted the
Negritos” in China. These people may have been Australoid. When did they
come? It’s not entirely clear when they first arrived, but there is evidence of their
presence as early as 20,000 years ago. Because of the coastal route we typically
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took, most of the earliest settlements can be found in the south.
Even notoriously Eurocentric historian Carleton Coon detected an ancient
Australoid colony in southern China. But, as noted earlier, many of the earliest
southern settlements have been swept away by rising sea levels. Fortunately,
there is also a decent amount of evidence left behind by our excursions inland.
One of the earliest sites of human occupation in China, Yuchanyan Cave in
Hunan, yielded shards of ceramic vessels and other artifacts which were dated to
be 17,500 to 18,300 years old. That would make these the oldest known
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examples of pottery. Who were the people of Yuchanyan? A clue can be
found further north. Skeletal remains at the site of Zhoukoudian, known as the
Upper Cave, date back to about 20,000 years ago, and can tell us quite a lot
about the early Chinese.
Why? They’re Australoid. Meaning they looked like the (Black) Australian
aborigines. Meaning the prehistoric Chinese came from the same ancestral
population as the people of Australia. Not only do the oldest skulls tell this
story, but there are shell beads and other artifacts that are nearly identical
between Zhoukoudian Cave, China and Devil’s Lair Cave, Australia (c. 20,000
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BC).
SO WHEN DID THINGS CHANGE?
Regarding the racial transition in ancient China, K.C. Chang theorized:
[B]y the beginning of the Recent (Holocene) period the population in North China and that in
the southwest and in Indochina had become sufficiently differentiated to be designated as
Mongoloid and Oceanic Negroid races respectively, even though both of them may have evolved
out of a common Upper Pleistocene substratum as represented by the Tzu-yang and the Liu-
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chang skulls.
In other words, within the past 10,000 years, the expanding populations of
China may have differentiated enough for some to look more Mongoloid and
others to look more Negroid. But they all came from the same ancestral
population, as represented by the “much older” Tzu-yang and Liu-chang skulls.
Chinese scholars assert that, while the Liu-chang skull may have been the origin
for populations south of China, the Tzu-yang skull looks Mongoloid and was
likely the origin of Mongoloid features among the Chinese. In other words,
Chinese people always looked this way. But is this true?
It doesn’t look like it. The “ancestral” Tzu-yang skull doesn’t support the claim
that the Chinese didn’t start out Black. For starters, the Tzu-yang skull may have
more of a Mongoloid appearance, but it isn’t as old as they thought. It only goes
back to about 5,000 BC. Not so much of an “ancestor” as they’d like.
DID YOU KNOW? On the other hand, the Liu-chang (or
Interested in learning more about prehistoric cultures Liujiang) skull is at least 60,000 years
in East Asia? Hit Wikipedia and search for the
following cultures: Hoabinhian, Fen, Balangoda, Son
old (possibly more), so it may be a
Vi, Kandivili, Jōmon, Mehrgarh, Angara, Sen-Doki, better representation of the Original
Soanian, Ngandong, Ordos, Soanian, and People of China. And guess what? It
Padjitanian. looks Black. Scholars have often
described it as Australoid, connecting it to the Australoid skulls found at
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Zhoukoudian, the skulls of early Neolithic China, and later skulls from the
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Shang dynasty.
In other words, Black people were the foremost presence at every major step of
Chinese cultural development. The Liu-chang skull has also been compared to
the earliest skulls found in the Americas, which reminds of what Walter Neves
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said about those remains.
And these people didn’t disappear. They survived in China all the way into the
Neolithic. Wolfram Eberhard’s History of China documents the presence of a
Neolithic culture in southern and coastal China at least as early as 4000 BC.
These were the people, he clarified, who formed the “original stock of the
Australian aborigines,” adding:
They survived in India as the Munda tribes, in Indo-China as the Mon-Khmer, and also remained
in pockets on the islands of Indonesia and especially Melanesia. All these peoples had migrated
from southern China.
Many of these people were influential in the founding of the first Chinese
dynasties. This is the story we’ll cover in Part Two.
 THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE OF TAIWAN
You probably own a few things that say they’re “Made in Taiwan,” but do you
know where Taiwan is? It’s an island off east coast of China, not too far from its
shores. You can imagine that it was probably settled by the same people who
first settled China. But unlike China, the island was mainly inhabited by
Taiwanese aborigines until the Dutch took over in the early 1600s and mainland
Chinese began immigrating to the island. That’s when they called it “Formosa.”
Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty the way they did the aboriginal people to make
their rule easy.
And Taiwan’s aborigines are quite an interesting people. Oh, you didn’t know?
Have you seen Warriors of the Rainbow? It’s a pretty incredible film, the most
expensive film made in Taiwanese history. It’s the story of Taiwan’s aborigines
and their fight against imperialist Japan in 1930. Long story short, it’s like the
Taiwanese Braveheart. But there’s more to this story. The aborigines of Taiwan
are – as you’d expect – darker-skinned than the people of China or Japan. They
tend to have “Blacker features” overall. But were they the first people of
Taiwan?
THE DBP IN TAIWAN
Several isolated Chinese populations have oral traditions suggesting an ancient
Black presence that has, with time and the disappearance of the Blacks
themselves, lent itself to the realm of legends and rumors. Today, that presence
is quite possibly best remembered by those tribal populations least affected by
the integration and assimilation of the Chinese mainland, that is, those of the
neighboring islands. Foremost among these is Taiwan. There, a rumor from the
Saisiyat tribe persists. It states:
[B]ack many years ago there used to be a population of small-body sized people with very dark
skin color living in the mountain area. People usually called them ‘little black man.’ They were
good-natured fellows, good swimmers and liked to play jokes…These people disappeared not
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too long ago.
Chai Chen Kang declares in his conclusion to Taiwan Aborigines: A Genetic Study
of Tribal Variations:
The widespread presence of Negritos in the South Pacific Islands support the theory that they
may have been the earliest inhabitants of Taiwan. Kroeber referred to them as an ancient and
primitive people, who may have inhabited wide stretches of Africa, Asia, and Oceania before its
invasion by Mongoloids and Caucasoids from the north…Our study provides what also may be
biologic evidence of genetic infiltration from this vanished race [the Negritos], in the short
stature and dark skin of the western tribes, especially the Bununs and Paiwans, who also have the
 342
broad head and nose and short, wide face typical of the Negritos.
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Every year, the Saisiyat tribe of Hsinchu and Miaoli commemorate the “little
Black people” they unknowingly exterminated. As Jules Quartly reports in the
Taipei Times:
For the past 100 years or so, the Saisiyat tribe has performed the songs and rites of the festival to
bring good harvests, ward off bad luck and keep alive the spirit of a race of people who are said
to have preceded all others in Taiwan.
In fact, the short, black men the festival celebrates are one of the most ancient types of modern
humans on this planet and their kin still survive in Asia today. They are said to be diminutive
Africoids and are variously called Pygmies, Negritos and Aeta. They are found in the Philippines,
northern Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra in Indonesia and other places.
Chinese historians called them “black dwarfs” in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220 to AD
280) and they were still to be found in China during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1911). In Taiwan
they were called the “Little Black People” and, apart from being diminutive, they were also said
to be broad-nosed and dark-skinned with curly hair.
After the Little Black People – and well before waves of Han migrations after 1600 – came the
Aboriginal tribes, who are part of the Austronesian race…Gradually the Little Black People
became scarcer, until a point about 100 years ago, when there was just a small group living near
the Saisiyat tribe.
The story goes that the Little Black People taught the Saisiyat to farm by providing seeds and
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they used to party together.
This is when things go downhill. Their community had dwindled down to the
point where there no available females to bear children and create a next
generation. They attempted to take some of the aboriginal community’s women,
and that didn’t go over well. Quartly tells what happened next:
So, the Saisiyat took revenge and killed them off by cutting a bridge over which they were all
crossing. Just two Little Black People survived. Before departing eastward, they taught the
Saisiyat about their culture and passed down some of their songs, saying if they did not remember
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their people they would be cursed and their crops would fail.
That’s heavy. Did you catch the part about how the DBP taught the aboriginal
people of Taiwan how to farm and how to have fun? That says a lot about what
the DBP taught the people who followed them, especially considering that the
DBP themselves were typically not farmers. The Saisiyat tribe’s oral tradition is
one of the few surviving records of how important the DBP were to the world’s
civilizations. I cannot help but wonder if the “Little Black People” of Taiwan
consciously foretold the destruction of Taiwan’s aboriginal people by the
Japanese. When you watch Warriors of the Rainbow, don’t miss the scene on the
bridge.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO JAPAN
I’ll be honest. When I went to Japan in 2003, I had a moment of American
ignorance. There were so many people with a similar complexion, similar nose
shape, similar eyes, and similar hair texture that it did seem a little homogeneous
at first. In other words, I was starting to think everyone looked the same. So yes,
I was one of those “uninformed” people I mentioned in the last chapter.
Fortunately, I stayed for three weeks, which gave me ample time to learn some
of the language, culture, and history. For starters, modern Japan is home to
several waves of immigrants from Korea and China, who don’t actually look the
same. However, modern Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese all share some traits in
common – like hair texture – which are, in fact, quite different from the features
of their oldest ancestors.
Outside Tokyo, I encountered a wider variety of “ethnic” features among the
people. I also visited a few temples where Black gods like Bishamon were still
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celebrated by the local people. I got a chance to hear a traditional form of
music known as Taiko drumming, where African rhythms had clearly been
preserved.
I learned that Japan had been a strong supporter of the Black Nationalism
movements of the early 20th century U.S. Most importantly, I learned about the
Ainu and the Jōmon people, two of the biggest clues into who the Original
People of Japan were.
 THE LITTLE BLACK PEOPLE OF JAPAN
In a 1903 study of the racial elements of Japanese history, Karl Kiyoshi
Kawakami wrote:
The first inhabitants of Japan were probably Pigmies, who lived in hill-sides and vaults along the
coast of the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan. This thesis, maintained by Professors Koganei
and Tsuboye, of Tokio Imperial University is based upon the results of excavations and upon
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traditions compiled in the Kojiki and other records. How many years ago and whence this
small race came to our land is a matter of conjecture. They were the race of the neolithic or,
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perhaps, of the palaeolithic stage.
In his groundbreaking 1895 work The Pygmies, Armand de Quatrefages,
Professor of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History of Paris, says of
the original people of Japan and other adjacent islands:
On the north, Formosa is the last place where the race of which we speak has preserved all its
characteristics; but it reveals its ancient existence beyond this island by the traces it has left
among the present populations. In the little archipelago of Loo-Choo [Ryukyu], Basil Hall
Chamberlain found at certain points ‘some men very black by the side of others who were almost
white.’ Ancient traditions in Japan speak of formidable black savages who were subdued and
driven away only with great difficulty…
Quatrefages adds that human remains confirm his theory:
Kempfer and Siebold have reported the differences in color and hair which certain classes of the
population present, and the latter mentions particularly the black color and the more or less
crinkly hair of the inhabitants of the southeast coast. Long since, I mentioned these characters as
confirming the opinion first propounded by Pichard relative to the intervention of a black
element in Japan, and this element can only be referred to the Negrito race. The examination of a
Japanese skull from the Broca collection has fully confirmed these conclusions. Studied by Hamy
and myself, it has presented a mixture of features, of which the most characteristic clearly betray
this ethnic origin. The details given by Dr. Maget have fully confirmed these conclusions. He has
discovered and described veritable Negrito metis [mixed-bloods] living in the midst of Japanese
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populations.
Kawakami continues:
[I]t seems almost certain that Pigmies of some sort or other peopled the islands of Japan at a time
long before the dawn of the historic age. Notwithstanding de Quatrefages’ remark that these
Negritos of the North were not exterminated as in Java, we are not able today to perceive so
much as a trace of this primitive stock so far as the people of Japan proper are concerned. In Riu-
Kiu and Formosa, our new territories, we may perhaps recognize to a greater or less degree a
certain relation to those early peoples, as the prominent French anthropologist has pointed out.
That the races who first peopled Japan were extraordinarily short in stature has been shown by
the smallness of the vaults recently found and alleged by scholars to have been the habitations of
the prehistoric folk, as well as by the evidences handed down through folk-lore…
These DBP may have been called by names such as Koshito, Koropokguru, or
Aoshima. Later Japanese myths describe “little black demons” inhabiting the
mountains and forests, which – as such myths go in Europe – may also describe
the DBP. What happened to the DBP of Japan? Kawakami concludes:
For how long a period this short-statured race had existed in Japanese islands before stronger
savages came to subjugate them, is not definitely known. Whence they came, where they went,
how they disappeared, are questions no less obscure…Professor Koganei, of Tokyo University,
insists that these Pygmies, attacked by a superior race now called Ainu, gradually retired to the
North, and finally crossed over to Siberia and America by the way of Yezo, Saghalin, and other
islands. He is bold enough to say that they were the ancestors of the present Esquimos.
This could explain why the history of human habitation in Japan predates the
appearance of the Jōmon, who are considered its founding population.
 BLACK SAMURAIS AND THE AINU
In his History of China, Wolfram Eberhard notes a Neolithic culture in
northeastern China, who he connects to the Papuan people of Melanesia. He
says they came from southern China, as did a southeastern culture of Blacks
who went on to settle Australia. In Eberhard’s analysis, “Both groups influenced
the ancient Japanese culture.” In other words, Japan was once a diverse array of
Black people, most of them of the Australoid type. Today, we’d have a hard
time tracking down the descendants of those early populations. Yet there is one
indigenous population in Japan that has maintained some of its unique heritage
by remaining distinct. They are known as the Ainu.
WHO WERE THE AINU?
The Ainu don’t look like most Japanese. Today they can best be described as a
pale-skinned people who look somewhat Caucasian. On closer examination, we
can identify Australoid traits, such as heavy body hair, brow-ridges, and wide
noses.
Indeed the pale-skinned Ainu, along with Australoid remains in Paleolithic
Europe, suggested to many historians that the origins of the white race may
have laid in the depigmentation of Australoid people. For more on that story,
see Volume Four.
But the Ainu were not always pale. They were originally Black like their
cousins in Australia and New Guinea. If you follow the trail provided by
photographs from the early 1900s and work your way backwards to watercolor
paintings from the late 18th century, you’ll see the gradual color change among
the Ainu.
According to Albert Churchward, in Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, “These
Ainu are of the same original race and type as the Australian Aborigines.” In
1937, Thomas Griffith Taylor also noted a connection between the Ainu and
the Australoid people of India:
A very interesting tribe is the Toda people of the Nilgiri hills. They are characterized by their
hairy appearance, thus resembling the Ainu and the Australian. Indeed, they may be akin to an
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early form of the Nordic race.
The Ainu are also genetically linked to the Australoid people who came into the
Americas 16,000 years ago. A 1994 genetic study revealed that the ancestors of
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the Ainu people migrated into the Americas in the Paleolithic. Some of these
people may have become the Native Americans of North America’s eastern
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seaboard.
THE ANCESTORS OF THE BLACK
SAMURAIS
James Brunson writes in African Presence in Early Asia:
An ancient tradition points to the conquest of Japan from the southeast by a race of warriors of
black or near black origin. These invaders were probably the ancestors of the Black Samurai, and
later Shogun, Sakanouye Tamuramaro. Sakanouye’s father and uncle were members of the
warrior class “Azumbabito” or “Men of the East.” The Azumbabito, who had praises sung of
them in early Japanese literature, are probably the subject of the proverb, “for a samurai to be
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brave, he must have a bit of black blood.”
And there is, indeed, a connection between the Black blood of the Ainu and the
Black blood of the samurai. Genetic studies have confirmed that the Ainu made
“a recognizable contribution to the warrior class – the Samurai – of feudal
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Japan.”
WHERE DID THE AINU COME FROM?
Kawakami says the DBP were part of the Ainu’s ancestry:
[I]t will be safe to admit that in some cases there was an intermingling of the blood of the
Pigmies and the Ainus. If the Pigmies played any role in the characterization of the Japanese
nation, it could have been only through the Ainus who in turn gave way before other conquering
tribes of Aryans and Mongolians…
Thus, it is asserted that the Japanese nation is of no single origin. It is the outcome of the
intermingling of entirely different ethnic stocks. The blood of the Mongolians, the Aryans, and
the Ainus, together with some tinge of the blood of the Pygmies, is mingled together in the veins
of the Japanese people.
Beyond this, Kawakami says, “As to the original abode of the Ainus, the
scholars are, however, still in darkness.” If previous chapters have shed any
light, we know that Australoid people were survivors of the Toba extinction and
probably repopulated East Asia from somewhere in the southeast.
THE JOMON CULTURE
The Ainu are quite possibly the strongest survival of Japan’s Original People,
but there’s more to the picture. Human habitation of Japan goes back at least
35,000 years, when early settlers mined stone from Mount Takaharayama to
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produce obsidian tools like those found at African sites. Such mining practices
continued into the Jōmon Period, which lasted from 13,000 to 2,500 years ago.
The Jōmon culture was made up of the Original People of Japan. Some of these
people later became the Ainu.
In addition to extensive mining, the Jōmon also:
 Had an extensive pottery tradition.
Fished, foraged, and hunted for their food, only occasionally planting hemp or other non-
native crops.
Built large, stable villages that reflect a sedentary (not nomadic) population.
May have sailed the Pacific coasts to eventually become part of the early Native
American population.
Mark J. Hudson, Professor of Anthropology at Nishikyushu University in Japan,
said the country was settled by a “Proto-Mongoloid” people in the prehistoric
past. These people became the Jōmon and their features can be seen in the Ainu
and Okinawan people. Proto-Mongoloid (or Paleo-Mongoloid) people, as we
noted earlier, descended from Australoid ancestors.
This is why Jōmon remains don’t look exactly like modern East Asians. In many
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ways, they resemble Australian Aborigines more than modern Asian people.
According to Jared Diamond, they had wide-set eyes and “strikingly raised
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browridges, noses, and nose bridges,” traits found in Australoid populations.
Other studies have established that the Jōmon’s limb proportions were those of
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a tropical people. As we’ve noted elsewhere, “tropical” means dark-skinned.
SO HOW DID THE JOMON BECOME THE
JAPANESE?
The Original People of Japan maintained their culture, and their independence,
for thousands of years. A recent study suggests these people actually avoided the
people who attempted to introduce agriculture:
[T]he hunter–gatherer population, which settled in Japan around 12,000–30,000 BP, managed to
fend off the farmers for thousands of years until being abolished suddenly and dramatically with
the arrival of proto-Japonic-speaking farmers around 2400 [years ago]…During all this transition
outside, the hunter–gatherers of Japan continued to prosper by using simple stone tools and
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without adopting full-scale agriculture, despite knowledge of cultivation of many crops.
So who introduced the racial, linguistic, and cultural change that shifted Japan
away from its Black roots? A later group, known in Japan as the Yayoi, came
into Japan about 2400 years ago. The Yayoi brought the science of wet rice
agriculture and a military tradition, quickly displaced their Jōmon predecessors.
The Yayoi were not tropically adapted but cold-adapted.
What does this mean? According to Hudson, this is when “Neo-Mongoloid”
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people entered Japan, quickly becoming the dominant population. In other
words, most Japanese descend from a mix of the original Australoid Jōmon
people and the Neo-Mongoloid Yayoi people, who came much later.
The genetic legacy of the Jōmon is best preserved among the Ainu.
Anthropologist Umehara Takeshi believes the Ainu and Ryukyuans preserve the
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“Proto-Mongoloid” traits of the Jōmon era. So the Ainu look the most like
the original Jōmon, while most Japanese look more like the Yayoi. Modern
Japanese ancestry is about 60% Yayoi and 40% Jōmon. Modern Koreans share
the same roots.
THEN WHAT HAPPENED?
As recently as the 1940s, Japan was working to bring the Black and brown
people of the world together. Along with India and some Middle Eastern
nations, Japan was sending delegates to build alliances with Black Nationalist
organizations in the U.S.
In an excellent article titled “When Japan was Champion of the Darker Races,”
Black historian Ernest Allen, Jr. reports on the Asian activists sent to Black
communities in the early 20th century, all with the intentions of dismantling
white supremacist rule.
A notable figure from this period is Satokata Takahashi, a Japanese general who
worked to build revolutionary relationships with Black people in America. In
one speech, delivered to a Black working-class audience, Takahashi asserted:
Three-fourths of the world are black people and one-fourth is white, and it is not in accordance
with God’s will for one-fourth of the world to rule the three-fourths, which are black. Now that
Japan has gained rightful recognition in the world, she is willing to help other dark races.
We know that the black people of the United States are citizens thereof, and can not help Japan
directly in case of war, but there are other things that can be done. If the white man knew that
you sympathized with Japan, he would not allow you to shoulder arms or go near an ammunition
plant in case of war…Japan is making overtures to you. If she fails you fail. This is the last chance
of the dark races of America to overcome white supremacy and to throw the white tyrants off
your backs.
In another speech, he declared:
You are clinging to an era of Caucasian civilization and psychology because you are afraid to
leave the sinking ship. I say the sinking ship because western prestige is doomed. It is pursuing its
inevitable course to the graveyard of obscure history. Here is the Negro’s chance to freedom in
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life. Leave the sinking ship.
By all accounts from those who knew him, Takahashi was sincere in his pleas.
He worked with people representing the Moorish Science Temple, the United
Negro Improvement Association, the AME Church, and the Nation of Islam.
Thanks to Takahashi and others like him, pro-Japan sentiment was growing
rapidly in Black communities across the U.S. By 1942, the government had
serious concerns about Black support for Japan conquering the U.S. in war.
CAN’T HAVE THAT…
In August of 1945, the United States became the first and only country to drop
atom bombs on another country, leaving the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in a state of such obliterated carnage that the people of Japan continue
to wear masks to this day because of the residual fallout.
After Japan surrendered, the U.S. began rebuilding the country, this time
according to a new set of rules. It wasn’t long before baseball replaces sumo
wrestling as Japan’s national pastime, nor was it long before Japanese culture
absorbed the sort of Western-style racism that continues to permeate today.
AUSTRALIA
THE BLACKFELLAS DOWN UNDER
“We know we cannot live in the past but the past lives in
us.” – Charles Perkins, Aboriginal activist
One thing you will draw away from this book is that the same things have
happened to Black people all over the world. In Australia, we find the same
tragic story that happened to the Original People of the Americas, Africa, and
Asia. That story can be summed up in one word: annihilation.
The Aboriginal people of Australia were subjected to a true genocide, including
the theft of their land and natural resources, being forced to live on desert
reservations, being hunted down and shot like dogs, and even lynchings in the
same fashion as in colonial America. While films like Rabbit-Proof Fence and The
Tracker tell some of this story, there is no film – to my knowledge – that
captures the way our people in Australia were killed off and violently repressed.
In fact, many of the aboriginal populations of the area – such as the Tasmanians
– are now gone forever. Meanwhile, the survivors have been left to witness the
theft and co-opting of their cultural traditions and knowledge. White folks might
like boomerangs and didgeridoos, but nobody wants to talk about what
happened to the people they belong to.
And, indeed, Australia has much to teach us, so long as we do not look through
the deceptive lenses of culture bandits like Marlo Morgan (who we’ll soon
discuss). After all, these are a people whose way of life worked for over 60,000
years! By comparison, it would seem that our own society is near-collapse after
only five centuries.
“The Australian native can withstand all the reverses of nature, fiendish droughts and sweeping floods, horrors of thirst and enforced
starvation - but he cannot withstand [Western] civilisation.”
– Daisy May Bates, Australian activist
So why don’t we hear about Australia when we talk of ancient Black
civilizations? Because – given the limited scope provided by the Western model
for civilization, which we discussed earlier – the Black people of Australia never
had “civilization.” They never congregated into large urban centers and built big
stone buildings surrounded by farmland.
But who’s to say they weren’t advanced? Even though they maintained relatively
the same way of life since the time they settled there, they didn’t have many
problems (until Europeans came). All the anthropological accounts of the
Aborigines, as well as James Bonwick’s 1870 account, Daily Life and Origin of the
Tasmanians, describe a way of life that made perfect sense, given the population
density and environment.
“Our culture is something that has sustained us for thousands and thousands of years and will continue to do so in generations to come.”
– Hetti Perkins

DID YOU KNOW? That is, the aborigines didn’t NEED

In 1990, Marlo Morgan self-published a book titled urban centers, because they had plenty
Mutant Message Down Under, which chronicles the
life-changing journey of a middle-aged, white woman
of room to spread out, and plenty of
living with a group of 62 desert Aborigines, known as natural food sources to live
the “Real People.” Morgan claimed the book was her comfortably. They had so much free
true story, and that she was now recognized as an time that they preserved a rich,
Aborigine. People loved the story and Morgan
enjoyed a profitable lecturing career. But then complex culture involving several
someone thought to find out who the “Real People” layers of cosmologies and hundreds of
were. Aboriginal groups established that there was no traditions to go along with them. And
such group, and that Morgan had never been to the
area she claimed. In 1996, a group of Aboriginal
when a need arose, they met it with a
elders, seriously disturbed by the book’s fabrications surprising (to modern researchers, at
and concerned that it was being turned into a major least) degree of intelligence and
motion picture, earned a grant to travel to the U.S. ingenuity. For example, the recent
where they publicly confronted Morgan. They made
her admit that it was all a fraud. Yet Morgan discovery of a 35,000 year-old stone
continued doing lectures, supported by the New Age axe in Arnhem Land, Australia is much
community, who didn’t seem to care about any of this more advanced than was expected.
controversy – because the “message was so deep it
didn’t matter.” When Aboriginal elders showed up Archaeologist Adam Brumm noted:
Aboriginal material culture was regarded by
AGAIN at a lecture, she said “they represent all that is
early European observers as the most primitive
bad, and I represent all that is good.” In 1998, she got
a book deal for a second book, Message from technology on earth…Yet at the same time that
Forever: A Novel of Aboriginal Wisdom, which she early European hunters were using stone
claims “is really written by Aboriginal friends tellingarrowheads to bring down large and dangerous
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me to please do this.” Disgusting. Ice Age animals, the ancestors of modern-day
Aboriginal people employed an equally if not
more sophisticated type of stone tool in order to gain access to vital foods.
In other words, “Australia was at the forefront of technical innovation 35,000
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years ago.”
“This painting is not from today. We’ve got a story. And we’ve got laws. We not only believe of land, we believe of even river or creek or
saltwater. That’s our own law there. Our own law and story. “
– Gawarrin Gumana
Before Europeans pushed the Australians into the desert fringes of their old
homelands, they had easy access to thousands of plants and animals, which they
knew well.
Before Europeans came, aborigines had few physical ailments, and few (if any)
mental health issues or addictions. Early accounts note Aborigines being
repulsed by the thought of drinking the white man’s grog, but before long these
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people were plagued by alcoholism.
In fact, in the initiation process of Euahlayi boys, they were told that their
shamans could see in their “sacred crystals” images of the future. They saw the
Black color of their people growing “paler and paler, until at last only the white
faces of the Wundah, or spirits of the dead, and white devils were seen, as if it
should mean that some day no more blacks should be on this earth.” The
account continues:
The reason of this must surely be that the tribes fell away from the Boorah rites, and in his wrath
Byamee [the “All Father”] stirred from his crystal seat in Bullimah. He had said that as long as the
blacks kept his sacred laws, so long should he stay in his crystal seat, and the blacks live on earth;
but if they failed to keep up the Boorah rites as he had taught them, then he would move and
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their end would come, and only Wundah, or white devils, be in their country.
 THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE
“This is the land of dreamings, a land of wide horizons and secret places. The first people, our ancestors, created this country in the culture
that binds us to it.” – Hetti Perkins
Scientists have confirmed that Australian Aborigines have “one of the oldest
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continuous population histories outside sub-Saharan Africa today.” But
they’ve also established that the Aboriginal population is not monolithic.
Before the Europeans came, there were about 600 communities (or “tribes”),
each consisting of 500-1000 people and speaking its own dialect. There are
hundreds of unique ethnic (and linguistic) groups in Australia for a reason.
Recent research reveals there is a ton of genetic diversity in the aboriginal
population, including representatives of most of the world’s haplogroups. The
genetic research has also determined that the Australian aborigines look
genetically related to a diverse array of the world’s oldest people, including
hunger-gatherers from Nepal and the Philippines, the Great Andamanese and
Onge from the Andaman Islands, the Highlands people of Papua, New Guinea,
and certain “aboriginal” people from India. This could mean that Australia was
populated in several waves or that it represents a generalized population that
predated many of the human splits that occurred over the past 50,000 years.
How did these waves of migration come in? As we’ve noted elsewhere, it took
sailing to populate Australia and New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago. Some
scientists claim there were land bridges connecting everything, but plenty of
areas had nothing connecting but several miles of water. As we noted earlier in
this book, Australasia (or the Sunda and Sahul) was one of those areas.
So yes, boats. Or canoes. Or some pretty serious rafts. But some sort of
watercraft was necessary. And it couldn’t have been a few small fishing boats
that were simply shipwrecked after getting carried away by an unexpected
tradewind or ocean current. We know that these maritime migrations were
deliberate because there are computer simulations that factor in normal fertility
rates and the genetic diversity of modern populations. These studies tell us that
it would have required more than “just a boatload or two of colonists” to
establish the kind of aboriginal populations we see today.
 BEFORE THE ABORIGINES?
We know that Australia, because of its location, was one the “final destinations”
of migrations out of Africa. And until recently, the aboriginal people of
Australia didn’t have too many visitors. As a result, Australia constitutes one of
the oldest continuous sites of settlement by an ancestral population of Black
people (outside of Africa and the Andaman Islands) as well as an “outpost” of
the Black presence across Asia.
Scientists have traditionally thought that Australia was first settled by the
migration that left Africa over 75,000 years ago, arriving there about 70,000
years ago. Thus people assume that the tall “Australoid” aborigines living there
today are remnants of the first people in that area. But the aborigines themselves
have a rich historical tradition that – in the guise of “myth” – encodes over
50,000 years of community history, including a “Dreamtime” state that may
represent a more distant ancestral past.
A critical piece of their historical recollection is the memory of an older
population who settled Australia before the present-day aborigines. The folklore
of the indigenous people of northern Australia tells of fairy-like beings known as
Mimis. They are described as having extremely thin and elongated bodies, so
thin as to be in danger of breaking in case of a high wind. To avoid this, they
usually spend most of their time living in rock crevices. This is reminiscent of
European, Native American, and Chinese myths about the “thief in the night”
manner of DBP people, who disappear into the earth and are described with
fanciful imagery that emphasizes their diminutive size.
DID YOU KNOW? These Mimis are said to have taught
The Aborigines of Australia have a 50,000 year old the aborigines of Australia how to
oral tradition. We don’t even know how much white hunt, prepare kangaroo meat and use
people stole from them though. The “Tasmanian
Devil” cartoon we remember from our childhood was fire. They are said to be like humans
based on an Australian aborigine “myth” of the but they live in a different dimension,
Wurrahwilberoo, a whirlwind with devils in it. But the 368
Wurrahwilberoo also symbolized two specific regions perhaps Dreamtime. This reminds us
in the spiral of the Milky Way. of the click-language Damin, which is
said to have been taught by ancestral
beings from Dreamtime. Could Damin have come from the Original People
who first inhabited Australia?
You might say that we’re assuming quite a lot, if all the evidence we have for the
DBP in Australia is aborigine myth, huh? As we’ve said elsewhere, “myth” is just
a European word for our version of history and science. And the older the
“myth,” the closer it is to the truth.
Fortunately, there’s scientific evidence to corroborate these histories. The work
of anthropologists Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin reveals that not only did
dark-skinned, “wooly-haired” pygmies inhabit Australia (until relatively recent
times), but that the presence of these people was deliberately hidden by most
early historians. The Australian DBP, who appear to have survived over 50,000
years, were then systematically destroyed by the colonists (like the extinct
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Tasmanians).
The archaeological evidence suggests the Original People made it to Australia
quite a long time ago. In an alluvial deposit in Western Australia, Mance Lofgren
and John Clarke discovered more than 30 stone tools dating back more than
100,000 years
So who pushed the world’s first settlers into the margins of existence? Much as
taller Bantu people displaced older populations across Africa, the same thing
happened throughout the rest of the world. In Australia – long before the
Europeans came – the ancestors of today’s Aborigines displaced the people who
had come before them.
In his 1937 work Environment, Race, and Migration, Thomas Griffith Taylor
remarks:
Perhaps we may assume a negrito migration during an early glacial period, when it was easy to get
into Papua and also into Melanesia and Australia. Then the Papuan hordes moved to the south
after Australia was shut off by the drowning of the Sunda region. They entered Papua at a time
when we may imagine extensive deserts in northern Australia for reasons given earlier. They
drove the Tapiro into the hill-jungles. Later the first horde of Australians arrived during an Ice
Age, when the Sunda and Sahul areas were dry land. They moved down the central rivers to the
south-east. They mixed with the negritoes in the south to some extent, producing the Tasmanian
type. The next migration drove the Tasmanian further south, and was in turn driven into the
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thick forested regions of New South Wales by the latest migrations.
These Australians may not have been much taller than the people they
displaced, but they settled in such massive numbers that they pushed their
predecessors into Tasmania, the island at the southernmost tip of Australia. This
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may have been what began the “pygmization” process. Not long after this
displacement, Australia soon became heavily desertified.
Considering the ecological knowledge of our earliest ancestors, I wouldn’t be
surprised if the Original People – who became Australia’s DBP – had been the
ones keeping Australia’s ecosystem compatible with human habitation…until
they were removed from their land. Sound familiar?
Genetic studies of surviving populations reveal that at least two distinct groups
of ancient people settled Australia after the DBP, one a “more robust” type very
early in the continent’s history, the other a “more gracile” type much later on.
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We’ll talk about this second population in Part Two.
 AN INTRODUCTION TO ASTRONOMY
ROBERT BAILEY
Astronomy is the science that studies celestial objects (like stars, planets and
galaxies) and other phenomena that occurs in outer space. More specifically,
astronomy is concerned with the evolution, motion, physics, classification,
nature and meteorology of these celestial objects and cosmology. Astronomy
used to be viewed as the same as astrology. According to the book History of the
Inductive Sciences: from the Earliest to the Present Time Vol. 1, when mysticism was
introduced into Greek philosophy, their physical sciences became magic and
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astronomy gave birth to astrology.
Astronomers obtain their data through ground and space based observations,
use computers to make models and simulations, then go on to analyze and
record their findings. It isn’t a hard science to put into practice, nearly anyone
can do it. In fact, amateur astronomy (which is astronomy done by laypeople)
has contributed many important discoveries to the field as a whole. After all,
Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto before he went to college. Bernabe Cobo
has written:
“The movements of the heavenly bodies are an admirable thing, well-known
and manifest to all peoples. There are no people, no matter how barbaric and
primitive, that do not raise up their eyes, take note, and observe with some
care and admiration the continuous and uniform course of the heavenly
bodies.”
From our early beginnings, humans have been looking up and observing the
heavens, making astronomy the oldest science. Even with all of today’s
“advancements,” people still look to the skies, lost, searching for answers. Not
to say that this is solely always the reason for observation. Practicing
astronomy aided farmers and hunters by giving indication of coming seasons
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and helped numerous people with calendric and navigational purposes.
Studies show that Australian aborigines (who’ve been integrating astronomical
information into their oral traditions and daily lives for more than 50,000
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years) could be the world’s oldest known astronomers. Numerous other
indigenous tribes (like the Maori people or the Skidi Band of the Pawnee tribe,
for example) have been found to have proficient astronomical knowledge.
Moving forward, civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Greece, China,
Mesopotamia, India, Mesoamerica and the Islamic world helped to advance
the science. The invention of the telescope helped bring about modern
astronomy, in which women were allowed to play a greater role. But you
know…WE didn’t need telescopes.
 PALEOLITHIC ASTRONOMY
In the November 2010 issue of the Journal for Astronomical History & Heritage,
Hamacher and Frew present evidence that the Boorong people of northwestern
Victoria practiced what UniverseToday.com called “astronomy without a
telescope.” The Boorong – a people who have been in Australia since the
Paleolithic – have an oral tradition surrounding Eta Carinae, a massive binary
star system – of which the dominant member is an eruptive blue variable star.
The system’s last significant “eruption” – also known as the ‘great outburst’ –
made Eta Carinae briefly the second brightest star system in the night sky after
Sirius (from 1837 to 1845), and then it faded again.
This great outburst left behind the Homunculus Nebula, which – like the Swan
nebula – figures into aboriginal mythology. But the Boorong also recorded the
eruption of Eta Carinae itself and incorporated the event into their oral
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traditions, which have basically outlived the prominence of the star system!
SIRIUS KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE
DOGON
These details remind me of another indigenous people who recorded the
patterns of a binary star system into their oral tradition. French anthropologists
Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlin, in their 1965 work The Pale Fox
reported that the Dogon of Mali were well aware of Sirius A as well as its
partner Sirius B, despite the fact that Sirius B is not visible to the naked eye.
In an article titled “African Observers of the Universe: the Sirius Question,”
renowned scientist Hunter Adams remarks:
Their extensive celestial knowledge, particularly that concerning this invisible star (Sirius B), is a
mystery that has sent shock waves around the scientific world.
But this shocking information didn’t really hit the mainstream until 1977, when
Robert Temple published The Sirius Mystery. Temple seriously claimed that
mysterious spacemen from the Sirius star system must have brought this
astronomical knowledge down to the Dogon people (which were never
mentioned in The Pale Fox).
This is a prime example of why we must consult PRIMARY sources, not simply
the second-party and third-party interpretations. You see, Griaule and Dieterlin
never claimed to have an explanation for the Dogon’s knowledge, saying, “The
problem of knowing how, with no instruments at their disposal, men could
know the movements and certain characteristics of virtually invisible stars has
 377
not been settled, nor even posed.
What made it so bad was that Temple wasn’t your run-of-the-mill amateur
historian with a kooky idea. He was an established member of the Royal
Astronomical Society of Great Britain, concocting sheer stupidity just to deny
that Africans could generate their own astronomical knowledge!
Did You Know? Science writer Ian Ridpath and
As Robert Bailey notes in the 2012 365 Days of Real astronomer Carl Sagan quickly
Black History Calendar: “Blacks started astronomy.
Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory were
responded to Temple’s ridiculous
found at Namoratunga in Kenya. A stone observatory theory. These scholars offered an
over 5,000 years old was found west of Egypt.” equally ridiculous theory: that the
Dogon’s knowledge must have come
from “highly knowledgeable” explorers from Europe or America who came to
discuss astronomy with their priests.
But James Oberg, in “debunking” the alien origins of Dogon knowledge,
concludes that the “Europeans taught them” theory is just as baseless as the
“Aliens taught them” theory:
The obviously advanced astronomical knowledge must have come from somewhere, but is it an
ancient bequest or a modern graft? Although Temple fails to prove its antiquity, the evidence for
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the recent acquisition of the information is still entirely circumstantial.
In recent years, critics have attempted to dismiss Griaule because he only relied
on one Dogon elder and one translator for his information (definitely not the
best way to go about such important research), while others, like Temple and
Sagan, celebrated his findings only to pervert them for their own agendas.
Now, with this recent evidence from the Boorong in Australia – who recorded
similar information about a binary system that was even harder to observe than
Sirius – perhaps scientists can agree that the Dogon knew what they were
talking about.
And here’s the real nail-in-the-coffin. The Dogon spoke of another star in the
Sirius system, Emme Ya, or a star “larger than Sirius B but lighter and dim in
magnitude.” This was before a third star was theorized in the 1950s. Years later,
when there was still no evidence of any such star, Robert Temple said, “If a
Sirius-C is ever discovered and found to be a red dwarf, I will conclude that the
Dogon information has been fully validated.” In 1995, gravitational studies
confirmed the possibility of a brown dwarf star orbiting around Sirius (a Sirius-
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C).
THE PRESERVATION OF ASTRONOMICAL
 KNOWLEDGE
The Dogon created iron artifacts representing the movements of Sirius.
Presumably, some of the artifacts of the Boorong could communicate their
astronomical knowledge as well. But these wouldn’t be iron; they’d most likely
be wood (and thus unlikely to last thousands of years).
We do, however, have the Lebombo Bone, the Ishango Bone, the Thaïs Bone,
the Abri Blanchard Bone, and the Wolf Bone to confirm that we recorded lunar
cycles. Archaeological evidence from the Dordogne region of France suggests
that we used a lunar calendar (c. 30,000 BC) and there’s other evidence even
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older than that.
Archaeologists Brian Hayden and Suzanne Villeneuve argue that the techniques
for using such tools allowed the holders of this knowledge – most likely the
shamans – to develop a ‘secret society’ of people with astronomical knowledge.
Shamans may have also embedded these devices into cupules and other rock art,
as well as the cave paintings of the time.
Many Paleolithic caves themselves appear to have been chosen for their
orientation to the nighttime sky or daytime stars. Hayden and Villeneuve also
suggest natural alignments like trees and posts were used to monitor celestial
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phenomena, but this practice left few archaeological traces. The tradition of
orienting structures on land with structures in the stars is one that the Black
builders of civilization carried over into the Neolithic period. We’ll discuss this
in greater depth in Part Two.
A survey of 26 modern hunter-gather groups revealed that Orion was known to
16 groups, Venus to 15, the Pleiades to 12 and the Milky Way and Ursa Major to
10. Many other constellations and star nebulae enjoyed local fame. But
throughout the indigenous world, the consistency is amazing.
For example, the Pleiades are known everywhere as a group of women, and
Ursa Major is seen around the world as a bear. What’s thought-provoking is that
the Ursa Major constellation doesn’t even look like a bear! So there must be a
common source, which has to at least date back to the Palaeolithic.
This is why we can find similar evidence among other indigenous societies who
maintain Paleolithic traditions. Hayden and Villeneuve examined hundreds of
indigenous ethnographies and found almost all peoples had a concept of the
extreme limits of the Sun and the solstices. They also tied lunar cycles to
environmental events, like the appearance of first fruits, or the migration
patterns of local wildlife, useful knowledge for people who subsist on hunting
and gathering.
Our Paleolithic ancestors used astronomy to schedule social activity, around
these ecological events. They developed mythological oral traditions that
symbolized this science so future generations could easily preserve the practice.
And – at these seasonal celebrations – we ate GOOD.
In fact, this is the era in which competitive feasting emerges. Not competitive
EATING (as in who can eat the most), but FEASTING, as in who can provide
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the most food for their group. Let’s talk about THAT for a minute, and
maybe we’ll see some of what we’re missing today.
 THE STRUGGLE IN AUSTRALIA
“How can it be, in an egalitarian society, that injustice to the marginalized creates scarcely a ripple? The answer I think is found at the
threshold: most Australians do not recognize the original inhabitants, the stolen generations, the faceless asylum seekers, as people: at
least, not in the same sense that we are people. Their humanity is of a different order…” – Julian Burnside, On Privilege
Runoko Rashidi has shared the following words on the plight of the Original
People of Australia:
Australia was settled at least 60,000 years ago by people usually referred to as the Australian
Aborigines. Physically, they are distinguished by straight to wavy hair textures, and dark to near
black complexions. In January 1788, when Britain began using Australia as a prison colony, an
estimated 300,000 indigenous people were spread across the continent in about six-hundred
small-scale societies. Each of these communities maintained social, religious, and trade
connections with its neighbors.
The dumping of British convicts into Australia proved catastrophic for the Blacks. Victims of
deliberate poisonings, calculated and systematic slaughters; decimated by tuberculosis and
syphilis; swept away by infectious epidemics; their community structures and moral fibers
shredded, by the 1930’s the Aboriginal Australians had been reduced to a pathetic remnant of
about 30,000 people, and perhaps twice that number of mixed descent.
When the continent was invaded by Europeans in the nineteenth century, the white historians
who wrote about Australia invariably included a section on the Blacks, and acknowledged that the
original inhabitants of the continent had had an historical role. After 1850, however, few writers
referred to the Blacks at all. The Blacks were thought of as a “dying race.” By 1950 general
histories of the continent by European-Australians almost never referenced the indigenous
people. During this period--the indigenous people--whether part or full blood, were excluded
from all major European-Australian institutions, including schools, hospitals and labor unions.
They could not vote. Their movements were restricted. They were outcasts in white Australia.
Today, the Blacks of Australia are terribly oppressed, and they remain in a desperate struggle for
survival. Recent demographic surveys, for example, show that the Black infant mortality rate is
the highest in Australia. Aborigines have the shoddiest housing and the poorest schools. Their
life expectancy is twenty years less than Europeans. Their unemployment rate is six times higher
than the national average. Aborigines did not obtain the right to vote in federal elections until
1961, nor the right to consume alcoholic beverages until 1964. They were not officially counted
as Australian citizens until after a constitutional amendment in 1967. Today, the indigenous
people constitute less than three per cent of the total Australian population.
“My view is that the Australian Constitution has served 97 per cent of the nation well. It has not worked, and does not work, for 3 per
cent: my people, indigenous Australians. It is broke and was broke for the 3 per cent from the beginning in 1901.” – Noel Pearson
To conclude this chapter, I’d like to quote Australian journalist Xavier Herbert,
who wrote in 1983:
Until we give back to the Blackman just a bit of the land that was his and give it back without
provisos, without strings to snatch it back, without anything but complete generosity of spirit in
concession for the evil we have done him - until we do that, we shall remain what we have always
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been so far, a people without integrity; not a nation but a community of thieves.
THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
THE BLACK AND BROWN ISLANDS
“I have remarked that in this maritime world (the Pacific
Islands), Sumatra and Java are the only large islands where
they (Negritos) have left no other traces than some doubtful
mixed breeds…” – Armand de Quatrefages, The Pygmies
The Pacific Islands are a visual paradise. Their beautiful, pristine natural
landscapes are so awe-inspiring that they’ve provided the backdrops for just
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about any feature film that takes place in a “land before time” kinda setting.
There are the islands everyone knows about, like New Zealand, Hawaii, and Fiji,
but those are really only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, those islands only carry
about 2% of the history of the Pacific Islands – partly because their history
doesn’t go back as far, but also because there are simply so many other islands
to consider.
In fact, there are so many islands in the Pacific that people normally discuss
them in groups, like Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Polynesia alone
consists of over 1,000 islands, all settled and resettled by different waves of
Original People. Almost all of them were ultimately taken over by Europeans
through colonization or conquest. All of these stories, some more tragic than
others, begin based upon a Black foundation.
These islands – over 10,000 in all – were originally settled by members of the
ancestral human population who became the DBP. Many were later settled by
Australoid people, and many more were even later settled by Mongoloid people.
Some of these people ultimately traveled from the Pacific Islands into the
Americas.
In The Negro in the New World, Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston writes:
To this day dwarf negro people survive in the Far East – the Samang in the forests of the Malay
Peninsula and the Aeta in the Philippine Islands. There are traces of the passage of a negroid
people through Sumatra and Borneo, in the island of Timor, and markedly so in New Guinea,
though here they have mingled with the Australoid and have produced the well-marked Papuan
race.
The existing populations of the Solomon Islands, of New Ireland, and of the New Hebrides are
much more negro-like in physical characteristics; in fact, perhaps the people of New Ireland are
the most nearly akin to the African negro of all the Asiatic or Australasian peoples.
Asiatic negroes also seem to have entered Australia from New Guinea and to have passed down
the eastern part of that continent till they reached the then peninsula of Tasmania, not, of course,
without mingling with the Australoids.
There is a negroid (Melanesian) element in Fiji, and as far west as the Hawaii Archipelago and
among the Maoris of New Zealand; in a much less degree, also, in Burma, Annam, Hainan,
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Formosa, the Riu-Kiu Islands, and Southern Japan.
 MELANESIA
The Original People ventured far beyond the islands of Southeast Asia. They
continued east, becoming the first to settle the Pacific islands. Their first
destination may have been the islands of Melanesia. Well-known parts of
Melanesia include: New Guinea, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, the Torres Strait
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Islands, the Trobriand Islands, and Vanuatu.
The Pacific Islands are unique because anthropologists say the Black people
living there were, like many Australian Aborigines, still living in the Stone Age!
We’ve already shown that “Stone Age” culture can be entirely sufficient for
meeting a people’s needs, but the story of the Pacific Islands can take us even
deeper. Without calling their culture “primitive” as others have done, historian
Nicholas Wade credits this fact to the tribalization of places like New Guinea,
where 1200 different languages occupy a region about the size of Texas.
But were the people of the Pacific Islands in a state of “stunted growth?”
Digging into this question makes us revisit the idea of “change vs. progress” and
the meaning of civilization. What does progress really mean? If it ain’t broke, do
we need to fix it? Just something to consider as we discuss the history of the
world’s cultures and civilizations.
NEW GUINEA
In 1526, Portuguese explorers come across a land that had not yet been
conquered by any European nation. Jorge de Meneses, the first Portuguese
governor of the Moluccas, named the island Ilhas dos Papuas based on the Malay
name for its people Orang papuwah, which means “frizzy-haired people.” These
people, later known as the Papuans, represent what Lothrop Stoddard called the
eastern end of the “black belt” that once “stretched uninterruptedly from Africa
across southern Asia to the Pacific Ocean.”
The Papuans know of this belt. In the 1970s, Ben Tanggahma, Foreign Minister
of Papua New Guinea announced:
Africa is our motherland. All of the Black populations which settled in Asia over the hundreds of
thousands of years, came undoubtedly from the African continent. In fact, the entire world was
populated from Africa. Hence, we the Blacks in Asia and the Pacific today descend from proto-
African peoples. We were linked to Africa in the past. We are linked to Africa in the present. We
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will be linked to Africa in the future.
As early as 49,000 BC, Blacks were living in the highlands of New Guinea, using
stone axes with wooden handles to remove trees, which scientists see as
evidence “that the early inhabitants cleared forest patches to promote the
 388
growth of useful plants.” Anthropologist John Hawks observed:
The “Highland” aspect is more interesting, suggesting a fairly quick adaptability of early humans
to a novel ecology. People had found the local plant foods in a unique ecology, they were
exploiting a range of altitudes in their foraging activities, and possibly were altering their
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landscapes by forest clearing.
This is, as noted elsewhere in this book, an early example of our agricultural
knowledge, before the widespread use of agriculture.
But how do we know the DBP were here? In The Times of June 3, 1910, an
expedition organized by the British Ornithologists’ Union reported a tribe of
little Black people still living in the snow mountains of New Guinea, at an
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altitude of about 2,000 feet above sea level. Guess what? After thousands of
years of occupation in these colder regions, they were still Black.
What were they doing in these mountains? The first humans in New Guinea
may have been remnants of the Original People who left the Nubian Complex
long before 75,000 years ago. I’ll explain.
There are two large language families in Melanesia: Austronesian and “Papuan.”
Austronesian originated somewhere in southern China or Southeast Asia and
began expanding into Melanesia and Polynesia within the last 4,000 years. Most
of these newer populations settled in places that were already settled by older
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people speaking incredibly old languages known as Papuan. In other words,
the Papuans are the original people of the area. They were there long before
Austronesian people came with the science of planting crops and stonemasonry.
HOW LONG HAVE THEY BEEN THERE?
Genetic studies suggest that 84% of the Papuan people of New Guinea descend
from lineages that go back to between 80,000 and 122,000 years ago, suggesting
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they could be survivors of a pre-Toba migration out of the Nubian Complex.
Dr. Victor Grauer has theorized that these Blacks were once settled in Australia,
but encroaching waves of Australoid people sent them fleeing. Some went south
into Tasmania, others sought refuge in the tropical forests of Northeast
Queensland (which was, according to Birdsell’s research, once home to small
groups of Pygmies), and still others went north into New Guinea. According to
Grauer:
If the newcomers had arrived while New Guinea was still attached to Australia, the refugees
could have made their way north by land, but if the sea had already separated the two regions,
they could have retreated in boats or rafts, at least while the distance was not too great. The
Australoid invaders would have followed them, and at that time taken over the New Guinea
coast, while the natives retreated into the highlands.
When Mongoloid people speaking Austronesian languages migrated into
Melanesia between around 5,000 years ago, they, in turn, displaced these
Australoid people. Grauer says:
Their only recourse would have been a retreat into the highlands, which would therefore have
come to harbor a mixed population, partly of “Negrito” and partly of Australoid origin. Since
these groups would have formerly been bitter enemies, it’s not difficult to see how the endemic
warfare we now see in the New Guinea highlands could have originated at this point, although
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many of these populations seem ultimately to have merged, both physically and culturally.
Sounds like a troubled past. Yet within the past 300 years, the Black people of
New Guinea have suffered more threats to their existence than in the preceding
50,000 years combined. First the Spanish came in 1545, introducing deadly
diseases and escalating local conflicts into wars. Then the Dutch took over,
making things worse. In 1963, the United Nations passed control of half the
island to Indonesia (who had already been colonized and “rewired”). The
eastern half of the island remained independent, known today as Papua, New
Guinea, while the western half became Irian Jaya, commonly known just as
Papua.
There, Indonesian rule has been as oppressive as those of their Dutch
predecessors. This is why the Free Papua Movement (OPM) was formed. The
Republic of Senegal promptly offered the Papuans an international base for a
movement known as the Revolutionary Provisional Government of West
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Papua, New Guinea. Today, many Papuans identify with the Black
Nationalism and Black Liberation movements of the U.S.
FIJI
Fiji is an island nation in the South Pacific, comprising over 300 islands in
Melanesia. Its largest island is Viti Levu (or “Great Fiji”), where most Fijians live
today.
According to the oral tradition of the indigenous people of Fiji, legendary
warrior chief Lutanasobasoba led his people across the seas to the new land of
Fiji. From where? One textbook on Fiji reports, “Most authorities agree that
people came into the Pacific from East Africa or South East Asia via
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Indonesia.”
The legend of Chief Lutanasobasoba is more specific. The Fijians say he sailed
from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, via the Rufiji River that crosses Tanzania.
They arrived on the west coast of Viti Levu, the chief was immortalized as Degei,
the Supreme God of Fiji, and his people moved inland into the mountains.
Today, the Fijian government recognizes this origin story as historical fact, and
 396
most Fijians trace themselves back to their African ancestor Lutanasobasoba.
In one of his many commentaries on the global Black Diaspora, historian
Runoko Rashidi describes his experience in Fiji:
I found Fiji to be a tropical paradise and the Fijians turned out to be some of the most beautiful
Black people that I’ve ever encountered. In fact, much to my delight, the brothers and sisters in
Fiji, dark-skinned Black people who wore big natural-type hairstyles, didn’t merely identify
themselves as Black but said that they came from Africa and said it with great pride! What a
refreshing revelation. In Fiji, needless to point out, I felt right at home. These Black folk were
just my kind of people.
What Rashidi says next is of incredible value to all of us who want to travel
abroad:
As a matter of fact, the brothers and sisters in Fiji that I met seemed as interested in me as I was
in them. Believe me when I say that if there is one thing that I excel in it is in asking questions
and I asked the Fijians all kinds of questions about exactly what part of Africa they came from,
when they got to Fiji, how they got there, what their present living conditions were like, what was
their relationship with the recently arrived Indian population, how did they feel about White
people, the nature of their oral traditions, myths and religious beliefs, male-female relationships,
diet, health, other Pacific islanders, general projections about the future and just about everything
that I could think of. They never got tired of answering my questions and had quite a few for me
also. They told me that the two most well known African-Americans were Rev. Martin Luther
King and Muhammad Ali. Of course, they knew about Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and
most of the major African-American sport figures. One Fijian brother, a businessman that I met
in the lobby of a luxury hotel, told me how proud he was of the brothers and sisters in America
and how much African-Americans had advanced the cause of Black people around the world.
I asked the Fijians how often they encountered Black people from the United States. They replied
that African-Americans frequently came to Fiji for holiday vacations but that I was different in
that I spent a lot of time with them and wanted to know all about them…The Fijians always
referred to me as “brother” and singled me out for special treatment. We drank kava together (an
extremely important Fijian tradition) and really bonded, and I met people who looked like all the
Black folks that I have ever known. In fact, one village chief physically seemed to be almost a
twin brother of Dr. John Henrik Clarke! When I told him of the resemblance he seemed to be
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extremely pleased and insisted that I come and sit next to him!

THE SOLOMON ISLANDS

The Solomon Islands are important to our discussion of the Black presence in
the Pacific Islands because they reveal to us yet another case of the startling
diversity found among indigenous Black populations. You see, many of the
people of the Solomon Islands look just like Black people elsewhere in the
world…except they have blonde hair! For centuries, it was thought that early
European sailors (like Captain Cook’s crew) must have “contributed their
genes” (ahem) to the island’s native women, and that’s where all this blonde hair
came from. But recent genetic studies have revealed that the blonde hair genes
of Solomon Islanders is different from the blonde hair genes found in white
Europeans. Of course, the Black version of the gene is older, but it’s totally
unrelated to the white version, showing us that they were separate
developments. This is just one of many instances where we find every
imaginable trait found in the world…among Black people.
 MICRONESIA
Micronesia isn’t all well-known as its more popular siblings, Melanesia and
Polynesia. Well-known parts of Micronesia include Guam and the Marshall
Islands. The Micronesian culture was one of the last native cultures to develop
in the Pacific. It is the byproduct of a mixture of Melanesians, Polynesians, and
Filipinos. Because of this mixed heritage, many of the ethnicities of Micronesia
feel closer to some groups in Melanesia, Polynesia or the Philippines.
 POLYNESIA
So who are the Polynesians? Well-known parts of Polynesia include: Hawaii,
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New Zealand, Samoa, the Cook Islands, and Easter Island. Historians argue
that the Polynesian Islands were settled no more than 5,000 years ago, and
Melanesian or Australians never sailed that far.
There really isn’t strong archaeological evidence for settlements more than 5,000
years old, but how did Australian-looking people arrive in the Americas over
20,000 years ago if they didn’t pass through the Polynesian Islands? It’s a
question worth investigating. In Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization, John G.
Jackson says, “These Asiatic black men were not confined to the mainland,” and
quotes Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, who wrote:
In former times this Asiatic Negro spread, we can scarcely explain how, unless the land
connections of those days were more extended, through Eastern Australia to Tasmania, and from
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the Solomon Island to New Caledonia and even New Zealand, to Fiji and Hawaii.
Here’s what we know so far. Recent linguistic studies suggest that the most
recent waves of Black migration into Polynesia (hailing from South China and
Vietnam) encountered “mixed communities” already there. These communities
were a mix of Austro-Asiatic/Austronesian speakers from Taiwan and non-
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Austronesian (possibly “Papuan”) speakers from Melanesia. In other words,
the linguistic evidence ALSO suggests that the Original People made it past
Melanesia into Polynesia.
In 1870, Thomas Huxley observed:
As linguistic evidence leaves no doubt that Polynesia has been peopled from the west, and
therefore, possibly, from Indonesia, it becomes an interesting problem how far the Polynesians
may be the product of a cross between the Dyak-Malay and the Negrito elements of the
population of that region. I am inclined to think that the differences which have been over and
over again noted between the elements of the population in Polynesia, and notably in New
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Zealand, may be due to such a mixed origin of the Polynesians.
According to Alfred R. Wallace, the “brown Polynesians” were “much more
nearly related to the Papuans than to the Malays, and should therefore be
classed as Negroid instead of Mongoloid.” Wallace found the Polynesians to
carry themselves like Africans and “Negroid” Papuans, with great energy and
humor, as opposed to the more somber demeanor of Australoid people. Wallace
maintained “that the typical Polynesians were fundamentally Negroid with a
considerable Mongoloid intermixture, and not originally Mongoloid with a
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Negroid intermixture.” Others have argued that the “Negroid” element came
later, an issue we’ll discuss in Part Two.
 SAMOA
Earlier in this book, we discussed “Paleo-Mongoloid” people. One example of a
Paleo-Mongoloid people still living today may be the Samoans. Physical
anthropologist Louis R. Sullivan considers Samoans Mongoloid but says their
features represent a “slightly different evolution since the time of their
separation and isolation from their parental stock.” Sullivan notes the retention
of features, like wavy and woolly hair, that have been lost in other Mongoloid
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types.
In other words, Samoans still have the original Black traits their ancestors had,
minus the “Neo-Mongoloid” traits found among other population. Perhaps this
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explains why Samoans share genes with Australian Aborigines.
These Black genes may also help explain why Samoans are one of the most
maligned populations among Polynesians. Samoans are seen as warriors,
criminals, and a ton of other bad things. When we consider how much they look
like Black people, it makes sense. And if you think the Samoans have it bad, wait
til you hear the story of the Maori.
THE MAORI OF NEW ZEALAND
The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Where did the Maori
people come from? Their oral history goes all the way back to mainland Asia.
But that’s where you’ve gotta sift through the lies.
Some online sources claim that Maori elders told veteran anthropologist Elsdon
Best that they migrated from India 161 generations ago (approximately 1500
BC), after a “disastrous war with a dark-skinned folk, in which great numbers
were slain.” When I encountered this reference, I thought to myself, “But the
Maori are dark-skinned (and were even more so in the past), so why would they
point out the dark skin of the people they were at war with?”
When I dug up the original sources, I found that the Maori have quite a
different story of their migration. In “The Origin of the Maori,” Elsdon Best
actually reported the following:
The East Coast natives of our North Island have preserved the following tradition of the original
homeland. In remote times the ancestors of the Maori dwelt in the lands of Uru and of Irihia,
two distinct regions of, apparently, an extensive land. A state of war in the land of Uru led to the
migration of a certain people under a chief named Puhi-rangirangi (given as Ngana-te-ariki in
another version). These migrants proceeded eastward because one Tu-te-rangiatea had informed
them that away to the east of the mainland (or interior lands) of Uru lay a goodly land called
Irihia. That land of Irihia was inhabited by a dark skinned, spare built folk, whose food supplies
were fish, and ari, and kata, and porokakata, and tahuwaero, and koropiri. A leading chief of
these folk of Irihia was one Kopura, a person of great mana, whose followers were so numerous
 that a local saying was:—”Tena te ngaoko na me te onepu moana.” (“Yonder they move like
unto sands of the ocean.”) Upwards of seven hundred and fifty chiefs were under his sway.
The names applied to these people by the immigrants from Uru are terms betokening their dark
skin colour. It is said they had peculiar side glancing eyes. Some of the tribes of Irihia were folk
of low culture, who lived wandering lives in the forests. War seems to have raged between the
immigrants and the people of Irihia, the former suffering severely, hence eventually they, or some
of them, left the land of Irihia in seven vessels and sailed away to the eastward in search of a new
home. These were the ancestors of the Polynesians who wandered from isle to isle until their
descendants reached, explored and settled the innumerable isles of Polynesia. Probably this was
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not the only party of migrants that left the land of Irihia to seek new homes across the sea.
Where was Irihia? The name comes from Vrihia, an ancient name for India.
And Uru? That may have been Ur or Uruk, two of ancient Mesopotamia’s
oldest cities. Is there any merit to this story? Well, Elsdon Best – unlike many
anthropologists of his era – was not known for altering the stories he recorded
(or making up his own stories). And the Maori could not have known about the
rugged tribal people who lived in the forests of India (pushed there by the Aryan
invasion) without some sort of firsthand knowledge.
If their oral tradition is true, they arrived at New Zealand after settling a long
stretch of islands. Their oral tradition also describes their ancestors settling
Hawaii and Fiji. This is when I realized that not all Maori are dark-skinned.
There are Maori who are distinctly more Polynesian in looks and ancestry. The
migration myth above was the story of the ancestors of the Polynesians being
expelled from India. In Polynesian Voyagers, Best reports:
The cause of the exodus from the homeland, which is said to have been a great country, was a
disastrous war with a darkskinned folk, in which great numbers were slain. It is possible that the
scattered colonies of Polynesians found occupying islands in Melanesia and Micronesia are
descendants of settlers left at such places during the eastward movement, or such colonies may
have been an ethnic backwash of later centuries – some assuredly were.
Again, who were the negroid-like people of Maori tradition spoken of as dwelling on various isles
of eastern Polynesia thirty generations ago?...If Melanesian, were they a remnant of an original
population of those isles, or were they new-comers? If the latter, how is it that we see nothing in
tradition pointing to Melanesian navigation of wide seas at that period?
Cook remarked that the natives of Ra’iatea (Rangiatea) seemed in ‘general smaller and blacker
than those of the neighbouring islands…The natives of the Bay of Plenty district have preserved
a tradition of a vessel having reached Whakatane many generations ago the crew of which was
composed of a very-dark-skinned people. These immigrants, probably castaways from a drift
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voyage, are said to have settled at Omeheu, on the Rangitaiki River.

DID BLACK PEOPLE COME FIRST OR

LATER?
Various studies of the Maori people cite them having “Australoid (Tasmanoid)
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and Polynesian components” as well as Melanesian blood. But when did these
people come? As we mentioned earlier, this is a subject of debate, with some
sources saying Black people came first, while others say Black people came later.
According to T.H. Mollison, the Maori is a mixed group, mainly Polynesian with
an “Australoid-Melanesian” element in its past, possibly related to the “dark pre-
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Polynesian population in New Zealand.” H.L. Shapiro says, “The mixture of
this aboriginal population with the invading Polynesians varied according to
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locality, thus producing the present tribal differentiation among the Maori.”
In other words, the Maori, like the Samoans, like most other Pacific Islanders
and Southeast Asian, are a mix of “aboriginal” Black people and Mongoloid
people who came later.
THE MODERN MAORI QUAGMIRE
The Maori have a long history of being brave warriors. They observed a strict
honor code and were skilled on the battlefield – but when the Europeans came
in the late 1700s, bringing a battery of diseases (including, measles, influenza,
typhoid, and cholera) – they quickly lost battles they never had the resources to
fight. Their populations fell from at least 200,000 in 1769, when Captain Cook
arrived, to less than 56,000 in 1858. Along with their personal cache of deadly
germs, the Europeans also brought loaded muskets.
Between the 1820 and 1830s, many Maori warriors died in the musket wars,
while their kin died at home from disease. Meanwhile, the missionaries
campaigned as hard as always. By the 1840s, a majority of the Maoris were
Christian converts, having lost much of their traditional culture in this tragic
period. In 1840, however, New Zealand was annexed by Great Britain. The
British government feared continued resistance (or an extinct labor force), so
they promised the Maori land rights and civil rights in exchange for their
sovereignty. This agreement became known as the Treaty of Waitangi, New
Zealand’s founding document.
In recent times, the Māori protest movement has resurfaced as an indigenous
rights movement in New Zealand. Through the tireless efforts of movement
organizers and mobilized Maori people, they’ve established the Waitangi
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Tribunal, won the return of some Māori land, made the Māori language an
official language of New Zealand, and popularized campaigns against racism.
Their movement is part of a broader Māori Renaissance.
The first act of the Māori protest movement was when a handful of elders
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boycotted Waitangi Day in 1968 in protest over the Māori Affairs
Amendment Act. A small protest was also held at parliament, but neither event
made much impact. In 1971, a youth movement known as the Ngā Tamatoa
(the “Young Warriors”) tried a different approach, disrupting the Waitangi Day
celebrations by chanting and performing haka (the traditional war cry and dance)
during speeches, not to mention attempting to destroy the flag! Needless to say,
it was THIS event that led to the explosive growth of the Māori protest
movement, and protest has been a feature of Waitangi Day ever since.
But being characterized as rebellious warriors comes with its downsides. In
2006, Dr. Rod Lea, a genetic epidemiologist, told the International Conference
of Human Genetics in Brisbane that Maori men were born with a “warrior
gene.” That is, Maori were twice as likely as Europeans to bear a gene connected
with risk-taking behavior like smoking, gambling, and criminal activity. He said
the discovery went “a long way to explaining some of the problems” Maoris had
in New Zealand.
Maori people were outraged. Tariana Turia, a co-leader of the Maori party, said
the findings were incredible. “I have never felt criminally inclined,” he said.
“And I’m very pleased to say that the majority of Maori people don’t feel
criminally inclined.” Brian Dickson, a respected Maori elder, said: “I could wrap
all his words up in one – colonization.”
In New Zealand, Maoris are convicted of more than 65% of all offenses, despite
making up only 15% of the population. Sound familiar? But New Zealand’s
white population (which includes a sizable number of skinheads and Neo-Nazis)
doesn’t entirely hate/fear the Maoris. New Zealand’s most popular sport is
rugby. Rugby teams are dominated by Maoris. In fact, New Zealand’s national
team is named the ‘All Blacks.’ Sound familiar again? This struggle is a global
one, and I can’t wait to explain its origins and pathology in Volume Four of this
series.
EUROPE
BEFORE WHITE PEOPLE
“The discoveries of abundant prehistoric remains all over
Europe, particularly France – these with one accord tended to
show that European aborigines of the Stone Age were not
Mongoloid like the Lapps, after all but the exact opposite. In
every detail they resembled rather the dolichocephalic Negroes
of Africa.” – William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe
 WHO WAS THE FIRST EUROPEAN?
On May 4th, 2009, one of Britain’s biggest national newspapers, The Independent,
published an article on its website titled “Revealed: The Face of the First
European.” The byline below the title read “35,000-year-old skull fragments
found in Romania are made flesh by scientists.” Sounded interesting.
There was a large picture beside the article’s text. You’d think it would be the
face of the…um…first European, right? It was Tom Hanks. And, at the date of
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this writing, it’s still Tom Hanks. You don’t get to see the face of this first
European until you click to the second page. This would seem odd, until you see
the picture. Then it all makes sense. The reconstructed face is undeniably a
Black man.
You’re already pretty familiar with the story of the Black campaign against the
Neanderthals, so it shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise to you that the
first humans in Europe were Black. But for white historians and archaeologists,
it’s been a tough pill to swallow. And they’ve been swallowing it long before
2009. You just might not have known that they knew.
EUROPE IS WHERE THE
ARCHAEOLOGISTS WENT
Archaeologists have only recently begun digging into Africa (outside Egypt),
Asia (outside the Near East), Australia, South America, and the Pacific Islands.
And we all know why. But as Europeans have excavated all over Europe in
search of the white man’s prehistoric past, their discoveries have been
bittersweet. While the earliest sites of settlement provide fantastic evidence of
“advanced” culture and technology, often more than 25,000 years ago, the
evidence also suggests something disturbing for many European academics. The
most consistent thing about all these sites? Everything looks like Black people.
THE FIRST REPRESENTATIONS OF
HUMANS IN EUROPE
Ever heard of the Venus figurines? Long before the Roman sculptures of the
goddess Venus, prehistoric artists were making their own three-dimensional
tributes to the feminine form. Although the Roman Venus was based on the
Egyptian Hathor, she was sculpted with typical European features. The
prehistoric Venus figurines, on the other hand, looked very much like Black
women.
Archaeologist Edouard Piette, who discovered some of the oldest Paleolithic
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figurines over 100 years ago, cited their “unusual condition of steatopygia” as
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proof of “the Negroid race of Europe.” He was perplexed by the “racial
differences within the collection of figurines and the resemblance of some of
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them to African populations,” but remained adamant that “they should be
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read literally as realistic depictions of human anatomy” since the people of the
period were “profound realists” who “represented themselves in engraving and
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sculpture.” In other words, he was saying, “These were definitely Black
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people.”
Many early historians believed that the Paleolithic in Europe extended to North
Africa, and theorized that the Khoisan (or their prehistoric ancestors) were
responsible for prehistoric European art. As Sir Arthur Evans noted in 1901:
The negroid contributions at least in the southern zone of this late Quaternary field must not be
underestimated The early steatopygous images – such as some of these of the Balzi Rossi caves –
may safely be regarded as due to this ethnic type which is also pictorially represented in some of
the Spanish rock paintings…Once more, we must never lose sight of the fact that from the early
Aurignacian period onward a Negroid element in the broadest sense of the word shared in this
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artistic culture as seen on both sides of the Pyrenees.
These Venus figurines are found far and wide throughout the ancient world.
And they most definitely represented Black women. Not just the “steatopygia,”
but the face and hair texture (when included) are giveaways, as is the black or
dark brown color of the stones most preferred.
These figurines may have been celebrations of the woman, but we don’t know
much for sure beyond that about their significance. We know that archaeologists
like James Mellaart fabricated the “Mother Goddess” myth by neglecting to
mention the male figurines that were found alongside the females. We also
know that they were part of an artistic tradition dating back over 500,000 years
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in Africa.
We also know that they continued to be crafted up to about 2,000 BC in ancient
Crete, Libya, and Egypt, and until much more recently in other parts of the
world. British archaeologist John Pendlebury thought their original home was in
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North Africa. In fact, Piette saw the figurines of Paleolithic Europe as so
similar to Egyptian models that he called them “uncontestably Egyptian in
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nature.”
Steatopygous figurines are found in Neolithic strata nearly everywhere the
“Mediterranean race” is said to have been. In ancient Crete, for example, the
majority of female figurines are short and stout with what excavator Sir Arthur
Evans called an “extraordinary development of the rump, which is often even
423
more prominent than that of the modern Bushman women.” Italian
physiologist Angelo Mosso compared the Cretan figurines to similar models
from pre-Dynastic Egypt, and noted:
The theory [of their origins] is complicated by the presence of steatopygous women in the
interior of Africa, and by the preference for fat women shown by men in the East. We shall see
that the present inclination of the African populations for fat women already existed in the
Neolithic age, and this atavism deserves to be recorded in the psychology of the peoples.
It is known that in South Africa and at the Cape of Good Hope the Bushman and Hottentot
women present a great development of the posterior part…[These forms] exactly resemble in
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profile the Neolithic idol which I found in Crete and the Egyptian female figures.
Mosso then says this same “peculiarity” is also found in other parts of Africa,
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including among the Kaffirs, Somalis, and Berbers. He cites Reinach, Morgan
and other scholars of his time regarding the “steatopygous race” in Europe
during the Neolithic. He notes Virchow’s theory that this race entered France
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from Africa during prehistoric times.
Today, we know that the people who crafted these figurines weren’t all
Egyptians, but they were most certainly Black people. One clue to this fact is
that the earliest figurines are found at sites where “Negroid” skeletons are also
found. This connection does, as Virchow proposes, go back as far as prehistoric
times. Thomas Griffith Taylor notes “small statues and rock paintings (found in
Spain and France chiefly) which certainly point to a race akin to the Bushmen
[Khoisan]” alongside skeletons bearing matching traits. He continues:
At Willendorf (near Vienna) a statuette of a nude woman is steatopygic and has hair apparently of
the peppercorn type. Similar negritoid figures come from Brassempouy and Lespugues in the
south of France, and perhaps indicate a former widespread negrito stratum.
In Europe, the most notable of these sites is in France, where the famous
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Grimaldi man was discovered.
 WHO WAS THE GRIMALDI MAN?
On the groundbreaking song “Nature of the Threat” Ras Kass raps:
Savage Neanderthals until the late Paleolithic age/ That’s when the Black Grimaldi man came/
With the symbol of the dragon, fire and art/ Check cave paintings in France and Spain to the
Venus of Willendorf
And with these words, Ras Kass introduced many of us to the idea of Black
presence in prehistoric Europe, long before the Moors’ conquest of Spain,
before Hannibal’s conquest of Rome, and even before the Black Builders of
Stonehenge (we’ll get back to that one!). Ras Kass may have been translating
some of what he’d learned from Cheikh Anta Diop, who wrote extensively in
Civilization or Barbarism about the “Grimaldi Negroids” of prehistoric Europe.
In 1901, the Grimaldi remains were discovered in the Grotte dei Balzi Rossi, a cave
situated on the border of northwestern Italy. They consist of two skeletons,
dated to between 25,000 and 35,000 years ago. When they were found, they
turned the world of European archaeology upside down. Here was conclusive
proof that the first humans in Europe were in no way Caucasian.
These skeletons were accompanied by hundreds of “Venus figurines” depicting
physical features only found among Black women. Perhaps this was the reason
they instituted a 50-year moratorium on excavations at one of the most
important archaeological sites for this time period. What did they have to hide?
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Sir Arthur Keith, one of the early scholars who described the Grimaldi Man as
“Negroid” almost sacrificed his career for this remark, and later recanted his
statement. (We’ll discuss his new “theory” a little later). Others suffered similar
fates. In later years, the name “Grimaldi” itself was virtually erased from texts on
the subject.
Scientists now lump them with other “early modern humans” and only identify
the Grimaldi man by his local culture, the “Aurignacian” culture. No more
“Grimaldi Man.” Now they say “Aurignacian” and the memories of “Negroid”
Europeans are magically erased! Ain’t it amazing how easy it is to rewrite
history?
DID YOU KNOW? Either way, the Black bearers of this
Cover-ups are everywhere. In addition to the ban on Aurignacian culture did indeed – as
digs at many of the Gravettian sites in Europe, many
of the Aurignacian skulls still haven’t been published.
Ras Kass rapped – introduce art to
Several DNA studies of ancient remains have been Europe, from the “cave paintings in
compiled but never published. In other cases, hair or France and Spain to the Venus of
skin samples that could authenticate African ancestry Willendorf,” all of which resembled
 were mysteriously lost. the prehistoric artwork we find
everywhere the Aurignacian people went. These first humans in Europe were
the ones who took the Neanderthals to war.
 BLACK EUROPEANS, CIRCA 50,000 BC
Until the coming of modern humans, Europe and Palestine were Neanderthal
territory. The earliest evidence of humans in this area dates back to about 48,000
years ago, when a warm period ushered in the end of a massive Ice Age. In
other words, as soon as it got warm enough to head north, some of us veered
off our southern coastal settlement pattern and took the fight with the
Neanderthals onto their home turf. As Nicholas Wade notes in Before the Dawn:
[T]he Neanderthals may have had light skin and their conquerors black. Early Europeans,
including the great artists of the Chauvet cave in France, may have retained the dark skin and
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other badges of their African origin for many thousands of years.

THE GRIMALDI WEREN’T THE FIRST OR

LAST
Despite the importance of the Grimaldi remains, we’ve gotta be clear that the
Grimaldi “presence” was not an isolated case. Some authors have proposed that
the people who came before and after the Grimaldi man were NOT Black, and
the Grimaldi were special because they were a Black presence in Europe. This is
a lie that advances the idea of a white prehistoric Europe.
In fact, at the time Grimaldi man was found, racist historians like Arthur de
Gobineau were busy arguing that Europeans were the original (and superior)
race, the progenitors of humankind. This meant the people of Africa and Asia
had to come from European ancestors. In other words, the original white
Europeans gave birth to the Grimaldi Europeans, who gave birth to Black
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Africans.
So, for some historians, Grimaldi was celebrated as a “Negro cousin of the
Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa” because it satisfied a political agenda
of promoting a European origin for Black people. The truth, as we now know,
is that the first Europeans were all Black.
But the Grimaldi remains are important because there aren’t too many human
remains older than those in Europe. Yet we know that humans were there long
before and after Grimaldi, because we left tools and other evidence behind at
various sites. These sites are grouped together based on common culture, and
each cultural phase, or “industry” is given a name.
 THE CULTURES OF PALEOLITHIC EUROPE
The first Black humans in Europe introduced a culture known as the
Aurignacian. This culture, in turn, was followed by several other cultures. Here’s
a quick review of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe:
The Aurignacian culture (47-27 kya) represents the first modern humans in Europe,
sometimes called the Grimaldi people. They defeated the Neanderthals and introduced
Europe to cave paintings and stone Venus figurines. The culture extended from Spain on
the west to Ukraine in the east and to Palestine in the South. They were Black.
The Gravettian culture (28-22 kya) made the first ceramic Venus figurines. The culture
extended from central Europe to Ukraine. They were Black.
The Solutrean culture (22-17 kya) didn’t make as much art, but made many new tools.
The culture extended from Spain to central Europe, and may have reached North America
(Clovis culture) either by seafaring west across the Atlantic or the eastern land route via
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Beringia. They were Black.
The Magdalenian culture (18-10 kya) is known for its amazing cave paintings, detailed
sculptures, and innovative tools and weapons. The culture extended from Portugal in the
west to Poland in the east. This period was once known as the Reindeer Age because we
hunted large quantities of reindeer. By 14 kya, we were breeding and domesticating
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them.
The Azilian culture (c. 12 kya) marks the last lingering survivals of the Paleolithic in
Europe. They too were Black. Yet, because of environmental issues, innovation and
cultural sophistication appear to have finally waned off, until another group of Original
People introduced the Neolithic.
DID YOU KNOW? Of all these periods, the most notable
Marcellin Boule and Henri Vallois suggested that the is the one that laid the foundation: The
earliest West African remains resembled a cross
between the Grimaldi people and modern Africans.
Aurignacian. These were the people
They said the Asselar Man (the oldest remains found who built the house that Europe
in Mali) had “undeniable affinities on the one hand became.
with the fossil Negroids of Grimaldi, and on the other
with modern Hottentot and Bantus.” They also noted WHAT DID
the “steatopygian statuettes of women yielded by
some of the oldest deposits of the Reindeer Age” as
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AURIGNACIAN
evidence that the Grimaldi were an African people.
PEOPLE LOOK
LIKE?
What else do we know about the amazing people of the Aurignacian? They were
us. Well, us over 40,000 years ago. The Black people who built the Aurignacian
culture, wiped out the Neanderthals, and became the first modern humans in
Europe were physically not too different from most Black people in America
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today.
The tricky part is that – without skin and cartilage – we are stuck letting
anthropologists tell us which skulls had “Negroid” traits, and those aren’t the
best ways to tell who was Black and who wasn’t. Not to mention that remains
can be interpreted differently based on what you’re looking for. You can even
see how scientists are able to play with skeletal remains by comparing different
reconstructions of the same skull.
Another source of confusion is the fact that all Black people don’t look alike.
This is obvious when you compare the Black people of Australia, those of West
Africa, and those of East Africa. Not all of the people of Paleolithic could easily
be classified into one physical “type.” The further back you go, the less you see
different “races” and the more you just see diverse populations of Black people.
The Grimaldi are a prime example.
WERE THE GRIMALDI AFRICOID,
AUSTRALOID, OR WHAT?
Since the discovery of the Grimaldi remains, at least five different theories have
been proposed regarding their racial origin:
(a) The Grimaldi were Negroid (Boule, 1903; Verneau, 1906).
(b) The Grimaldi were an intermediate race with Negroid features (Keith, 1911; Osborn,
1915).
(c) The Grimaldi were Australoid (Smith, 1927; Abbie 1951).
(d) The Grimaldi were Capoid or “Bushmen” (Sollas, 1913; Hrdlička, 1930; Breuil, 1930).
(e) The Grimaldi were simply “Cro-Magnon” (Keith, 1931; Bean, 1932).
The earliest commentators on the Grimaldi (the discoverers actually) described
the skeletons as Negroid. In the years that followed, there were many revisions
and retractions of this assessment. For example, in 1911, Sir Arthur Keith –
notorious for this kind of backpedaling – proposed that the Grimaldi were an
“intermediate” race between Black and white with “Negroid features.”
In The Negro in the New World, Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston details the physical
features that make the Grimaldi remains “Black” people, yet also distinct from
modern African populations. He connects the Grimaldi people to several
different Black populations – including “Nilotic Negroes,” the Khoisan,
Australoid Blacks, and “modern Negroes” – suggesting that the Black people of
Paleolithic Europe could simply have possessed “generalized” features that were
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not yet specific to a distinct population.
In other words, there could have been a “prototypical” population so old, and
so ancestral, that they had diversity in their features – which only later became
homogenized into different racial types through genetic drift. In other words,
they all looked kinda different but still kinda similar, until thousands of years of
mixing had different population looking more alike.
THE DIVERSITY OF AURIGNACIAN
EUROPE
Another way to look at the problem of diversity among Paleolithic European
remains is to consider multiple migrations into Europe. Thomas Griffith Taylor
believed that Europe was first occupied by Neanderthals, and then by several
waves of Black people.
First, he said, there were Negritos (or DBP), then Negroid people, and then
Black Australoid people. He says of the Australoid stratum:
The fourth stratum, which is almost world-wide, and which probably extends to America, is the
Australoid. It is, of course, universal through Australia, Indonesia, south-east Asia, and South
India. Types akin to the Australian were common in early Palaeolithic times in Europe. It is,
however, difficult to decide whether some early peoples were more like Australians or Africans
436
(Negro).
DID YOU KNOW? Taylor’s last comment is especially important. Many
Interested in learning
European anthropologists called early remains Australoid,
more about prehistoric
but that only means they looked like Black people. It
cultures in Europe? Hit
doesn’t always mean that they looked specifically more like
Wikipedia and search for
modern Australians than modern Africans (as Walter Neves
the following cultures:
Tardenoisian, has noted in recent studies).
Sauveterrian,
In 1923, Roland Burrage Dixon traced the prehistoric
Magdalenian, Solutrean,
Mousterian, Micoquien,
Australoid presence across the Mediterranean and as deep
Tayacian, Gravettian, 437
Starčevo, into Europe as modern Switzerland. This explains why so
Vinča,
Choirokoitia, many of the oldest European remains have been described
Azilian,
Asiloid, Mezine, andas Australoid. It also explains the similarities between the
Kostienki. You can also
rock art of Paleolithic Europe and Australia.
search for the category
“Old Europe
And it certainly explains the 30,000 year-old boomerang
archaeology.”
they found in Poland, made from pure woolly mammoth
438
tusk! And that boomerang was no crude throwing-stick either. They tested it
and found that it could kill at a distance of over 600 feet!
WHERE DID THESE PEOPLE COME
FROM?
There is strong evidence that the strongest cultural influences for Aurignacian
culture came from North Africa via the Near East. In 1937, Thomas Griffith
Taylor connected the Aurignacian culture to Algeria:
In Upper Tonkin seventeen skulls of Australoids akin to those found in the Aurignacian in
Europe are mentioned by von Eickstedt. Many of the people living in Western Europe about
20,000 BC were very like the Australoids; and Sir Harry Johnston draws attention to the
439
Australoid appearance of the Ushtettas still living in the mountains of Algeria.
Grafton Elliot Smith also said Australoid people were prehistorically settled in
440
North Africa. But does it all begin in North Africa?
In The Origin and Evolution of Primitive Man, Albert Churchward traces the tall
Black people of prehistoric Europe back to the Nile Valley:
The tall race of Europe, who came up from Egypt, were an exodus of the Turkana. These Nilotic
Negroes are still found in Africa, a fine race of men, some of them over seven feet in height, very
muscular and powerful, have high foreheads, large eyes, rather high cheek-bones, mouths not
very large and well shaped, lips rather full. He was followed by another race from Egypt, of
441
shorter stature, like the Ipswich man, and, after, the Galley Hill man.
Churchward may have been referring to the later entrance of the Anu People,
who took the same routes as their Aurignacian ancestors.
CONNECTING THE DOTS PAST NORTH
AFRICA
“There was once an “uninterrupted belt” of Negro culture from Central Europe to South Africa.”
– W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa
Archaeologists have found 48,000 year old artifact sites in south-central and
442
eastern Europe, similar to those of the Emirian culture in Palestine. Soon
after, Proto-Aurignacian sites show up in Europe, resembling the Ahmarian
culture of the Near East. Connecting these dots, we can see that these European
sites were settlements of Black people moving from the Near East into Europe.
443
These people birthed the Aurignacian culture around 47,000 years ago.
We can easily connect the dots in Europe back to sites resembling Aurignacian
culture in the Near East (near Israel) and North Africa (near Morocco and
Tunisia). These sites are anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 years older than
comparable sites in Europe. Clearly, we should know where Aurignacian culture
originated.
But scientists act as if they can’t connect the dots between one culture in
Europe and an older version in the Near East, and an even older version in
Africa. To anyone who can see objectively, it is quite obvious that the African
cultures of 100-50,000 years ago were clearly the sources for “Upper Paleolithic”
cultures in Europe.
For example, we can find similar cultures at Howiesons Poort in southern Africa
over 60,000 years ago, predating the Aurignacian in Europe by almost 20,000
years. We know that the people of Howiesons Poort basically “disappeared,” so
perhaps some of them went to Europe? Many of their innovations could also be
found at prehistoric North African sites. On the other hand, perhaps the reason
why Howiesons Poort has been connected with the L3 haplogroup reflects the
fact that they migrated south from Northeast Africa.
Thomas Griffith Taylor saw a connection between the Aurignacian people and
the Khoisan people of South Africa:
In their culture the Bushmen [Khoisan]…resemble in so many ways some of the Aurignacian
folk of Western Europe that Sollas and others have little doubt of their being of the same race.
Customs, weapons, steatopygy, small stature, and especially the artistic work of the two groups,
are exceedingly alike…It is suggested that the similarity in the pictures found at Cogul (Spain), in
the present Bushmen territory in South Africa, and at Raigarh (340 miles west of Calcutta) is due
to their common origin. We may imagine these negrito people spreading from a cradle-land
(between the three regions mentioned) and carrying the culture independently to Spain, South
444
Africa, and India.
This could explain why some Aurignacian remains were described as
Khoisanoid (like the south African Khoisan) or Capoid (like the Africans of the
southern Cape), while others were simply described as Negroid, and still others
as Australoid (like some of the remains from North Africa).
Why so many different descriptions? It would seem that – between 40,000 and
15,000 years ago – several infusions of Black people joined up with the rebel
alliance in Eurasia. The tropically-adapted body proportions of all these people,
including later people who are just described as “Cro-Magnon,” suggest that –
despite variations in the shape of their nose or brow – these were all Black
people who originated in the motherland. However, many of these people
joined the Aurignacians after embarking from settled in the Near East, India,
and Central Asia.
In the chapter on India, we explore the expansive reach of Aurignacian culture
and related traditions, as well as the likelihood that Blacks from Northeast
Africa were joined by Blacks from across Asia.
BLACK PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
As Taylor notes, Black people were found in India, South Africa, and Spain at
their most prehistoric dates of human occupation. He identifies these Blacks as
“the earliest races, as we may deduce from their invariable position in the inland
inaccessible portions, or in the marginal islands, of the territory which they share
with other folk.” In other words, these people were the Earth’s first humans,
but became marginalized and forced to live on the fringes of their old territories
by new arrivals.
Taylor continues:
Their artefacts and drawings have been found in an uninterrupted belt from Europe to
southernmost Africa. Drawings of a similar nature are also found at Raigarh in Central India. In
the map they are seen to be the sole people to have reached Tasmania; they are the lowest
stratum all through the East Indies and Melanesia, and also in India…
These people are almost never discussed by modern historians. In the
September 1896 issue of the Arena, Professor Willis Boughton of Ohio
University wrote about how historians had already begun ignoring these Black
foundations:
The black race has a history. In fact, all history is full of traces of the black element. It is now
usually recognized as the oldest race of which we have any knowledge. The wanderings of these
people, since prehistoric history began, have not been confined to the African continent. In
Paleolithic times the black man roamed at will over all the fairest portions of the Old World.
Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, acknowledges his sway. No white man had as yet appeared to
dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany, or upon the classic hills of
Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all others, and carried Paleolithic culture to its very
445
height. But the history of all lands has been only a record of succeeding races.
Verneau found so much evidence of a Black presence in later periods of
European history that he credited them to Grimaldi ancestors:
That we may still find at the present day so many traces of a racial type having characters recalling
those which I have observed in the Grimaldi race must of necessity have been due to the fact that
this race was formerly represented in our country by a whole group…We must therefore admit
that an almost Negroe element lived in South-Western Europe towards the Mid Quaternary
446
Era…
Thomas Griffith Taylor believed that Europe was settled by Blacks who
extended from Switzerland to Siberia:
[Negroid] people must have been quite abundant in Europe towards the close of the Palaeolithic.
Boule quotes their skeletons from Brittany, Switzerland, Liguria, Lombardy, Illyria, and Bulgaria.
They are universal through Africa and through Melanesia, while the Botocudo and the Lagoa
Santa skulls of East Brazil show where similar folk penetrated to the New World. A Mousterian
station near Krasnoiarsk in Siberia, associated with the mammoth, probably shows the presence
of this Neanderthal-Negro-Australoid type in North Asia.
In Civilization or Barbarism, Cheikh Anta Diop observed that the Black presence
in prehistoric Europe was so widespread it extended into East Asia:
The Grimaldi Negroids have left their numerous traces all over Europe and Asia, from the
447
Iberian Peninsula to Lake Baykal in Siberia [just north of Mongolia], passing through France,
448
Austria, the Crimea, and the Basin of Don, etc.
Between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, delegations of these people may have
joined the occupation campaign against the Neanderthals in Europe. This
explains why there is such great diversity in the features of Paleolithic
Europeans. Yet, even with this diversity, it’s hard to deny that all of these people
were Black.
The remains at Combe-Capelle (found in Dordogne, France and dated to 28,000
years ago) have also been described as Negroid, as have the remains from
Sunghir (found near Moscow, Russia and dated to 30,000 years ago). And these
are just the ones that are undeniably “Negroid.” As far east as China, the 20,000-
year-old remains at Zhoukoudian are Black. And there are hundreds of other
skulls bearing “Black” features, but scholars won’t commit to calling them
“Negroid” or “Africoid” or anything close.
Yet these Original People – at least during the Aurignacian period – weren’t
much different from us. They weren’t pygmies and they weren’t giants either.
The Grimaldi skeletons were over five feet tall, which lends support to the
theory that the world’s oldest people weren’t always as small as they are
nowadays. However, after new waves of people came into Europe, many of the
aboriginal Black settlers were displaced. These people may have become
Europe’s DBP.
 THE “LITTLE BLACK PEOPLE” OF EUROPE
In Europe, there are thousands of ancient accounts describing DBP
populations. Today, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find any “little Black people” as
you would in the Philippines, but plenty of evidence suggests that the DBP
survived in Europe until quite recently. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica reported
that:
Relics of a pygmy race are supposed to exist now in Sicily and Sardinia, i.e. along the high road
between Pleistocene Africa and Europe. Near Schaffhausen [Switzerland], Dr. Kollman found
skeletal remains of small human beings, which have been regarded by some authorities as
belonging to the European pygmies of the Neolithic period. Some anthropologists of authority…
believe that a dwarf negroid race at one time existed in northern Europe, and may have given rise
449
to the traditional tales of elves, goblins, gnomes and fairies.
One of the most prominent of these authorities was British historian David
MacRitchie, who wrote several works on the Black presence in ancient (and
modern) Europe, and how these little Black people living underground became
regarded as supernatural beings of immense power. These reports later became
stories of myth, coming down to us now as tales of little fairies, trolls, gnomes,
elves, and leprechauns. Yes, that’s all about US. Because it sounds so far-
fetched, we’re republishing MacRitchie’s books and letting him speak for
himself.
 WHO WERE THE CRO-MAGNONS?
Remember Sir Arthur Keith? The guy who said the Grimaldi man was Black?
An eminent archaeologist with much to lose, Keith endured quite a bit of
criticism when he said this in 1911. In 1931, he retracted his statement and said
he now considered the Grimaldi to be just a “morphological variation” of “Cro-
Magnon” man. In other words, they weren’t Black…they were just a “Black-
looking” variant of non-Black prehistoric Europeans.
WHAT’S RACE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
What does Cro-Magnon really mean? For starters, it’s a very broad category.
Cro-Magnon quickly became the racial type for just about any human remains
found in Paleolithic Europe, regardless of their facial features. This sort of racial
redaction became common from the 1930s onward, but became the norm after
the emergence of the “no such thing as race” school of anthropology in the
1960s.
To be fair, Paleolithic Europe was composed of different cultures and different
genetic groups, and some of these populations had very different facial features.
Yet scientists employ a very NARROW set of criteria in deciding who and what
was Black.
Sometimes, when there’s no way around it, they’ll say the find was unimportant.
Later, once they’ve sterilized race out of the discussion, they’ll come back and
use racial arguments to subtly promote that these people were actually pretty
great…and white.
Case in point: Once it became passé to speak of the Grimaldi as “Negroid,” a
new generation of paleoanthropologists began grouping a wider variety of
human remains together into broader categories. Finds as distant as the Qafzeh
remains of Israel, the Combe-Capelle remains of France, Minatogawa Man in
Japan, the Kabwe skull of Zambia, and several Paleo-Indian finds (Stone Age
450
remains from the Americas) were lumped together as Cro-Magnons, and
eventually the term Cro-Magnon was expanded to encompass all early
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“anatomically modern humans,” including the Grimaldi remains. Yet ALL of
these remains represent Black people.
DID YOU KNOW? We know this new labeling system was
The Qafzeh and Skhul remains from Israel are promoted to minimize the emphasis
examples of human remains outside Africa more than on race, but let’s not forget that
75,000 years ago. They are 80,000 to 130,000 years
old, and have African-like, or “tropically adapted,” anthropologists only cared about
 452
minimizing this emphasis once racial
body proportions. The remains named Skhul 5 and
Skhul 9 (dated to 119,000 years old) are especially
analysis suggested “Black” features.
“Negroid” in appearance, while others are more
When they thought the fossils were
generalized. The people of the Skhul site wore the
white folks, it was all about race. Race
same jewelry (necklaces made of Nassarius shell
was important THEN!
beads) that were found in eastern Morocco, where
they dated back to 82,000 years ago. They also
But when the fossils turned out to be
shared other cultural traditions with people living in
northern Africa at the time. Black, it was time to dismantle the
concept of race altogether! And this
happened in EVERY branch of science. As soon as medical science found that
Blacks were actually dominant in every sense, race was deemphasized and
considered “an outdated concept” in medicine and genetics.
When archaeologists were busy talking about white Egypt and white
Mesopotamia, race was worthy of discussion. Once the evidence suggested that
the founders of the world’s ancient civilizations were Black, race became an
“outdated concept” in the archaeological community. C’mon son! Anyone with
half a brain can see how it went down. Fortunately, there are books like this to
tell the side of the story that’s not being told anymore.
WEREN’T THE CRO-MAGNONS THE
FIRST WHITE PEOPLE?
Nope, not them either. Just as the Grimaldi man was Black, so too were the
people who came after him. Although Cheikh Anta Diop believed that the Cro-
Magnon people who came after Grimaldi man were the first “white people,”
based on their morphology (shape of facial features like nose and cheekbones),
recent evidence (unavailable to Diop at the time he wrote) suggests that the Cro-
Magnon people were not pale-skinned.
French anthropologist Rene Verneau compared the Grimaldi man’s remains
with those of later remains classified as Cro-Magnon, and concluded that “there
is no reason why they should not have had some ties of kinship.” Verneau even
adds that the Grimaldi Negroids “may have been the ancestors” of these later
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Europeans.
In their 1998 text, African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity, Christopher
Stringer and Robin McKie confirm this early observation, noting:
Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples – some resemble modern Australians
and Africans more than modern Europeans. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move
on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like
present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical categorizations, as is the case
454
with some early modern skulls from the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian in China.
Beyond looking at skull shape, skin color, nose shape, and prognathism,
scientists can tell if people come from tropical climates by looking at their body
proportions. For example, Neanderthal limb proportions were cold-adapted, but
prehistoric Eurasians were not. Erik Trinkhaus explains:
Their distinct limb proportions are instead indicative of an equatorial ancestry and better
culturally based thermal protection…The limb proportions of the Eurasian early modern samples
455
are retentions of the African ancestral morphology of long limbs with long distal segments…
In other words, these folks look like Africans. Roger Lewin supported this
notion, stating:
Cro-Magnon skeletons exhibit a warm-adapted body stature, not the cold-adapted formula seen
in Neanderthals. This character may be taken as strong evidence of the replacement of
456
Neanderthals and supports the single African origin hypothesis.
The next time we see “cold-adapted” bodies like the Neanderthals is among
modern white Europeans, but not among early Europeans like the Grimaldi
Man or Cro-Magnons. So, although some Cro-Magnon people had facial
structures resembling that of many Europeans, we should be well aware that
indigenous Black people can have a WIDE variety of features, including narrow
noses and flat faces.
As C.L. Brace has said, “The oft-repeated European feeling that the Cro-
Magnons are “us” is more a product of anthropological folklore than the result
457
of the metric data available from the skeletal remains.” In other words, white
people are not the “original people” of Europe. Since the ONE feature we
can consistently associate with white people is “whiteness,” it’s not enough to note that
the Cro-Magnons might have had relatively “straight” noses, or even coarse,
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straight hair.
DID YOU KNOW? And here’s the best part: In recent
Recent studies of genetics, blood types and cranial years, “Cro-Magnon” too has fallen
morphology indicate that, as Diop proposed, the out of use among anthropologists.
Basque people of Spain may be the descendents of
the original Cro-Magnon population. But scientists Why? Because they’ve been forced to
have also agreed that the Basque people are the realize that these people weren’t
closest thing to Black that you will find among different, in any definable way, from
“unmixed” populations in Europe, genetically and
phenotypically (yet that’s a story we’ll have to explore other human populations of the time.
in a future volume). Which is exactly what I could’ve told
them if they’d asked me before they
came up with this Cro-Magnon mess.
 SO WHEN DID THE FACE OF EUROPE CHANGE?
By now, you might be wondering to yourself, “If the first humans in Europe
were Black, and the Cro-Magnons were Black, and the Europeans who came
after them were Black, when did Europe become white? And how?
Well, that’s quite a complicated question. And to date, no one has fully
documented the true story, at least not using the standards of evidence we’re
sharing with you in this series. This is why we’re dedicating an entire volume of
this series to that topic – the origins of white Europeans and the white cultural
complex.
And, in researching that text, we’ve come to appreciate WHY such a book
hasn’t been written yet. For starters, it’s an unpopular subject! Nobody wants to
touch it. And if you’re one of the brave few who do, the research is mind-
bogglingly difficult, because so few have attempted to approach the subject
honestly and comprehensively in laymen’s terms.
Not to mention that much of the data has been ignored, buried, or altered!
Fortunately, recent years have provided a wealth of journal-published studies
that tell bits and pieces of the untold story. They say modern Europeans are
mostly the byproduct of a population wave that swept in during the Neolithic,
459
over 40,000 years after the first Black humans came into the region.
Here’s an example of one of those studies, in laymen’s terms:
Journal Text Laymen’s Translation
“Body proportions are under The length of different parts of
strong climatic selection and your body says a lot about
evince remarkable stability within where you’re from, and they
regional lineages. stay the same even when other
things change.
As such, they offer a viable and So these lengths can tell us a
robust alternative to cranio-facial lot more than facial features
data in assessing hypothesised about who came into Europe
continuity and replacement with when they started farming and
the transition to agro-pastoralism who was there before them.
in central Europe.
Humero-clavicular, brachial and We looked at the bones of many
crural indices in a large sample skeletons from Europe around
(n=75) of Linienbandkeramik 4000 to 2000 BC, and
(LBK), Late Neolithic and Early compared them with much older
Bronze Age specimens from the skeletons from Africa and
middle Elbe-Saale-Werra valley Europe, as well as with
(MESV) were compared with skeletons of modern people
 Eurasian and African terminal from around the world.
Pleistocene, European Mesolithic
and geographically disparate
recent human specimens.
Mesolithic Europeans display The old European skeletons
considerable variation in humero- from 10,000 years ago had a lot
clavicular and brachial indices of diversity, but none had the
yet none approach the extreme “extreme white” features of
“hyper-polar” morphology of LBK Europeans of the LBK culture,
humans from the MESV. which spread throughout central
Europe after 5000 BC.
In contrast, Late Neolithic and On the other hand, people in
Early Bronze Age peoples display other parts of Europe between
elongated brachial and crural 4000 and 2000 BC looked like
indices reminiscent of terminal the oldest African skeletons as
Pleistocene and “tropically well as modern Black people
adapted” recent humans. elsewhere in the world.
These marked morphological This suggests that there was
changes likely reflect exogenous some kind of foreign migration
immigration during the terminal of white people coming into
Fourth millennium cal BC.” Europe around 3000 BC.
Gallagher et al. (Mar 2009). In March of 2009, the
“Population continuity, demic anthropological journal Homo
diffusion and Neolithic origins in (meaning “Man”) published this
central-southern Germany: the study by Gallagher and
evidence from body proportions.” colleagues on pages 95 to 126
Homo 60(2):95-126. of Volume 60, Issue Number 2.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Where did this new population come from? How did they take over so quickly?
What was their relationship like with the Original People of Europe? How
different was their cultural complex from those that came before them? And
how did these people go on to conquer so much of the ancient world? No way
we could do those questions justice in a chapter or less. And thus, Volume Four
of this series.
Understandably, some readers will be furious, because you’re “sure” that white
skin is a product of the cold climate of Europe and “must have” emerged long
before 6,000 years ago. And we’ve just got to tell you, sorry, but you’ve been
misinformed on both counts. As we noted, we WILL dig deep into the topic in
Volume Four and explain everything, but for now, just consider this quote from
W. C. Boyd’s 1956 text, Genetics and the Races of Man:
The aborigines of the New World, though not by any means identical, agree in having on the
whole considerable skin pigmentation. If pigmentation is adaptive, and conforms to climate, why
 460
are not the Eskimo and the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego as light as Europeans?
Apparently, most Inuit people – living in areas that are as cold as it gets – are
still brown-skinned enough to warrant such a question. And this was after
centuries of white explorers coming among them and marrying into their
families! This fact adds special relevance to what Bory De Saint Vincent said
about the same population in 1839:
Whatever the reason, both sexes, more tanned than people in Europe and Central Asia, darker
than any other Americans, are even blacker the farther north one goes; an additional proof that it
is not, as generally believed, the heat of the sun that causes black skin-color in certain
intertropical regions. It is not rare to find Eskimos, Greenlanders, and Samoyeds at 70 degrees
latitude who, darker than Hottentots at the opposite extreme of the old continent, are almost as
461
black as Wolof or Kaffirs on the Equator.

THE “SPARK” OF HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT?
“Wherever Homo arose, and Africa is at present the most likely continent, he soon dispersed, in a very primitive form, throughout the
warm regions of the Old World....If Africa was the cradle of mankind, it was only an indifferent kindergarten. Europe and Asia were
our principal schools.” – Carleton S. Coon, 1962
Some scholars assert that humans only became true “modern humans” when
they entered Europe. Why? They explain that the amazing developments in
human ability that are seen in the Aurignacian culture of Europe are evidence of
a profound brain “jump.” Meaning evolutionary development was given a nitro
boost around this time…but more so, around this place. All the while, ignoring
the Aurignacian culture’s precedents in Africa over 30,000 years prior.
The idea that humans only became behaviorally modern within the past 40,000
years (coincident with our migration into Europe) is reminiscent of similar (but
more openly racist) theories from the 19th century, which asserted Europe as
both the birthplace of civilization and humanity itself.
The modern version of this theory is championed by paleoanthropologist
Richard Klein, who says Aurignacian Europe of 40,000 years ago is the first time
and place we see such a “spark” in human development. Fortunately, Klein’s
argument is not universally accepted.
Two critics, Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut and Alison S.
Brooks of George Washington University, argue that modern behavior didn’t
experience the “dramatic shift” Klein claims. They write:
As a whole the African archaeological record shows that the transition to fully modern behavior
was not the result of a biological or cultural revolution, but the fitful expansion of a shared bodv
of knowledge, and the application of novel solutions on an ‘as needed’ basis.
But Klein remains steadfast in arguing that there was no modern behavior in
Africa prior to 50,000 years ago. For example, the eight barbed harpoon points
made of bone, from the 100,000 year old fishing site in Zaire? Klein believes
that the bone points are less than 12,000 years old. And so it goes, anything
African and old must be recent. Same story line of thinking the white
supremacists of the 19th century proposed, only updated for modern audiences.
THE AMERICAS
WA A AY B E F O R E C O L U M B U S C A M E
“It seems on the whole probable that the Proto-Austroloid
must have been one of the earliest, if not the earliest, type to
spread into the North American continent.” – Roland
Dixon, 1923
 WHO WERE THE FIRST AMERICANS?
When you think “Native American,” who do you think of? If you know some
history, you might think of Tecumseh, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and
some of the other resistance leaders that attempted to stop Europeans from
taking over their homelands. If you don’t know much about history, you might
think of Pocahontas, Sacagawea, and some of the other people white folks like
to celebrate for having helped them accomplish this same goal.
What you probably won’t think of is Black people. Yet the first Americans were
Black. Every modern anthropologist knows this. We don’t. We learned that
there was a land migration across some “ice bridge” known as the Bering Strait,
which connects Siberia (in Asia) and Alaska. This is said to have happened
16,000 to 13,000 years ago, and the people who came looked, talked, and acted
just like modern Native American people.
And that’s it. Nobody questions if there was more than one migration across
this little land bridge, or if there was any other way to get to the Americas. Or if
all Native Americans – throughout North and South America – really descend
from this one small group of migrants.
Yet when they tell the history of Egypt, they want to tell you about every single
group of foreigners that ever stepped foot in the direction of the Nile Valley.
And they’ll be quick to tell you that everybody looked different and that it
wasn’t such a simple story.
Turns out that American history is, as usual, all wrong. The evidence suggests
that migrations into the Americas came from many different directions, over the
course of at least 40,000 years. In this chapter, we’ll explore all of the earliest
migrations into the Americas.
 THE TRAGIC FATE OF THE PERICÚES
In 1533, Spanish navigator Fortún Jiménez became the first European to set
foot in Baja, California. Never being the one to break tradition, Jiménez and his
crew murdered a few Pericú men, including an elder, and raped their women.
Typical European stuff. But the Pericú were not pleased. They captured
Jiménez, beat him to a pulp, and killed him, quickly establishing they were not to
be played with.
In 1697, Jesuit missionaries from Spain began setting up missions in the Baja
peninsula. But it took over 30 years before they were brave enough to set up
camp at the southern tip where the Pericú reigned. The Spanish Jesuits – who
were there to establish control of the people before the colonists could come –
knew the Pericú did not fear them enough…yet.
In 1730, Jesuit priest Nicholas Tamaral founded a mission in Baja, where he
began baptizing Pericú Indians, typically with promises of prosperity to follow.
Seeking to establish power, Tamaral and company identified an important
Pericú leader, a shaman named Botón, and charged him with “licentious”
462
behavior because he had more than one wife. They declared that Botón was
not fit to lead, and that he had been stripped of his leadership role, hoping to
establish a show of dominance.
They weren’t ready for what would come next. Botón quickly mobilized a rebel
alliance of Pericú and Guaycura Indians to oust the Jesuits from Pericú land.
Their plan was multifold. First, they would kill the native soldiers (Indians who
now fought for the Spaniards) one by one, and then the missionaries and
converts, before finally sweeping the missions themselves.
And they actually followed through! They stormed the Santiago mission,
creeping in while the soldiers were out, slaying the priest in charge with a hail of
arrows. When a native convert in the mission couldn’t stop crying over the dead
priest, they killed him too. When the soldiers came back, they killed them too.
They took all the bodies, threw them in a pile, and set them on fire, along with
all the Bibles and religious items. Next, they killed Tamaral, burnt down his
463
mission, and drug him through the streets as a true show of dominance.
By 1737, the Jesuits had been forced to abandon several missions. It almost
looked as if the Spaniards would lose control of the Baja region to the Indians.
For them, that wasn’t an option.
In 1742, King Felipe V sent in boatloads of royal funds to pay for additional
military assistance to suppress the revolt. The same year, a typhus epidemic
“somehow” spread through the area, killing off entire tribes. Soldiers attacked
the survivors mercilessly. By the end of the 1700s, most of the indigenous
464
people of the Baja area, including the Pericú, were extinct.
Soon after, King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from America,
possibly because they’d “allowed” such a rebellion to take place. He quickly
replaced them with the Franciscan Order, showing that it’s really not at all about
religion – but power.
THE PREHISTORY OF THE PERICÚ
Who were the Pericú? Where did they come from? How long had they been
there before they met Europeans? The Pericú society possessed sophisticated
maritime technology, making use of wooden rafts and double-bladed paddles.
And studies of their skulls suggest they were veteran divers. The evidence
suggests that the ancestors of the Pericú came to the Baja peninsula by boat
465
over 10,000 years ago. This would explain why the Pericú were quite different
from their neighbors. How different? They were Australoid.
Mexican geologist Dr. Silvia Gonzalez theorizes that the Pericú people were
related to a set of human remains known as Peñon woman, found by an ancient
466
lake bed near Mexico City. At over 10,700 years old, she is one the oldest
remains in America. Gonzalez, who dated the skulls, was also the first to declare
467
that “Peñon Woman was originally an Australian.”
DID YOU KNOW? In fact, prehistoric skulls from the Baja
The Pericú weren’t the only Black Indians observed region are hyperdolichocephalic
on the west coast. In 1930, Walter Lehmann
theorized that Melanesian migrations could explain
(extremely long-headed), like those of
the “Negroid” traits observed in the coastal the first remains along coastal South
populations of California, Panama, Venezuela, and America…and unlike those of most
468
Colombia. Native American people today. Besides
their skulls, the ancestors of the Pericú
also left behind thousands of cave paintings to tell us about themselves. They
painted themselves in only two colors, black and red. To be specific, many of
the human figures are black, many more are half-black and half-red (split down
469
the middle), and a small minority are only red. What does this mean? It could
mean many things, both symbolic and literal. Taken literally, they speak volumes
on the history of the Americas.
 THEY CAME WAAAY BEFORE COLUMBUS
In the December 1986 issue of the Journal of African Civilizations Runoko Rashidi
and Legrand H. Clegg II discuss the Black history of the Americas in a period
that few other scholars have touched. While many have focused on the pre-
Columbian periods that gave birth to Olmec civilization and other more recent
contacts with Africa, Rashidi and Clegg focus on the more distant past.
They address the pivotal work of anthropologists like Harold S. Gladwin,
Roland B. Dixon, Earnest A. Hooton, Thomas Griffith Taylor, and Sir Arthur
Keith, all prominent white scholars and scientists who fell into disfavor for their
views about the first people to settle the Americas. Their crime? They said the
first Americans were Black.
In his 1947 Men Out of Asia (now out of print), Henry Gladwin identified
Australoid traits in skulls found at early sites along the path that the migration
470
into the Americas is likely to have taken. Regarding finds in southern
California, southwestern Colorado, southern Arizona, the Texas Gulf coast,
Punin and Paltacalo in Ecuador, and Lagao Santa in eastern Brazil, Gladwin
remarked that all demonstrated…
…characteristics which link these various instances together and point to their wide distribution
and common ancestry with other Australoid peoples, as do also certain vestigal traces in some
modern people, such as the Pericú of Lower California, the Seri on nearby Tiburon Island, and
various tribes in Central and South America…
[P]eople of Australoid type were once widely distributed, and survivals of some of their features,
471
customs and culture are still to be found in isolated localities.

THE PUNIN SKULL OF ECUADOR

Until 1975, the most conclusive evidence of this prehistoric Black migration was
the Punin Skull, discovered in a small village in the Andean region of Ecuador,
accompanied by the remains of an Andean horse, known to have been extinct
for over 10,000 years. Runoko Rashidi calls it “the most well-documented single
piece of evidence for the early presence of Australoids in the prehistoric
472
Americas during the period of Gladwin’s writing.” Indeed, the skull was
heralded by the American Museum of Natural History of New York as the
earliest evidence of humans in the Americas. At the same time, it was evidence
of Australoid humans in America.
The “dean of English anatomists,” Sir Arthur Keith, noting the similarities
between the skull and those of indigenous Australians, declared, “The discovery
at Punin does compel us to look in the possibility of a Pleistocene invasion of
 473
America by an Australoid people.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton
echoed Keith in stating that the skull was one “that any competent craniologist
would identify as Australian in type.” Yet he added much to the bigger picture
by following:
It is easier to find Australoid-looking dolichocephals [long-headed] in the more ancient burials in
474475
the New World than anything in the way of a skull that resembles a Mongoloid.
Another eminent Harvard anthropologist, Roland Dixon, also saw the
Australoid characteristics of prehistoric skulls found throughout western North
America:
It seems on the whole probable that the Proto-Austroloid must have been one of the earliest, if
not the earliest, type to spread into the North American continent. On the Pacific coast in
California and Lower California it appears to constitute the oldest stratum, characterizing as it
does the crania from the lower layers of the shell-heaps from the islands of Santa Catalina and
San Clemente off the coast, and from the extinct Pericue, isolated in the southern tip of the
peninsula of Lower California. It is moreover, prominent among the ancient basket-weavers of
northern Arizona, who represent probably one of the earliest peoples in this whole area. In the
northeast the type is of importance among the Iroquois and the southern Algonkian tribes, such
476
as the Lenape.
Where some scholars saw Australoid traits, others described them as Negroid.
Thomas Griffith Taylor declared in his Environment, Race and Migration that
surviving crania indicated “the presence in the far past of negroid peoples in the
477
American continent.” Dixon also cited prehistoric crania of the “Negroid”
type in Arizona, the Ohio Valley, Tennessee, New England and northern
478
Mexico. Needless to say, Dixon later regretted ever making these comments,
and after enduring endless harassment from other academics, renounced most
of these views and referred to his 1923 work Racial History of Man as “my
479
crime.”
“America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.” – Oscar Wilde
Gladwin, the only one of the above named to hold his ground, was also the one
with the least at stake. Gladwin, like me, was not considered a “true” scientist by
others in the archaeological community and other circles of academia. Gladwin
was regarded as little more than amateur who had gained most of his knowledge
and experience through actual fieldwork, as opposed to the indoctrination –
ahem, instruction – of some prestigious university or institute. Yet this is
probably why he could “think outside the box,” come up with a new way to
look at the data, and actually hold onto these convictions with little to lose.
Gladwin explained:
 It has been this negative attitude of mind, for instance, which has consistently refused to
recognize the definite implications of the many references by physical anthropologists to such
tribes as Australoid or Negroid in the makeup of various Indian tribes – even though veiled by
such qualifications as Proto-Negroid or pseudo-Australoid. Terms such as these will be found
only in technical papers on physical anthropology, but never in orthodox reconstructions of
native American history. We have included them here because we think they cannot be fairly
ignored, and, once you accept them as facts to be reckoned with, they turn out to be essential to
an understanding of the problem since they show that Mongoloid people could not have reached
480
North America before the time of Christ.
Gladwin didn’t have as much to lose as the others. These eminent scholars
immediately caught hell for their ideas. Some sacrificed their entire careers as a
result. They were outcast, along with their ideas.
In 1966, renowned anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel vindicated these early
scholars, confirming that the first Americans were Australoid, and noting that
his predecessors had already documented these connections:
Hooton, Count, Hrdlicka and many others have identified Paleo-Amerind individuals or even
“types” which approximate Australoid or archaic White, and Negritoid or Melanesoid modes in
East and Southeast Asia…This eastern Asiatic proto-Mongoloid norm does indeed show long-
range resemblances to eastern Upper Paleolithics [from the Near East] and to Australoids (or
Amurians and Negritoids), as well as to Palaeamericans…For example, the Liukiang South
Chinese Paleolithic male skull, some Shang dynasty Chinese skulls and the female from Burial 5
at Tranquillity [in California] have low and broad noses, shallow malars, short faces and alveolar
481
protrusion: a Negritoid (or Australoid?) trait complex.
In other words, “Yup, they were right. These people were definitely Black.”
Yet such conclusions were practically ignored. Even when Ivan Van Sertima
republished these articles in the compilation African Presence in Early America in
1987, the idea that the first Native Americans were Black was considered yet
another “Afrocentric myth.” Few scholars took the idea seriously. Native
American communities weren’t too thrilled with the idea either.
Nearly a hundred years after Dixon published his Racial History of Man, it’s
becoming increasingly clear that the founding population of the Americas was,
indeed, Black.
LUZIA AND FRIENDS
It was August 22, 1999. The heading in the UK Sunday Times declared boldly,
“The first people to inhabit America were Australian Aborigines – not American
Indians.” Sarah Toyne reported on what the 12,000-year-old remains of a young
girl unearthed in Brazil, told us about earliest human skeleton found in the
Americas. This girl, whom scientists have named Luzia, has proven to be
482
conclusive evidence that the first Americans were Blacks out of Asia.
Walter Neves, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Sao
Paolo, examined Luzia’s skull for clues into the anthropological ancestry of the
earliest Americans. Shocked by the results, he responded:
When we started seeing the results, it was amazing because we realized the statistics were not
showing these people to be Mongoloid; they were showing that they were anything except
Mongoloid... They are similar to modern-day Aborigines and Africans and show no similarities at
483
all with Mongoloids from east Asia and modern-day Indians.
Luzia’s skull was then reconstructed by University of Manchester forensic artist
Peter Neave, who echoed the remarks of Neves: “That to me is a negroid face.
484
The proportions of the face do not say anything about it being Mongoloid.”
In the published study, the scientists reported:
In the first case, Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 [also known as Luzia] exhibited an undisputed
morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the
second comparison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early
Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103 [See the chapter on China], and Taforalt 18 [in
prehistoric Morocco]. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first
colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late
485
Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology…
DID YOU KNOW? In other words, Mongoloid Native
Americans were a later wave, preceded
In the same cave where they found Eve of Naharon,
they found the remains of ancient camels and
by a wave with African or Australian
486
horses, along with four other human skeletons. One
features. But this was all based on one
of those ancient skeletons, called the Young Man of
skull. Critics claimed Luzia could have
Chan Hol II has mysteriously “gone missing” since its
487
discovery! been a “mutation” or “anomaly” and
not representative of the norm.
By 2005, Neves had even more skulls to examine. In one of the most
comprehensive reports on the first human skeletons in the Americas, the
authors concluded:
Comparative morphological studies of the earliest human skeletons of the New World have
shown that, whereas late prehistoric, recent, and present Native Americans tend to exhibit a
cranial morphology similar to late and modern Northern Asians (short and wide neurocrania;
high, orthognatic and broad faces; and relatively high and narrow orbits and noses), the earliest
South Americans tend to be more similar to present Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan
Africans (narrow and long neurocrania; prognathic, low faces; and relatively low and broad orbits
488
and noses).
In other words, most modern Native Americans may resemble Mongoloid
people in Northeast Asia, but the earliest remains suggest the first Native
Americans were Black people. Neves had found that the earliest remains – from
southern Chile to coastal Florida to “Kennewick Man” in Washington – all
489
looked Australoid and Africoid.
In addition to Luzia, Peñon Woman, and Kennewick Man, other examples
include the Wilson-Leonard remains from Texas (dated to 10,000 BP), the
490
Santana do Riacho remains from Bahia, Brazil (around 9,000 BP), and the
491
“Eve of Naharon” remains from an underwater cave in Mexico (13,600 BP).
By at least 14,000 years ago, the Australoid population had settled the Americas.
By 10,000 years ago, Australoid people spanned the continents from end to end.
So we call the Australoid people the foundational people of the Americas
because they laid the foundation for the modern Native American gene pool.
Despite tons of admixture (first with Mongoloid people, then with centuries of
European rapists and colonizers), there is still Australoid blood running through
the veins of many Native Americans today.
 BEFORE THE AUSTRALOIDS
Native American traditions recall mysterious “little people” who were not
considered to be mortal men. There are dozens of accounts of these little
people, who are held in high regard, often with fearful superstition of their semi-
divine capabilities. Often they are not described as new arrivals, but the people
who came first. Were they real? And if so, who were these people?
The ancestral human population (that is, the Black people who exited Africa
130,000 years ago) may have arrived in the Americas long before the Australoid
wave. Unlike the Australoid wave, the ancestral human population may not have
had many surviving descendants in the Americas.
As a result, we can’t find any genetic traces of them in the Americas, but there
are sites in Brazil that are 30-50,000 years old, and some sites that may be even
492
older. For most archaeologists, these represent the earliest evidence of human
settlement. These could have been the Original People
DID YOU KNOW? They could have been the same people
There are even older remains throughout the who became the Andaman Islanders,
Americas. According to W.N. Irving of the University who never “make” their own fire, but
of Toronto, a massive “bone tool industry” along the
Yukon’s Old Crow River may be over 100,000 years instead carry naturally-struck fires from
old. In Calico, California, simple tools were found in a site to site. As we noted in Volume One,
493
layer estimated to be at least 200,000 years old. this isn’t because they didn’t know how
Remains from a cave in Brazil’s northeastern to do so, but because they upheld a
backlands suggest that man could have been in the
494
Americas at least 300,000 years ago. Of course,
timeless tradition, shared only by the
we’re probably talking about Homo erectus at this aboriginal DBP people of Tasmania.
point, but the idea that Homo erectus could have As Jean-Pierre Hallet notes in Pygmy
made that journey is fascinating. Kitabu:
The Pygmies make and use artifacts that are far more complicated than friction firesticks. This is
a fact that their stupid or bigoted critics somehow fail to realize. They preserve “perpetual fire”
for religious reasons. Egyptians, Norsemen, American Indians, Greeks, Hindus, Persians,
Hebrews, Christians, and many other people have zealously maintained perpetual altar fires,
lamps, and candles. The Pygmies traditionally carry burning brands from one campsite to the
next. The Greeks of early historic times brought fire to each new colony in identical style. The
Pygmies supposedly marched through the blizzards of ice-age Siberia, Alaska, and Canada to
accomplish their “Pygmoid visitation” to the Americas. This very chilly journey has been
attributed to people who possessed no means of making artificial fire.
In other words, you’re dumb if you think they were too dumb to master fire.
They had mastered fire, but they’d also mastered the discipline required to
survive in any environment without making their own fires. Which skill do you
think is more impressive?
Still, we actually don’t know what path they took, or when they came, but
there’s evidence they were here. In Men Out of Asia, Henry Gladwin wondered
whether the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego (who we’ll discuss later) were of a
Black “Pygmoid” extraction. He mentions “visitations” of small Black people
before the Australoid wave, but they’re never described as a large population
movement.
Like everywhere else, few of these ancestral people would survive into the reign
of the Australoid people. They were mostly likely pushed into the forest and
mountains, where they eventually became the DBP. It’s also possible that DBP
populations from outside the Americas came into the Americas “already small.”
DID YOU KNOW? Most traces of their presence can be found in myths and
Underwater stone tools legends. Lewis and Clark, in their Travels to the Source of the
reveal clues about man’s
history. Chert, a stone
Missouri River, said that the Sioux recalled a ‘Mountain of
used by prehistoric Little People’ near the Whitestone River, said to be
people to make tools, inhabited by tiny humans, who were…
was found during an …armed with sharp arrows, and ever on the alert to kill mortals who
underwater expedition should dare to invade their domain. So afraid were all the tribes of Red
along Florida’s Gulf Men who lived near the mountain of these little spirits that no one of them
Coast. The team of 496
underwater could be induced to visit it.
archaeologists was
According to historian Donald A. Mackenzie, the Indians
digging under riverbeds
of California believed themselves to have been preceded by
that could only have been
497
dry enough for man to
an earlier race that was “diminutive.”
walk on 13,000 years ago
The DBP of the Americas were the subject of nearly as
or more. Not only does
this add much myth-making as the DBP of Europe and Asia. Native
more
confirmation that the first
Americans held these diminutive Black, and later African
Native Americans
people in general, to be exceptional healers and medicine
entered the Americas
men. For example, the Aztec god Ixtlilton, known as “the
more than 12,000 years
ago, but it reminds us
little negro,” or “the black-faced,” was the god of medicine
how much of our history
may be
and healing, and cured children of various diseases. He was
lost
495 498
underwater. also the god of feasting, dancing, and games.
Occasionally, anthropologists uncover more concrete traces
of the DBP. For example, pygmy burials were found near Cochocton, Ohio in
499
1937. In Tennessee, similar graves were found, but the remains were
dismissed as those of children. Virgilio R. Pilapil disagreed, using body
measurements to argue that those graves were most definitely DBP burials.
Because of their appearance, Pilapil theorized that they were Negritos who had
arrived by boat from the Philippines, possibly related to today’s Aetas. Pilapil
also cited a Cherokee tradition that mentions the existence of “little people” in
eastern North America, as well as a tradition among British Columbia Indians
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who recalled a very small people called the Et-nane.
If the DBP were present in British Columbia, they may have indeed taken a land
route. These may have been the people who Thomas Griffith Taylor said left
“traces in America of aborigines akin to the Melanesians, and so ultimately to
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that great group of humanity to which the negroes belong.”
 BLACK ESKIMOS?
We’ve been taught so wrong that we really believe there are Eskimos living in
freezing-cold igloos on the ice in Alaska. For starters, they are known as the
Inuit, and Eskimo is a name given to them by other people to insult them. It
means “eaters of raw meat.” Second, they don’t live in igloos. Igloos are the
temporary housing they construct when they go on hunting and fishing trips in
frozen areas. And igloos might be made of ice, but they’re warm inside, because
their construction includes a special cold air trap that seals in warm arm, which
is further heated with oil lamps. Guess what they build to live in? Houses. Yes,
they used to build houses. That is, until the American and Canadian
governments took over their lands and put them in cheap shacks. The point is,
we’re missing a lot of the story.
So don’t be surprised when I say there’s even a DBP presence in the history of
the Inuit. The 12th century writer Eustathius tells of a little people in ancient
Thule (Greenland), described as short-lived, small, and armed with spears that
were like needles. The people of Greenland called them “Skraelings.” In the
1911 book Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, Norwegian explorer
Fridtjof Nansen writes:
As the Skraelings of Greenland were dark, it was quite natural that they should become trolls…I
have already stated that the Norse name ‘Skraeling’ for Eskimo must have originally been used as
a designation of fairies or mythical creatures. Furthermore there is much that would imply that
when the Icelanders first met with the Eskimo in Greenland they looked upon them as fairies;
they, therefore, called them ‘trolls,’ an ancient common name for various sorts of supernatural
beings. This view persisted more or less in after times. Every European who has suddenly
encountered Eskimos in the ice-covered wastes of Greenland, without ever having seen them
before, will easily understand that they must have made such an impression on people who had
the slightest tendency toward superstition. Such an idea must, from the very beginning, have
influenced the relations between the Norsemen and the natives, and is capable of explaining
much that is curious in the mention of them, or rather the lack of mention of them, in the sagas,
since they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing.
In Marshall B. Gardner’s A Journey to the Earth’s Interior, he explains:
Nansen also notes that when Skraelings were mentioned in Latin writings the word was always
translated “Pygmaei” and they were also described as living underground. 12th century Norse
accounts even describe Skraelings bringing them into the fantastic world of their underground
settlements. Nansen later explains that the present-day Eskimo is considerably different from the
original “Skraeling” described by the Norse, due to Scandinavian intermixture after Norway cut
off ties with the Greenland colonies in the 14th century, leaving the Norse to “mix” [ahem] with
the indigenous people they once avoided. So, explains Nansen, “the Eskimo race as we know it
today is not the same in physical appearance as the race that ordinarily came out of the interior of
the earth.”
In other words, many of the “dark” Skraelings eventually became light brown
Inuit.
INUIT LEGENDS OF BLACK PEOPLE
Runoko Rashidi has written and published on the original Black population of
the Americas, who were followed by a later Mongoloid migration that, over
time, became the dominant population. Rashidi cites Henry Gladwin, who
observed:
The arrival of the Eskimo along the Arctic Coasts marked a fundamental transition in the
anthropological history of North America. It was the last of a series of long-headed migrations,
and the broad faces and slant eyes of the Eskimo marked the initial stage of a long period of
Mongoloid domination in lands where Mongoloid people had therefore been unknown.
Rashidi adds:
Mongoloid peoples, in fact, were soon coming to the Americas in such massive numbers,
crossing the Bering Strait in boats rather than across the Beringia land bridge, that they eventually
almost totally absorbed the New World’s earlier arrivals. The resulting fusion of peoples
constituted the native American populations at the time of the catastrophic European intrusions
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The earlier arrived Blacks (the very first Americans)
tended to fade away with increasing rapidity into the shadowy realms of fairy tales, myths and
legends. Some native legends of the Americas abound with exploits of early Black people.
He cites an Inuit legend, describing an Inuit woman’s encounter with a man
who was “black all over, even his face.” The Black man wanted to take the
woman to live with him, but her father replied, “I won’t have my daughter going
away with a black man like you.” The legend continues:
The stranger became angry and made a step forward with his right foot. The whole house shook.
Then the father said to his daughter, “My daughter, you’ll have to go away with this man. This
will go badly with us if you don’t.” She got ready and left the house, with the stranger behind her.
Before leaving, he put his left foot down hard on the floor and the house shook again. He went
out, put the girl on the sledge and shoved the sledge because it had no huskies. After a while they
saw a house – the man’s house. They stopped and entered. Everything inside was black, and his
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parents also were completely black.
There are several myths and legends like this among the Inuit, the Tlingit, and
many other native people in Northwestern Canada (as well as among the
Iroquois and others further south). They don masks that look like Black people
during their most important cultural ceremonies. Clearly, there is some
remembrance of a Black people deep in their history.
But the Original Inuit people were not necessarily pale-skinned. Many of them,
too, bear the traces of ancient Black roots. For example, many of them are not
broad-headed, but long-headed. Their bodies are cold-adapted, but their skin is
still brown. In fact, some sources (especially the older ones) have said that they
were darker than any of the other indigenous people in North America, and – in
some cases – they were “blacker” than any African! (See the chapter on Europe
for the quotes.)
 THE DBP IN SOUTH AMERICA
As far south as Brazil, there are legends of little-people, described variously as
“leprechauns”, “pygmies”, and “dwarves,” who are seen sporadically in the
Amazon rainforest. When the Rio Negro River in Manaus, Brazil experienced an
extreme drop in water levels, a fisherman noted some unusual markings on
rocks that were now exposed above the water’s surface.
Scientists visited the region and identified geometric shapes, spirals, and
serpentine designs. Also found were a series of human characters, some with
pygmy characteristics. Although rock carvings are hard to date (because of the
lack of organic material), scientists have suggested the drawings may date back
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to about 7,000 years ago, when river levels were similarly low in the region.
 THE 500 NATIONS
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the documentary (and book) 500
Nations, it’s definitely worth a look. And its title is no exaggeration. Within the
geographic boundaries of the U.S. alone, there are more than 566 indigenous
nations, speaking over 250 languages. When you factor in Central and South
America, you’ve got at least 1,000 ethnic groups to consider. Many of these
people are descendants of small clans that came into the Americas, had several
thousand years to split up, go their separate ways, and become distinct nations
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on their own. We can use genetics, linguistics, and anthropology to establish
who may be related, and who came from who. As you look, however, the traces
of the early Black presence may be difficult to find.
Obviously, most of the indigenous people of the Americas don’t look Black
today. You’ll have to realize, of course, that there’s been over 70,000 years of
genetic drift and mutation since our brothers in the Americas left Africa. You
can’t expect them to look straight-up African or speak African languages. But
you might be surprised how much is preserved. You can still find Australoid
features among many Native American faces, such as those of the Pericú and
the Fuegians of South America.
The further you go back into the photographic record, you will also see that the
original Indians were much darker than they are now. Their hair was also much
coarser. Many even wore dreadlocks. In fact, you can see that hundreds of
Native American cultural traditions are near duplicates of those found in Africa.
We’ll get into that common culture in Volume Three.
After you’ve considered 70,000 years of regionalized evolution and genetic drift,
you then have to remember the history of how European conquest works. They
literally rape women everywhere they go. I’m not saying that to be extreme. That
is what the historical record tells us.
Any “contacted tribe” of indigenous people ANYwhere in the world has
experienced some degree of “miscegenation” thanks to the lust of European
males. If they weren’t simply taking women outright, they would marry as many
as they could afford to, all the while writing back to Europe with reports on
how they despised these ignorant savage people.
This history has quite a lot to do with the gradual lightening of the Native
American complexion over the past 500 years of European domination. Not to
mention that the past century has seen the growing popularity of “indigenous
lifestyles.” This has inspired thousands of whites to claim Native American
ancestry, some simply for bragging rights, some to escape “whiteness,” others
for more insidious reasons. So the face of the Americas, again, has changed
considerably within recent years.
But there is yet another element that contributed to the transition from an
Australoid foundation to today’s 500 Nations: another wave of ancient
migrations.
 HOW MANY MIGRATIONS WERE THERE?
“The ‘native’ inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are not all minor variants of the same people.”
– Anthropologist C. Loring Brace
For as long as scholars have been studying the indigenous people of the
Americas, they’ve observed that they don’t all look alike. This has led to decades of
speculation about how many groups of people actually settled the Americas, and
who those people became.
Figuring out the “true story” of the prehistoric peopling of any part of the world
is like assembling a puzzle. With the story of the Americas, there’s a big chunk
of the puzzle missing, and it’s hard to put the picture together without it. You
see, many indigenous nations of the United States aren’t interested in being
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involved in DNA studies of human ancestry. This means there’s a lot we
don’t know about millions of indigenous people in North America.
Fortunately, we can figure out some of what’s left unsaid by looking at what is
being said. That is, studies of language can reveal a great deal about people and
population movements.
In 1492, an estimated 30-40 million Native Americans spoke more than 1,000
different languages. Renowned linguist Joseph Greenberg proposed that all of
these languages could be classified into three groups:
The Na-Dene family: These languages are spoken from Asia to Alaska to northwestern
America (with a few offshoots reaching as far as Mexico). The roots of Na-Dene may be in
506507
Siberia. They arrived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The Eskimo-Aleut family: These languages are mostly spoken in Alaska, northern Canada,
and Greenland, and include the languages of the Inuit people. They arrived between
3,000 and 6,000 years ago.
The Amerind family: This is Greenberg’s grouping for all the languages that don’t fit in the
other two groups, including isolated languages that don’t seem connected to anything
else, like the languages spoken by the people of Matto Grosso in Brazil. Some of these
languages may derive from the original Australoid population of the Americas. Some are
connected to languages found in Oceania. Other languages in the Amerind family appear
to be related to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Others may have arrived with the first
wave of Mongoloid migration into the Americas between 12,000 and 14,000 years
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ago.
We certainly still don’t know enough about the languages of the Americas.
There remains considerable disagreement about how and when these language
families arrived, and who introduced them. But on thing is clear. What these
language families suggest is that that there were at least three waves of migration
into the Americas.
 THE STORY IN THE SKULLS
Another way to dig into the evidence is by examining skeletal remains. Dr. C.
Loring Brace, a professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, has
analyzed over 1500 skulls from across North, Central and South America as well
as their possible ancestors in Asia and Australia. Brace says the skulls suggest the
people of the Americas came in at least three distinct waves, some of whom
trace back to recent Asian ancestors, others to a Paleo-Mongoloid population
that is no longer widespread in Asia, and still others to prehistoric Australoid
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people.
HOW DID THEY GET THERE?
From the distribution of the earliest sites in the Americas, it appears that there
were four routes by which people arrived:
From Southeast Asia and Oceania across the Pacific Ocean, sailing east into the west
coasts of the Americas.
From Asia (India/Siberia/China/Japan) along the northern land route across northeast
Asia into Alaska and then southward into North America.
From Africa, sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean, into eastern Central and South
America (Olmec Mexico and Brazil).
From northwest Europe, island-hopping from Greenland into northeastern Canada.
 ACROSS THE PACIFIC
Almost all of the oldest American remains are found along coastal sites, and
none of them look like modern “Amerindians.” They look like Australian
Aborigines, Melanesians, Ainu, Papuans, and South Indians. In other words,
Black people. Specifically, they most closely resemble Australoid people.
How did they get here? It appears the Australoid colonization of the Americas
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came by way of maritime convoy, rather than by land. They obviously had the
technology to navigate these waters, and the desire to do so. In August of 1999,
BBC News reported on some of the evidence that supports this theory:
[H]ow could the early Australians have travelled more than 13,500 kilometres (8,450 miles) at that
time? The answer comes from more cave paintings, this time from the Kimberley, a region at the
northern tip of Western Australia.
Here, Grahame Walsh, an expert on Australian rock art, found the oldest painting of a boat
anywhere in the world. The style of the art means it is at least 17,000 years old, but it could be up
to 50,000 years old. And the crucial detail is the high prow of the boat. This would have been
unnecessary for boats used in calm, inland waters. The design suggests it was used on the open
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ocean.
They could have come and settled anywhere their boats landed, expanding
southwards and northwards along the western coasts before expanding inland.
Because sea levels have risen 100 feet since that time, most of the sites where
they first landed are probably buried underwater now. We’re probably also
missing a ton of evidence from the Asian side of things as well. Still, there’s
plenty of evidence of an Australoid presence up to 20,000 years old.
THE HAIDA OF NORTHWEST CANADA
In Japan, where Australoid people later founded the Jōmon culture, there is also
evidence of boat use 20,000 years ago. This could explain why some Native
American remains resemble Jōmon remains. It also connects East Asian
maritime cultures to maritime cultures on the west coast of the Americas.
For example, we’ve already discussed the Pericú of Baja, California. Further
north, the Haida of Northwest Canada are a sailing culture who resemble the
Jōmon (and later Ainu) in many ways. For example, they practice tattooing, they
have a bear cult, they practice shamanism, and look more like Australoid people
than their neighbors. In fact, some of the masks worn by the oldest shamans are
made to look just like African or Australian faces.
In the early 1900s, Dr. John Swanton of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
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reported that “the richest man among the Skidegate Haida is a Negro.” In his
Haida Texts and Myths, Swanton retells a Haida story of young man who visits a
house where shamans gathered. In front of the house stood two shamans “with
big bellies and black skins.” In another story, a young man’s uncle asks him
about a journey he took recently to the top of a mountain. He says:
Did you see the one standing there with a black skin? He shoots down on those people below
who treat each other badly. Then the land below is also full of smoke, and there is sickness every
where…Be watchful. If one always watches, he, too, will live here. The black man always
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keeps watch on those who are foolish.

WHEN DID THESE BLACK PEOPLE

ARRIVE IN CANADA?
Or better yet, how? They certainly could have taken a boat route from northern
Japan, along the shores of the Bering Strait, onto the coasts of Northwest
Canada. But the majority of the evidence suggests that all of the earliest
Americans did not come this way. Most of the dates point to an ocean migration
from Southeast Asia or Oceania, island-hopping across the Pacific Islands,
before ultimately landing on the Pacific coast of Peru (and possibly Mexico).
This would explain why the sites and settlements get older when you go further
south. In other words, Australoid people who landed in South America then
traveled north to settle North America’s shores. And here’s the thing: Crossing
the Pacific Ocean – a distance of over 8,000 miles – wouldn’t have been as
tough as it sounds. Just as there are ocean currents that will carry just about any
sailing vessel from West Africa into eastern Brazil and Mexico, there are also
ocean currents – like the Equatorial Countercurrent – that could carry
Australasian canoes and rafts across the entire Pacific.
DID YOU KNOW? Ironically, one of these trans-Pacific ocean currents is
According to a recent known to the Japanese as the Kuro Shiwa, or “Black
study of 1500 skulls from
Asia and the Americas,
Stream.” On November 30, 1980, six Japanese researchers
the Blackfoot, Iroquois, arrived in Chile, six and a half months after leaving
and many other tribes Shimoda, Japan in a 43-foot catamaran. They took the Kuro
along the eastern U.S. Shiwa Current east to the Northern Pacific Current, taking
resemble the Jōmon, the
prehistoric people of that to San Francisco, then sailing down the coast to Chile.
Japan! The Jōmon were In 1991, Gerard d’Aboville rowed a 26-foot boat from
a later branch of the 515
Australoid people, who
Japan to Washington State in just 134 days. Again, these
may have evolved migrations are not unrealistic at ALL.
regionally in east Asia. Not to mention that they’d have plenty of islands to stop at
The Indians of the
eastern seaboard would along the way! In 1978, a man named Webb Chiles left San
thus be descended from Diego to circumnavigate the world in an 18-foot boat. He
 the Australoid people of stopped at several islands along the Pacific as he made his
East Asia, with some
traits that may have
way west. Two years later, he sailed into Cairns Harbor,
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evolved locally. The 1250 miles north of Sydney, Australia.
study suggests that the
Inuit are an even later You mean to tell me that our ancestors couldn’t do this? Of
branch from that same course they could. And you’ll find this part of our journey
514 described in our chapter on the Pacific Islands.
Jōmon trunk.
THE MONGOLOID MIGRATION
When did the face of the Americas change? Genetic evidence suggests that at
least one wave of people migrated into the Americas via the Bering land bridge
which once connected Siberia to Alaska. Thus, while one group took the luxury
route, sailing ships into the west coasts of the Americas, another took the hard
road, walking through thousands of miles of bitter cold tundra. The branch that
took the land route left India about 16,000 years ago.
We don’t know how long they remained in Siberia before they migrated into
Alaska, but it’s uncertain if they were in the Americas more than 10,000 years
ago, as all of the old sites that are associated with the “first Americans” can no
longer be attributed to this group of people. Not only that, but the oldest
Mongoloid remains don’t even seem to go back that far.
But there’s no denying that a Mongoloid population DID come into the
Americas, where they quickly began displacing and replacing the old Australoid
populations. Same thing happened later in East Asia and even later in the Pacific
Islands. Different anthropologists place the Mongoloid migration into the
Americas at different times. Some say it dates back as far as 10,000 years ago,
while other say it only happened within the past 3,000 years.
DID YOU KNOW? Compounding the confusion, it also
In his Origins of Pre-Columbian Art, Terence Grieder appears that more than one wave of
proposes a major migration of Australoid people from
Asia. This migration expands in two directions, one
Mongoloid people came into the
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wave going to America and the other going into to Americas. The oldest waves were
Australia and Tasmania, both before 20,000 BC. what we call Paleo-Mongoloid, while
Grieder also proposes a later Mongoloid migration
that goes to America and Polynesia between 5000 later waves from Siberia were Neo-
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and 1500 BC. Mongoloid, meaning they were closer
in appearance to modern East Asians.
Some of these people only made it as far south as Mexico. And an even later
wave of “southern” Mongoloid people – related to the Polynesians – came by
sea from the Pacific Islands, reaching the west coast of the Americas and then
spreading outwards. We’ll talk about some of these transitions in our chapter on
the Pacific.
 WHAT ABOUT WEST AFRICANS?
As far as the people who came from West Africa, these people were obviously
Black. But there may have been multiple voyages, and it’s hard to tell when the
first voyage could have been. In They Came Before Columbus and African Presence in
Early America, Ivan Van Sertima establishes mountains of data for pre-
Columbian voyages from Africa over the past 3,000 years.
As early as 1922, Leo Weiner, in his two-volume text Africa and the Discovery of
America, was making the same case. But could the 30,000-year-old sites in Brazil
have been populated from Africa? It’s possible, but unproven. The Atlantic
Ocean has a current that sweeps off the North West coast of Africa and across
the Atlantic toward the Americas. This current, known as the Canaries Current,
is so efficient that it could carry even a simple West African fishing boat (like
the 8,000 year old Dufuna Canoe found in Nigeria) all the way to Brazil, Mexico,
or the Caribbean Islands.
In 1988, Rudiger Nehberg sailed from Senegal to northern Brazil, in a small
Fiberglass pedal-rowing boat, taking only 74 days. Two years prior, Alain
Pichavant and Stephane Peyron took only 24 days to travel from Senegal to
Guadeloupe (and then New York) in a small sailboat. In 1985, two men even
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made a transatlantic crossing by surfboard in only 39 days! So it wouldn’t take
complicated boats to make the journey – the current would have done most of
the work.
DID YOU KNOW? James Guthrie notes that there is a
A study of 1500 skulls suggests that the indigenous sizable body of evidence supporting an
people of Peru, Mexico, and southern United States,
who don’t resemble any of the modern people of east
early African migration into South
Asia, can be traced back to an early migration of America and the Caribbean:
Paleo-Mongoloid people who left Asia before Neo- Some have argued for African influence
Mongoloid features took over the region. A later between 8000 and 5700 B.C. on the basis of
group, closer resembling the people of China, cultigens, including cotton, jackbeans, and the
became the Na-Dené-speaking people of Alaska and bottlegourd, which may have reached South
northwest Canada, only extending as far south as and Central America from Africa before 5000
520 B.C. (Schwerin 1970; Simmonds 1976; Lathrap
Arizona and northern Mexico. 1977). Wendel, Schnabel, and Seelanan (1995)
have now established the identity, through DNA sequences, of a cotton variety grown both in
Africa and in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, presumably a result of early human activity.
It remains to be seen whether a connection will be made between postulated early African
voyaging and the very early pottery of the lower Amazon (8000-6000 B.C.) reported by Roosevelt
et al. (1991) and Hoopes (1994). Hoeppli (1969) identified African parasitic diseases that were
present in early America and was able to distinguish them from those brought later by the slave
trade.
Some South American populations, especially the Ge groups of eastern Brazil, possess some
seemingly African traits, but it does not seem possible at present to make a conclusive case for
 extreme antiquity of sub-Saharan African traits. Africoid skeletons from Venezuela and Yucatán
appear to demonstrate Atlantic travel from Africa to the Caribbean (Wiercinsky 1972), but they
are from a later period. Any early African colonists are likely to have been submerged beyond
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easy recognition by the more numerous Asians.
In others, if these Africans had any descendants, they’ll be tough to identify
because any West African DNA in the area will be assumed to come from the
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slave trade. However, we’ve pieced together much of this puzzle in Part Two,
where we’ve covered a wide array of genetic data pointing to Black migrations
within the past 5,000 years, as well as the civilizations they built.
REVIEW
In 1947, Henry Gladwin asserted that there were four successive waves of
migrations to enter North America: (1) Australoid Blacks, (2) Asiatic Negroids,
(3) Algonquians, and (4) Eskimos (Inuit). It was a revolutionary proposal, and
far ahead of its time. Recent studies of Native DNA (outside the U.S.) have
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confirmed that at least three waves settled the Americas. Based on my review
of the available data, it is my theory that there were indeed dozens of migrations
into the Americas before Columbus. We can group them into a few categories
as follows:
First came the Original People/DBP, either by foot, by sea, or both. They may have come
anywhere between 30 and 100,000 years ago, and may never have been here in large
numbers.
Next came Australoid People, settling the west coast of the Americas by boat, beginning
about 20,000 years ago, but possibly before then. They became the founding population
of the Americas.
Between 3,000 and 15,000 years ago a Paleo-Mongoloid people left Siberia by land.
These people established a dominant presence in the Americas, absorbing many of their
Australoid predecessors.
Several more Mongoloid migrations followed, via both a northern route through Northeast
Asia and a southern route along the Pacific Islands. These people became another
dominant face in the Americas.
Over the past 8,000 years, several voyages came from Africa, but they didn’t displace or
replace the native populations they enountered. They were, however, more influential
than any European visitors before Columbus.
In Part Two, we’ll cover the last wave of these migrations, particularly those
coming from Africa and the Black civilizations of East Asia.
 WHY IGNORE ALL THESE MIGRATIONS?
Why are the multiple migrations to the Americas ignored? Because America –
pre-white people – was held to be a nonentity in world affairs, and of no real
significance. It lay outside the peripheral view of Western minds even after
Columbus discovered it for them, and only gradually grew in relevance as
Europeans increasingly found it useful (for resources to improve the conditions
of those in Europe) and habitable (for those who had no place left to go in
Europe). But Europeans continued to debate whether Indians were human for
almost 100 years.
The issue of whether the “Indians” were human was debated for almost 100
years. It was addressed directly by Pope Paul III early on in the May 29, 1537
papal bull Sublimus Dei in which the pope declares the indigenous peoples of the
Americas to be rational beings with souls, denouncing any idea to the contrary
as directly inspired by Satan. He condemns Indian slavery and declares their
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right to liberty and property, concluding with a call for their evangelization.
So why a New World? Cause the “Old World” revolved around Europe. Adam
and Eve were white, and everything – including Black people – were thought to
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come from them.
So the Americas, like Africa, spent quite a while sitting on the shelf, awaiting
serious consideration by Europeans. It was during this time that the land bridge
migration theory was first proposed by José de Acosta, S.J. in 1590 in Historia
Natural y Moral de las Indias.
Over the next 200 years, the Americas became important, Indians became
human, and the original migration theory was revised, updated, and amended
with scientific data. It kept things simple: to think that the Americas was settled
by one group of people at one point in time. Thinking of it this way preserved
the simplicity of the Americas, which were still obviously not as relevant to the
world as those places that experiences hundreds of population movements over
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thousands of years.
So, nobody has seriously entertained the idea of several waves of migration
coming into (and possibly out of) the Americas because, well, that’s the type of
stuff that only happens in important places. It’s a racist assumption, and it goes
hand-in-hand with another racist assumption that we accept without question:
that sailing across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean was somehow outside the range
of capabilities available to ancient Black and brown people before they met
white people. Seriously, think about it. That’s the assumption.
Never mind the fact that Black folks had to sail to Australia over 60,000 years
ago (whatever land bridge they claim didn’t connect it all the way – there were at
least seven miles of water to cross even when there was a land bridge). And our
ancestors certainly had to know how to sail to settle every last one of the damn
Pacific Islands – and there’s literally more than 10,000 of them – spanning
across over 68,000,000 square miles of ocean!
You mean to tell me these folks could sail all the way up to the last island, right
before you hit the west coast of the Americas…but they never made it into the
Americas? Are the Americas some sort of magic land bottled up in an
impenetrable casing – except at the very top corner where there’s a small
opening that opened once in the distant past?
It’s the same type of thinking that has us thinking of a “Black Africa” (or “Sub-
Saharan Africa”) as if Africans could never get out of the bottom of a pot called
the African continent…except through a little spout in the top corner that
opened once in the distant past.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
We have plausible theories, but we don’t know exactly how or when Australoid
people first arrived. All we know is that they were the first large population
movement into the Americas. This leaves us with questions.
For example, if most of the oldest American skeletons are found along the
coasts, and most of the coasts are now underwater, how far back does
Australoid settlement go? Currently, the oldest skeleton, the Eve of Naharon,
dates back to at least 13,600 years ago, and was found in an underwater cave
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near Mexico. But how many more are there to be found?
Further, how many Original People (before the Australoid migration) came into
the Americas and how did they come? If we’re trying to figure out how they got
there, it’ll be tough. We don’t know when the first humans arrived, but it could
have been more than 30,000 years ago. The problem is that there simply aren’t
enough remains and none of the remains have been reliably dated. All we know
is that SOMEBODY was here before the time period when all the Australoid
remains show up along the coast.
How far did these early humans spread? Were they all displaced by Australoid
people, and does that explain accounts of DBP people in the Americas? Did any
of these DBP people survive, perhaps in the remote forest regions of the
Amazon where there are “uncontacted tribes” we know very little about?
And why do Australoid skeletons appear all along the west coasts of the
Americas, but also on the eastern coasts of Mexico, near the Caribbean? K.R.
Fladmark says they could have traveled the entire length of America’s west
528
coasts in ten years’ time. During their initial colonization did they travel to the
east coast by land (across Central America) or did they sail across some
prehistoric water channel in the Isthmus of Panama? Or did they take the longer
water journey around the southern tip of South America?
“[S]ome scientists are of the opinion that the South American Indians are the present representatives of Paleolithic man, who dwelt in
Africa before the evolution of the Black race.”
– J. Fitzgerald Lee, Great Migration, 1932
And what about the African routes into the Americas? Genetic evidence
suggests that African sailors were in South America by 8,000 years ago, but did
anyone come from African before this? We know West Africa wasn’t heavily
populated before 8,000 BC, but could Saharans have sailed down the Niger
River and made this journey 20,000 years ago? As Willard P. Leutze writes in
“The First Americans – Red or Black?”:
[T]here were two different groups of early man in the western hemisphere, and that the group
advancing from the south to north was earlier than the Asiatic migration by a substantial margin.
If men entered the Americas through South America, they probably originated in Africa.
If so, which prehistoric skeletons in the Americas look more Africoid than
Australoid? Or were some prehistoric Africans, like the 36,000 year old
Hofmeyr skull from South Africa, more Australoid? Or is Walter Neves correct
in describing populations this old as looking so much like either branch that
they should be described as resembling both African AND Australoid people
instead of being associated with only one of the two?
 AT THE EXTREME END OF SOUTH AMERICA
WHO WERE THE FUEGIANS?
“In Tierra del [Fuego] I first saw bona fide savages; & they are as savage as the most curious person would desire. – A wild man is
indeed a miserable animal, but one well worth seeing.” – Charles Darwin
The Black people of South America didn’t disappear. One of the strongest
pockets of survival appears to be in Tierra del Fuego, which is found at the
southernmost tip of South America. It is the southernmost inhabited land in the
world, and the closest to Antarctica. The region is notorious for its treacherous
rocks, violent winds and mountainous waves. There are few days without rain,
sleet, hail, or snow. Living marginalized at the extreme end of the Americas, the
Fuegian people are one of the oldest people on the planet, and most likely the
oldest people of the Americas.
The Fuegians are physically, culturally and linguistically distinct from other
Native Americans. According to Walter Neves, the Fuegians may be the
descendants of the original Australoid people who settled the Americas, mixed
with later people from East Asia. Therefore the Fuegians are the last surviving
remnants of the original people of the Americas.
Anthropologists guessed at this long ago, because many Fuegian people
practiced body painting and rock art that looked just like the kind you’d find in
Australia. Several linguists have compared the Fuegian languages to those of
529
Australia. Erich Von Hornbostel likened Fuegian songs to those of Australia,
530
Ceylon, and the Andaman Islands.
531
Later studies have found that many Fuegian remains were Australoid. Recent
studies have described Fuegians skulls as aligning “with Africans and
532
Australians, instead of with Asians and modern Amerindians.”
So who were the people of Tierra del Fuego? Joseph McCabe believed that the
migration that brought the Fuegians from Asia into the Americas came before a
later migration of “Red Indians” who “pushed the crude earlier population
south, or into the forests, just as the arrivals from Europe displaced the
533
Indian.” Later studies have confirmed that the people of Tierra del Fuego may
be descendants of the oldest surviving population in the Americas.
For several thousand years, they’ve maintained a thriving lifestyle in a harsh and
unforgiving environment, with no worries, and little evidence of strife or
struggle. They lived in the frigid cold and biting wind, wearing almost nothing,
even swimming naked in the freezing water! Remember, this is the
southernmost tip of South America, not far from Antarctica! Though the
Fuegians make fires and build domed shelters, European anthropologists
reported that they often slept in the open, completely unsheltered, while the
Europeans shivered under their blankets.
DID YOU KNOW? Old photographs of the Fuegian
From 1831-1836, Charles Darwin (then a trainee people reveal them to be darker than
Anglican priest) served as an unpaid naturalist on a
science expedition aboard the HMS Beagle. It was on
many of the indigenous people further
this journey that Darwin encountered the Fuegians, north. Some look Mongoloid (from a
and it was following this journey that Darwin later migration), but others are dark-
developed his theory of evolution. To be fair, Darwin skinned and have kept their Australoid
based his theory – which is solid – on specimens he 534
collected from nature. But when we look at the full title features. When Charles Darwin –
of his foundational work, On the Origin of Species by who was supposedly “not a racist” –
Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, I can’t help
reported on his visit to the Fuegians,
but wonder if Darwin’s racist commentary on the he said:
Fuegians was somewhat indicative of what he meant I could not have believed how wide was the
by the “favored races.” difference between savage and civilised man: it
is greater than between a wild and
domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement…Their skin is
of a dirty coppery red colour…The party altogether closely resembled the devils which come on
535
the stage in plays like Der Freischutz.
In other words, these were some dark-skinned people. For many Europeans,
this alone was enough to be considered savages and devils.
THE FUEGIAN GENOCIDE
Like the Andamanese, the Aetas, and the San, they are one of the oldest
surviving remnants of the Original People who settled the four corners of the
Earth. And like those people, the Fuegians are being exterminated.
Why? Joseph McCabe thought the Fuegians were among the best examples of
how indigenous people with the longest histories still live today. He grouped
them with the Veddahs of India, the Tasmanians, the Andamanese, the Khoisan
of South Africa, the Aetas of the Philippine Islands, and “a few less known
fragments of the human family” as some of the most marginalized people of
today. Yet he contends:
These peoples at the lowest level have no moral rules or ideas, yet they rarely steal, lie, or murder.
They are kindly to the widow and aged. They live peacefully. They observe the decalogue [Ten
536
Commandments] better than more advanced tribes, but they have no decalogue.
These people also have lower instances of mental illness, disease, and other
issues…until European contact. These groups have never – in thousands of
years of oral tradition – had an instance of suicide….until they met
 537
Europeans. These groups had ways of life that worked for tens of thousands
of years without interruption, but were stopped almost immediately and driven
to near extinction when they met Europeans. The Fuegians are yet another case
study of how this happens.
WHO’S THE BEST MAN?
DID YOU KNOW? When whites met the Fuegians, they
DBP people aren’t the only subjects of European
were civilized and strong. One of the
myth and legend. It is now known that the legendary
first
stories told by early European explorers about the
missionaries/explorers to
encounter the Fuegians, Captain
Patagones, a race of giants in South America, are
Robert Fitzoy of the HMS Beagle
actually based on the Tehuelches, a Fuegian people
who are taller than most Europeans. When European
“forbade his sailors to wrestle with the
explorers described these people, who average about
natives, who, being the stronger
6 feet tall, they called them giants and said they were
would learn to despise the white
12 to 15 feet tall. Early maps of the New World
afterwards would sometimes attach the label “Land of
538
man.” Stop. Just let that marinate
Giants”) to the area. “Patagonian” became
for a minute.
synonymous with “giant” in European folklore.
Charles Darwin, who traveled with
Fitzoy, remarked on the mental acuteness of the Fuegians:
They are excellent mimics: as often as we coughed or yawned, or made any odd motion, they
immediately imitated us. Some of our party began to squint and look awry; but one of the young
Fuegians (whose whole face was painted black, excepting a white band across his eyes) succeeded
in making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in
any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time.
Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign
language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of
more than three words?
All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told, almost
in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres; the Australians, likewise, have
long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he may be
recognized.
How can this faculty be explained? Is it a consequence of the more practiced habits of perception
and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized?
539

Isn’t that ironic? “Savage” people can remember any word they learn from a
foreigner, but “civilized” whites can’t process three words from a savage? It’s
not like these European really believed they were advanced, however. They just
made it their image. By 1850, British explorer W.P. Snow was reporting back
to his countrymen:
In their rude state wild men often fancy themselves our superiors in many things, and to rightly
deal with them we must show that we can hunt, fish, sing, talk, dance, and endure hardship as
540
well as they.
If you believe that any European to visit Tierra del Fuego (or anywhere else
indigenous people are found) was actually able to compete in fishing, hunting,
singing, or any damn thing, you’re kidding yourselves. So what did they do?
What do you think they did?
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT EM, KILL EM
Before long, whites began destroying the Fuegian people. How? As we’ll explore
in Volume Four, it’s almost as if they had a script everywhere they went. Here’s
how it went in Tierra del Fuego:
The first to come were missionaries, who introduced – along with culturally incompatible
541
ideologies – European diseases like smallpox and measles. Thus began the genocide.
The missionaries also forced the Fuegians to wear clothes, which caused more problems.
The grease the Indians put on their bodies protected them from rain and ocean spray,
but their new clothes were perpetually damp. So outbreaks of pneumonia, influenza, and
542
tuberculosis soon became common.
Not long after they set up camp, Europeans began taking Fuegians hostage and
assimilating them, only to use them to later take better advantage of the native people
and land.
Soon, Spanish sheep ranchers and gold miners launched a campaign of extermination
against the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego. They literally began hunting and
killing them like animals.
Before long, the surviving Fuegians found themselves starving because European and
American ships were eliminating their natural food supply by overfishing the region.
As it goes everywhere else they did this, the combined effects were devastating.
The Fuegians were reduced from tens of thousands pre-European contact, to
over 6,000 when Europeans set up a permanent camp in 1871, to a few hundred
by 1902…to only one woman as of 2004. You can take a guess how many there
are now.
As Charles Darwin wrote in his 1871 Descent of Man:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will
almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.
 BLACK, BROWN, AND YELLOW
Hinton Rowan Helper was a prominent North Carolina abolitionist. He saw
slavery as a barbaric practice so unsustainable it would cripple the country. After
abolition, he sided with movements to repatriate Africans to the land of their
ancestors. But in 1869, he was quoted in a published critique of the “true
intentions” of white philanthropists, activists, and abolitionists:
We should so far yield to the evident designs and purposes of Providence, as to be both willing
and anxious to see the negroes, like the Indians and all other effete and dingy-hued races,
gradually exterminated from the face of the whole earth.
In other words, all Black, brown, and yellow people have got to go. And some of us are
gonna look like the bad guys, while some of us look like the good guys, but all of us need to be
in it together. That was the mission and the vision.
Does this help you put things in perspective? Do you understand what you’re up
against? There’s a reason why we are “all Original People.” It’s not because –
despite our overwhelming diversity – we somehow all decided that we were one
people. It’s because, historically, until the coming of Europeans, we never decided
that we weren’t. We come together instead of seeking to racially annihilate one
another. We would rather unify, absorb, merge, and synthesize than wipe each
other off the planet.
But it’s not always easy. Whenever you have different groups of people living in
close proximity to each other, you’re gonna have conflict. Petty disputes grow
into long-term rivalries. Minor distinctions evolve into big differences. Trivial
things can get out of hand quick. This is something you’ll see today in urban
complexes throughout the world, including our own.
This goes back to the ridiculous conflicts that exist between different groups of
Original People today. Most of them were instigated and escalated by
Europeans, often by putting us in proximity to each other while only allowing us
a limited number of resources to compete over – all while highlighting what
makes us different to the point where that’s all we know about each other. This
book exists to change that. We hope to teach the Original People of the planet
about their history, and show them the tree we all branch off from. In doing so,
we can bring Black, brown, and yellow together.
Fortunately, we already have a model for this process. It definitely happened in
the early 1900s, when Black, Asian, and Latino communities were coming
together to overthrow white supremacy, but it also happened long before then.
I’m referring to the dawn of urban civilization, when thousands of people from
diverse cultural backgrounds came together to become a metropolitan society.
This couldn’t have happened without an effective leadership ushering in the
needed changes. Otherwise, growing populations and limited available resources
have spelled chaos. It took a small number of men and women to keep that
from happening. Those Black men and women – and the civilizations they built
– are the subject of the second part of this book.
THEN WHAT HAPPENED?
THE CYCLES OF HISTORY
In The Science of Self, Volume One, we explored the history of man, beginning with
the origins of life itself. You may have noted how the development of man
followed the same mathematical process that we find in the evolution of life and
in the development of the material world (the physical universe) itself.
For humanity, this process (1) began with the foundation of the first man, who
then (2) diverged, spread, and attempted whatever was in its capacity, and then
(3) came to realizations about what worked and what didn’t. This led to (4)
humans developing institutions, cultures, and traditions based on what was
effective, as well as social groups that engaged in the same patterns of behavior.
Many of these bands of people (5) grew considerably in size and industry due to
their consolidation and shared culture, and developed into (6) egalitarian
societies with an equal distribution of labor, ownership, prestige, and
responsibility. However, this eventually gave way to (7) the rise of leadership
and privilege, with some individuals esteemed over others, and therefore
possessing more property, knowledge, and/or rank in the society. When this
occurs, it leads to (8) a natural process of accumulation and loss, progress and
problems, advance and sacrifice, power and poverty. In essence, the rise must
come with a fall. This is all part of the natural order though, and even massive
extinctions of entire population groups can sometimes be the necessary
consequence of the trajectory of this course. That is the nature of how all
processes are brought to (9) completion, so that another cycle can begin.
Thus, as “advanced” as our early ancestors may have been, they didn’t begin
their presence on this planet as a socially cohesive community of like-minded
individuals, working cooperatively to achieve outstanding results with the least
amount of time and effort! Anyone who would claim that our first human
ancestors were flying around in hovercrafts and beaming lasers out of their
eyes…well, you just shouldn’t listen to those kinds of people. In reality, our
ancestors were not “primitive savages” but they certainly “evolved” into their
mastery of the world we inhabit. Robert Greene talks about this briefly in his
latest book Mastery, and we’ll explore this topic again in Volume Three of The
Science of Self series.
As we conclude this half of Volume Two, however, we’re left with several
questions. As you’ve seen, between 200,000 and 20,000 years ago, our ancestors
settled nearly all of the planet, learning and eventually mastering every climate
and environment they encountered. They conquered just about everyone
obstacle imaginable. They maintained symbiosis (or balance) with their natural
environments, in ways we’re struggling to do today. And they became “fruitful”
and multiplied, growing from an ancestral population of a few thousand to
several hundred communities, each containing hundreds of men, women, and
children.
But what happens when these communities are all vying for the same resources?
Sure, they can go their separate ways and start new communities (and new
genetic lineages). But what if these people – far removed the “root” from which
their ancestors dispersed – lose some of the ancestral knowledge that allowed
them to maintain a perfect balance with nature and its resources? Both because
of the way that Earth is “designed” to transition through cycles (like Ice Ages)
and because many of our ancestors overconsumed their region’s resources (like
cutting down too many trees), some communities were finding it a bit harder to
survive.
And when resources get low, anyone living in an urban community knows what
comes next. Conflicts are coming. Warfare is coming. Things will get worse.
These diverse communities had come together before, particularly in their battle
against the Neanderthals. But the Neanderthals were long gone. Our ancestors
had – once again – gone their separate ways.
Who would introduce the knowledge needed to transition our ancestors into a
new phase of culture – one that would address the difficulties of the changing
climate? Who could bring these diverse communities together in order to
institutionalize and propagate these systemic changes? What would these
cultural leaders have to teach, and how would they teach it? And where would
they come from? Where would they go? How would a small community of
change-makers reach all of the people who had settled the world before them?
These are the questions we answer in Part Two. Part Two is the story of when
“modern civilization” was introduced to the world. In its birth, these traditions
and practices were associated with the changes needed to keep things going and
moving forward. We’ll explore who they were, where they went, and what they
did. Because their contributions were so important, not only to the ancient
world but to the modern world, I’ll make sure to (again) dedicate considerable
time and space to demonstrating one of the most important things we should
know about these people: They were Black.
APPENDIX
A L L T H E S T U F F T H AT D I D N ’ T F I T
In this section, you’ll find all kinds of resources to help you make sense of the
content in this book and others like it. I’ve decided to start this section with a
list of questions frequently asked by people who reviewed this book before
publication, followed by a guide to making sense of historical information.
 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. Why use BC and AD instead of B.C.E. and C.E.?
Throughout this book, I’ve done my best to present very difficult information in
the clearest and simplest way possible – without compromising the academic
integrity of this work. It hasn’t been easy striking that balance. Some parts may
be smoother than others. In cases where I could avoid unnecessary confusion
by using a common or colloquial term, I did. For example, many people have
heard of BC before. But some people haven’t! And how many actually “get” the
concept?
So there’s no way I’m going to try to teach people about BCE and CE when so
many people don’t even understand BC and AD! Similarly, I know the part of
the Earth known as Africa was never known to its people as Africa – but that’s
how most people today know this part of the Earth. In other words, I’m just
doing my best to keep things simple wherever I can.
2. Why use so many quotes?
It’s one thing for you to read me, a guy named “Supreme Understanding” saying
these things – and it might help that I actually have solid academic credentials
and a good reputation – but it makes it easier for me to SHOW you this stuff is
real when I can let some white professor or scientist tell you himself.
3. But why quote all these old books?
As we explained earlier in this book, the historical documentation on Black
people in the ancient world is much harder to find nowadays. If you find it, its
shrouded in technical language lacking any whisper of the word “Negroid” or
“black-skinned.” Back when Europeans wrote openly about race, they put out
books that establish many of the points I’m making in this book. Some of these
books are unknown and out-of-print nowadays. I’m bringing them back out.
And not only am I quoting Sir Fuddyduddy the Third to show you how the
Mayans loved Black people, I’m going to add some modern sources to the mix
(you know, the ones that never use the word “Black”) to support my case.
4. Where can I find your sources?
You think I’m making this stuff up? C’mon, I’m not like the other guys, I
promise. I’ve provided literally more than 1,000 endnotes citing the sources for
the claims I’m making in this text. And these are reputable sources! There are at
least 500 other sources which I’ve consulted over the past several years, but – as
I wrote and edited – those are the ones I didn’t get a chance to cite. If you’d like
to follow up on any of those sources, you can dig them up at any library, or at
Google Books, and research for yourself. In fact, it is my hope that you do just
that. If you ever find a claim or statement where I didn’t think to cite my
sources specifically, just look up what I’m talking about on Google Books and
you’ll find plenty. I don’t make things up, I promise.
5. Where’s all the information on woman? What about them?
What do you mean? Don’t think, because I’m not mentioning women by name,
that I’m not including them in this history somehow. Everything you read about
“Original People,” you’re reading about men and women. That’s a given.
There are many instances where males dominated (but more so within the
context of the Anu People, who we discuss in Part Two), but there are many
instances where women were at the helm. The fact that migrations were often
led by males does nothing to discount the importance of women. Just as men
shouldn’t be threatened by the fact that our earliest systems for mathematical
notation may have been systems to keep track of a woman’s cycle.
Anytime you see Y-DNA in this book, we’re talking about men, but anytime
you see mtDNA, those are maternal lineages. In other words, everywhere the
men went, women were there…or else that was the end of them! Plain and
simple! For a richer discussion of the roles played by males and females within
the historical communities of Original People, check out Volume Three.
6. What does indigenous mean?
Indigenous is a tricky word. I use it in this book because it’s a common word for
what we call “Original” throughout this book. However, you have to understand
what it means, and what it doesn’t. Unless you’re in east Africa where the first
humans emerged, no one is really “indigenous” in the sense of originating
someplace else on Earth. The idea of being “aboriginal” or “indigenous” is
more so about claiming the original land rights as the first population to settle
someplace and call it home. Keep in mind, I’m talking about communities who
evolved into distinct populations in these new environments.
Thus, the “indigenous” people of the Americas are not a group of humans who
“came from” the Americas, but a group descended from the Australoid and
Mongoloid people who settled this region and made it home. Australoid people
evolved in Australasia, Mongoloid people in central Asia, West African people
in West Africa, and so on. But all these people can ultimately be traced back to
the root – the Original People.
7. What does “ancestor” mean?
Sometimes, people think of their “ancestors” as a group of people who
contributed directly to their lineage. As in their parents, parents’ parents, and so
on. But think about your great uncle. Wouldn’t you consider him one of your
ancestors? He was certainly kin to your great granddad, so why not? When I use
the word “ancestor,” I’m using it in the indigenous sense that appropriates one’s
entire family tree as one’s ancestors. So, while you’re thinking about it that way,
consider how all the Original People we discuss in this book (and Part Two) are
essentially your ancestors.
It may seem odd to call the people of the Indus Valley your ancestors if your
family is from South Africa, but if you think about how much some of those
ancient progenitors traveled, you’ll realize that some Black brother from India
really could have been in South Africa 6,000 years ago – or vice versa.
No exaggeration. They really traveled this much, especially in the period of the
Anu people, who we discuss in Part Two. Perhaps this is why the “elites,” the
people in the statues, tend to look like familiar faces we’ve seen in statues from
another civilization thousands of miles away. When you look at the statues,
figurines, and effigy pots in Part Two, you’ll see tons of lookalikes. You might
also see some of your own features! When you do, ask yourself – who and
where do I come from? Then…find out.
8. You mention a lot of indigenous populations that are, or were, “under
attack.” How do I help them?
You’re right, and we’ll discuss many more in Volume Three. Sadly, this is the
state of affairs for much of the indigenous world, especially so the closer these
people are to the oldest human lineages on the planet – that is, the Original
People. So when we talk about the crusade against Black people worldwide,
don’t ever think that Europeans simply “hate us” for the “color of our skin.”
That’s not it. It’s about who survives, and who doesn’t. If that doesn’t make
sense, it will become clearer in Volume Four.
As for the indigenous communities that are being destroyed as we speak, there
are stories like this everywhere we look. There’s a map from the Indigenous
Peoples’ Project at www.ifg.org that lists hundreds of aboriginal ethnic groups
and the specific threats they face in this age of globalization. That should lead
you to at least some ways that you can help these communities.
At the same time, never forget that “charity begins at home.” Meaning, you
might be able to make a long-distance donation to the Bagyeli people of
Cameroon in their fight against Chevron, ExxonMobil, Petronas, Thanry,
Bollore, Coron, Alpi, IMF, and the World Bank…or you may be able to raise
some awareness by talking about their plight with others who would care…and
you SHOULD…but don’t forget that our own communities are full of the
SAME kinds of people facing the SAME threat: eventual annihilation.
Of course, the tragedies experienced by people living in other countries are
often greater than ours. We shouldn’t lose sight of that fact, but our risk of
being wiped off the planet is the same. We are ALL in bad shape. Just don’t
allow yourself to think we’re in such bad shape because of some internal defect.
It’s not as if we wreaked all this havoc on ourselves. Partially, yes – but totally?
Just think. Many of us believe that we’re a mess because alcohol and drug abuse
is through the roof in urban communities. But aboriginal people everywhere in the
world are now alcoholics. I’m not exaggerating. Find me ONE indigenous
community that hasn’t been set into “self-destruct” mode under European rule
and I’ll be surprised.
What we see in our communities are the long-term results of the SAME process
we describe throughout this book. So what can we do? We can start by loving
our own, coming together wherever and however we can, building more bonds
than we break, teaching more youth than we condemn, and finding our
common grounds with the people most tragically affected by the threats we all
face.
 SCIENCE VS. PSEUDOSCIENCE
What’s science, and what’s not? With all the information and misinformation
raining down on us nowadays, it’s often hard to tell what’s real from what’s
false. In The Science of Self, Volume One, we dedicated one chapter to helping our
readers better understand what science is really about. Here’s a quick review of
what you can expect to find when someone is employing “real science”:
Skepticism of unsupported claims
Combination of an open mind with critical thinking
Attempts to repeat experimental results.
Requirements of testability
Seeking out falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis
Use of descriptive language
Performing controlled experiments
Theories that are self-correcting
A reliance on evidence and reason
No claims for absolute or certain knowledge
The production of useful knowledge
Science was not “invented by white people,” but it was certainly used by them
when advantageous to their goals. Why not us? For us, science can play a vital
role in reconstructing a real sense of identity and history, leading to further
solutions for our problems. These solutions, because they are based on scientific
study, are more likely to be successful than ideas that aren’t.
Far too many of our ideas are based on claims made by people who don’t
employ honest scientific inquiry. How do we tell which is which? As William D.
Gray explains in Thinking Critically About New Age Ideas, pseudoscience (and
religious thinking) have some of the following features:
Has a negative attitude to skepticism
Does not require critical thinking
Does not require experimental repeatability
Does not require tests
Does not accept falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis
Uses vague language
Relies on anecdotal evidence
No self-correction
Relies on belief and faith
Makes absolute claims
Produces no useful knowledge
Pseudoscience wasn’t invented by white people either, but it was also used by
them when advantageous. It has played a vital role in constructing a false sense
of identity and history, leading to further problems and a lack of solutions.
 HOW TO ANALYZE HISTORICAL INFORMATION
DEVELOPING THE ABILITY TO ANALYZE
HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY
INFORMATION
Apply understanding & knowledge of past events to new situations
Identify cause and effect relationships
Practice problem solving through the use of analogies

SYNTHESIZING INFORMATION
Synthesis is creating something new from a number of different sources.
Synthesizing information is a process of examining and inferring relationships
among sources and then making those relationships explicit. Synthesis is also a
process of combining information and ideas to create or develop a new idea,
focus, or perspective. An effective way to integrate and synthesize information is
to recognize and use four particular thought patterns. These include:
Cause-effect – expresses a relationship between two or more actions, events, or
occurrences that are connected in time.
Comparison-contrast – the comparison pattern is used to emphasize or
discuss similarities between or among ideas, theories, concepts, or events, while
the contrast pattern emphasizes differences.
Problem-solution – defines a problem and conducts research to test possible
solutions.
Classification – organize information into broad types or categories.
USING ANALOGIES
The use of analogies to understand and interpret situations is another method
for analyzing information. Using analogies requires one to identify similar
problems or situations and compare them with the problem at hand. The use of
analogies enables one to learn from the experiences of others. Some guidelines
to follow are:
How are the situations alike?
How are they different?
How well does the analogy apply to your situation?
What does it suggest that you do?

RECOGNIZE & VALUE VARIOUS

 VIEWPOINTS
It’s also important to factor in our viewpoints and those of others when we
consider arguments. You can:
Identify an individual’s values and biases (including your own)
Explore issues from multiple perspectives & understand multiple perspectives
Examine your existing beliefs, attitudes, and opinions. Why do you think so? What
evidence do you have to support that opinion?
Evaluating differing viewpoints is an essential critical thinking skill because it
enables you to pull together divergent ideas and integrate differing, even
contradictory, sources. The skill is valuable as you research papers, examine
social and political issues, and resolve controversy.
SUGGESTIONS
Deliberately put aside or suspend temporarily what you already believe about a particular
issue.
Discover what similarities and differences exist among the various viewpoints.
Identify the assumptions on which each view is based.
Look for and evaluate evidence that suggests the viewpoint is well thought out.
To overcome the natural tendency to pay more attention to points of view with which you
agree and treat opposing viewpoints superficially, deliberately spend more time reading,
thinking about, and examining ideas that differ from your own.
To analyze particularly complex, difficult, or very similar viewpoints, write a summary of
each. Through the process of writing, you will be forced to discover the essence of each
view.
For more on the science of thinking critically, check out A Sucker Born Every
Minute, our guide to scams, cons, frauds, hoaxes, and how to avoid them.
 WHAT DO WE CALL THEM?
NAMES, IDENTITY, AND CULTURAL
CONFUSION
The Olmecs didn’t call themselves Olmec. The Papuans didn’t give themselves
that name. The Aetas either. The list goes on: Yoruba, San, Moor, Ainu,
Hottentot, Berber, Iroquois, Egyptian, Nubian, Ethiopian, Twa. All of these
names were given to these people by other groups.
Very few of the names we have for the world’s indigenous people actually came
from those people themselves. Typically, they were descriptions given by others.
Sometimes they were meant to be demeaning (e.g. Eskimo, which means, “eater
of raw meat”), but many were simply descriptive names that meant “first
people” or “Black people.”
What did they call themselves? Well, the idea of “Black people” only becomes
relevant when you’re differentiating a group from people who are not Black.
Thus names like Nakhi and Hei Miao in China (both translate to “Black people”)
differentiated them from other Chinese who weren’t as dark. Same with the saĝ
gíg-ga (“black heads”) in ancient Sumer, one of the first civilizations to be
overrun with whites.
But in situations where there’s no color differential (or nobody cares about
color), Original People distinguished their unique clan or cultural identity by
their language group. For example, an Andaman Islander may say, “I’m a Bea
man, and she’s a Boro woman. Those are languages spoken by the people of the
Andaman Islands.
Original People also used clan names that represent a common lineage, usually
based on some sort of totemic animal that became considered a legendary
ancestor. For example, in the nineteenth century the San of southern Africa
lived in groups with names like The Giraffes, The Big Talkers, The Scorpions,
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and even The Lice. Aren’t these the same types of “clan names” used by the
street gangs of the 50s and 60s? Sure are. It’s also where the makers of Western
sports got the idea of team names and mascots.
As you can see, our ancestors were not some monolithic, unified people. Every
time a large group split into smaller groups, those groups were known by
different clan names. Sometimes they identified with a totem, at other times
with their dialect. Our history, not simply as the human species – but the history
of life itself – is a steady succession of cycles: splitting and rejoining, dividing
and reuniting, diverging and merging. It’s simply the way life works. It’s the
mathematical nature of the way things went in the past and – as we’ll explain in
Volume Five – it’s the way things will go in the future.
So it’s not often that we’ll find a “collective” identity for our prehistoric
ancestors. Typically, they simply considered themselves “people” or “humans”
until they encountered something distinctly “other” than themselves, either
physically or culturally. For example, the Black people of the Andaman Islands
have many clan names, but – as a group – they call themselves Ang (or en-nge or
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Ya-eng-nga), which simply means “human being.” The San people of southern
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Africa call themselves Ju|’hoansi, which means “Real People.” Yet they call
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Europeans !ohm, a category that includes predators and other wild beasts.
So what do we call them? All things considered, “Original People” works well as
a global group name for the planet’s indigenous people. So does “Black people.”
Yes, even though few people actually have skin the color of coal, we can call
Original People “Black.” I’ll explain.
For starters, some people don’t think “Black” is a “real identity.” “Black,” they
say, “is not a geographic identity or nationality.” Fair enough, but it shouldn’t
be, because Black people are not bound to any one place on the Earth. “Africa”
is where humanity was born, but – as we’ve seen in this book – these same
Black people were the first people everywhere else as well. So the WORLD was
once Black. Calling Black people “African” is not a bad thing, but we should not
think of Africa as a special little box where Black people belong. The planet
Earth belongs to the Original Man.
DID YOU KNOW? Second, Blackness is not simply a
Some of the oldest surviving mtDNA lineages in the marker for the pigmentation of our
world are found among the Andaman Islanders, the
Orang Asli (or Semang) of Malaysia, and the San
skin, because all Original People aren’t
people of southern Africa. All of these people jet-black in complexion (though some
consider themselves “Original People.” The name are). Instead, the idea of being “Black”
“Orang Asli” literally means “Original People.” refers to an identity that is timeless and
nonlocal. As we explained in The Science of Self, Volume One:
Black is the life-giver, and life-taker, it is the absence and the presence, it is the source and the
destination, it is everything and it is nothing. Because of this, Blackness is – on every level,
including the human presence on Earth – both the origin and final destination of all things…This
“Blackness” – at its deepest level – may be the consciousness that informs all of the above, from
dark energy to electromagnetic energy, from dark matter to black matter, from the womb of the
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Earth to the mind of modern man.
In other words, we are Black because “blackness” is where everything begins.
We are both Original and the “Origin of All.” Our Blackness did not begin with
the first Homo sapiens, but with life and matter themselves.
Thus, it’s no coincidence that the Original People of the planet are so dark-
skinned. Melanin, the chemical that makes us rich in complexion is the key
ingredient in much of life’s formulas. It is known to the scientific community as
an “organizing molecule,” fundamental to the growth, order, and direction of
life and its evolution. As we explained in The Science of Self, it’s found in the
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depths of space and the center of our brains.
Finally, those among us who think that “Black means death” or that “Black
means evil” have allowed the wrong people to define things for us. Before the
social orders of the world were turned upside-down, European explorers
reported back to their governments that the people of Asia and Africa portrayed
all their gods as Black and their demons as white. The darkest man among them
was the most handsome, and – in India – they would rub their newborn babies
in sesame oil to make their skin darker.
We’ve come a long way from the time when the world was Black, and many of
us are quite confused about who and what we are. It is my hope that this book
helps redefine our worldview, allowing us, ultimately, to usher in an era when
the world is Black again, and the Original People of the planet prevail.
 “THOSE FOREIGNERS”
Are you tired of foreigners? Sick of other ethnic groups who don’t like you?
Over the years, I’ve heard just about any complaint you can imagine regarding
the presence of Arabs, Asians, and Latinos in Black communities. Whether it’s
the Vietnamese nail shop, the Pakistani gas station, or the Mexican construction
workers, the overall impression seems to be “They don’t like us or respect us,
yet they want to take our money. We need to take back our communities.” But
this is actually not a “them vs. us” issue.
You see, there’s a lot we don’t understand about immigrants to the U.S. For
starters, we need to be honest and consider the fact that Africans who move to
the U.S. tend to have the same attitudes towards American blacks. So it’s not
just an “Arab/Asian/Mexican” thing. It’s not a perspective specific to one or
two groups of people. It’s something widespread, and we need to research why.
Next, we should question how long these people have felt this way. We can look
at history to see that the Black and brown world was once very unified. Even as
recently as the 1940s, the rest of the world – from India to Japan to Mexico to
Iran – were all trying to align with Black America. But then things changed.
So we have to look at the historical and social dynamics that led to the
conditions we’re seeing today. For starters, the majority of people who can
afford to immigrate to the U.S. are not the poor people of their nations. They’re
a little better off, which might mean that they were connected to a politically
conservative family who holds pro-American values.
At the very least, they believe in the American Dream. Once they get here, they
end up establishing a business where they can afford to: in the poorest
communities. Who gives them the loans? White people. White people are the
ones who say, “We wouldn’t give this loan to a Black American, but we have no
problem giving it to you.”
So when we look at the obvious disparity in the ownership of businesses in the
Black community, we have to look at WHO makes that possible. We’ve got to
stop looking at things at the surface level and dig deeper. Going back to when
they first got to this country, you should also know that most immigrants,
including Africans, are told to avoid Blacks and Hispanics. I’m not making this
up. They WILL hear it from someone at some point in their naturalization
process.
And when these kinds of things are seeded in their mind, together with the
images they’re force-fed by the American media, it creates those negative
perspectives. But don’t get it twisted. Everybody doesn’t like everybody back in
their homeland. But when immigrants from any country come to the U.S., they
pool together with others from their ethnic group and collaborate in circles of
trust and support – which allows them to thrive financially. They’re able to share
a car, a house, an apartment, anything, because they’re still in the collectivist
mindsets their people have back home. This is what it takes to keep a business
alive. It takes coming together, which is hard to do if you’re not part of that
culture.
But don’t think that – just because a few Kenyans and Ugandans can go half on
a cargo shipment of designer handbags – that those people would get along just
as well back in Africa. You see, America forces people to work together or they
fail. This is why they look at Black America as such a puzzle. Immigrants can’t
understand why a people who needs so desperately to come together, instead
continues to squabble and bicker over the pettiest of differences, often killing
each other over these issues. If only THEY knew the history of what White
America did to Black America to make things this way.
The bottom line is not to misinterpret these historical dynamics, and walk away
thinking that everyone hates you and you should hate them too. It’s deeper than
that, especially when you consider how many Black Americans have the same
negative perception of Black America. This is the byproduct of miseducation
and purposeful division. We’ve been turned against each other to their benefit.
Because if you talk to enough immigrants, particularly the ones who came from
less conservative backgrounds – and you just randomly say, “White people make
me sick” – you’ll see that many of them have plenty to say on that subject. Talk
to the dark-skinned Indian store owners and ask them if they’re Black. You
might be surprised. Some will be scared to say yes, others will do so proudly.
And once you know the history, and I mean the DEEP history – including how
all the Black, brown, and yellow people of the world were done the EXACT
same way by the exact same people – you’ll have quite a LOT to talk and build
about. So keep building with people from other countries, even if things don’t
click right away, and learn about their cultures. In turn, perhaps you can teach
them what they missed in their miseducation process. You might be the one
who closes the gap.
And when that’s done, anything is possible.
 GENETICS GLOSSARY
Allele: One of multiple alternative forms of a single gene. Different alleles can result in different
phenotypic or genotypic traits.
Autosomal DNA: In humans, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes, 22 of which are autosomes. The
23rd determines gender: female (XX) or male (XY). The first 22 determine other traits. These traits
can be dominant or recessive, making them more likely or less likely to be passed on to your
descendants based on who you have children with (and their autosomal DNA).
DNA sequence: This is a “sentence” of information that directs the functions of an organism, also
known as a gene or genetic sequence.
Founder Effect: The loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a
very small number of individuals from a larger population.
Gene: A DNA sequence or genetic sequence that can be inherited. Different variations of a gene
are known as alleles.
Genetic Drift: Genetic drift describes random variations in a group’s genetic makeup. Small
populations are especially prone to the phenomenon, because the genes of a single individual play
a proportionately larger role in successive generations. Genetic drift can cause one individual’s
genes to predominate, or for another gene to be eliminated entirely.
Genome: The total package of genetic sequences possessed by an organism.
Genotype: The entire set of alleles present in an individual’s genome. This is what produces the
individual’s phenotype.
Haplogroups: A group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with the same SNP
mutation. Different lines of Y-DNA and mtDNA can’t combine back together again, so a haplotype
can change only by mutation. These mutations are known by genetic markers, which can be traced
to identify where a population has been, and for how long.
Haplotype: A haplotype is a combination of various alleles or SNPs that are associated. It’s a
“complex” of genetic traits, useful for identifying groups that share genes and ancestry.
mtDNA: Mitochondrial DNA is passed down the matrilineal line, from mother to child (no matter
what gender).
Mutations: When DNA makes copies, sometimes there are errors in the copy. These errors become
mutations. Many evolutionary biologists believe such mutations are random, but some say
beneficial mutations are “pre-adaptive” and emerge to allow a species to thrive in new
circumstances.
Phenotype: The visible physical (and behavioral) traits of an organism. This is basically whatever is
manifested externally, and is determine by one’s genotype.
Population Bottleneck: An evolutionary event in which a population descends from a reduced
parent group, either because part of the parent group is killed or prevented from reproducing, or
when a small group becomes separated from the main population. Over time, bottlenecks can
increase genetic drift toward homogeneity. (Also see “Founder Effect”)
Selection: Selection simply means the process by which the members of the next generation are
chosen. “Natural Selection” is when the members with the features best adapted to their natural
circumstances are the ones most likely to live and reproduce. The ones who aren’t a good fit with
nature will die off. “Direct Selection” is when members of a species choose which features they
prefer. This also happens when animals or plants are domesticated, being bred to produce the
most desired features, while other varieties die off.
SNP: An SNP (single-nucleotide polymorphism) is a DNA sequence variation found when one
chemical in the sequence is different between members of the same species.
Survival Advantage: A member of a species has a reproductive advantage when their traits are
better adapted to the needs of their environment than those of other members. (Remember,
“survival” is about how long your genetic lineage survives, not how long you personally live.) This is
what they mean by “survival of the fittest.”
Y-DNA: Because only males carry the Y chromosome, Y-chromosome DNA is DNA passed solely
along the patrilineal line, from father to son.
 THE GENETICS OF ORIGINAL PEOPLE
One branch of the Original People carried Y-DNA haplotype DE, while
another branch carried Y-DNA haplotype CF. The split between these two
branches happened near India, sometime after the Toba eruption 74,000 years
ago. The split between these two lineages produced what anthropologists now
regard as the two oldest branches of the world’s Original People: Africans and
Australians.
THE AFRICOID LINEAGES
We can track some of the migrations of the world’s first settlers using human
genetics. The two oldest male (Y-DNA) lineages are Haplogroup A and B.
Haplogroup A is the African macro-haplogroup from which all modern
haplogroups descend. BT is a subclade, or descendant lineage, of Haplogroup A.
BT has two major lineages, Haplogroups B and CT. If none of this makes any
sense, see “A Re-Introduction to Genetics” and come back.
Haplogroup A (identified by genetic marker M91) is typically only found in
Africa, especially among the Khoisan, many Ethiopians (especially the Beta
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Israel), Nilotic people, and small groups of people in West Africa. Outside
Africa, traces of Haplogroup A have been found in Yemen, Palestine, Jordan,
Oman, England, coastal Turkey and several of the Aegean Islands.
Haplogroup B (Genetic marker M60) is also typically only found in Africa,
especially among Central African pygmies, East African Hadzabe, and (again)
Nilotic people. Outside Africa, traces of Haplogroup B have been found in
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Southern Iran, Pakistan, and India.
Could earlier migrations carrying Haplogroup A or B have made it out of
Africa? Absolutely. In fact, there are a few people carrying those lineages outside
Africa today, but we don’t know enough to say anything conclusive. All we
know is that – if earlier human migrations did expand beyond Arabia (and they
probably did) – they were effectively wiped out around 74,000 years ago, due to
the explosion of the Toba supervolcano. In other words, just before the
ancestral wave of Original People began their expansions, the Earth had
basically hit the ‘reset’ button.
Outside Africa, the oldest human lineages are associated with Y-DNA
Haplogroup D, which descended from Haplogroup DE around 65,000 years
ago. Haplogroup DE came from the root of civilization, but we’re not sure
where it split into the D and E lineages. DE has been found in Nigeria and
Tibet, suggesting the split could have happened anywhere in between. The split
may have happened in East Africa, as Haplogroup E seems indigenous to the
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region. Today, most modern Africans carry E lineages.
Meanwhile, Haplogroup D is found among the oldest people of India, the Ainu
of Japan, the Miao-Yao and Nakhi of China, and several other minority groups
in East Asia, particularly those speaking Tibeto-Burman languages. These people
represent the oldest settlers of these regions.
Carriers of D may have made it into the Americas, but they didn’t leave
surviving lineages. In India, the distribution of D ranges from 0-65%,
representing the people who originally settled the Indus Valley over 50,000 years
ago. Everywhere we find Haplogroup D, Diminutive Black People are found. In
fact, the short-statured Black-skinned people of the Andaman Islands are almost
exclusively D, showing us what at least some of the original people of the DE
Haplogroup may have looked like.
Studies of mtDNA confirm what the Y-DNA suggests. The Orang Asli (a DBP
population of Malaysia) and the Andaman Islanders belong to mtDNA
haplogroups M, N, and R, the oldest descendants of the L3 Haplogroup that
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began the human exodus from Africa.
THE AUSTRALOID LINEAGES
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The East African Haplogroup CT gave birth to CF somewhere in the Near
East (possibly Palestine) about 50-60,000 years ago, a little after its older sibling
Haplogroup DE. The ancestors of CF may have taken the northern route out of
Africa, up the Nile Valley and through Sinai, before crossing the Levant, where
C and F go their separate ways.
C begins the second wave of human expansion into Asia (Haplogroup D went
first), in a coastal migration along Southern Asia, into India, then into Southeast
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Asia. Some go south into Australia, some sail east into the Pacific, and some
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travel up the Asian coast, into the Americas.
Meanwhile, the other branch of CF, haplogroup F, spreads from the Near East
into Asia, Europe, and back into Africa. Both groups settled wherever we later
find Australoid people or their traces. In other words, the descendants of
Haplogroup DE continued the Africoid lineage found in A and B, while the
earliest descendants of CF became Australoid people. After several thousand
years, many of these lineages have merged and converged, but we can still trace
them back to where they came from because DNA doesn’t recombine in such a
way that we lose our roots.
 THE BIBLE AS HISTORY?
As we’ve said throughout this book, we can’t rely on scriptures alone as a source
of historical fact. Not only have these traditions been subjected to numerous
revisions, outside influences, and outright tampering and alteration, they are also
coded in the language of allegory and myth. In other words, people should not
take these stories literally. At the same time, if we can appreciate that these
traditions come from a diverse array of intelligent people from the Near East
and North Africa, we can consider their accounts in an appropriate historical
context.
CAN WE READ THE BIBLE
SCIENTIFICALLY?
Is there a scientific way to approach the content of the Bible (or any scripture)?
Absolutely. But you’ve gotta take faith and acceptance out of the equation and
read things fresh while consulting plenty of outside sources. I’ll explain. I took a
few college courses in the study of religion. I learned that there are several
methods of making sense of scripture. Two of the most prominent are known
as exegesis and esegesis. Exegesis means “out of the text” and refers to religious
scholars digging for meaning in the scripture by comparing it with evidence
from outside sources. An example would be looking at archaeological evidence
for the enslavement of the Hebrews (there’s none).
Esegesis means “reading into the text” and refers to the act of coming up with
meanings based solely on what’s in the scripture itself. An example would be
looking for proof of angels by looking for Bible verses that talk about angels.
For many of us who don’t want to “question the Word,” this is commonplace.
Perhaps that’s why “esegesis” sounds just like “Easy Jesus.”
It’s really easy to skip the questioning and fast-forward to just believing. But
you’ll be missing most of the picture if you look at things that way. For example,
most Biblical scholars accept that 70-80% of the words attributed to Jesus in the
New Testament could not have been his, that books like Genesis were compiled
from multiple source documents from different traditions, and that there are
hundreds of places where one scripture contradicts another, or is simply
inaccurate. And you can figure that out JUST by looking at the Bible itself.
Imagine how much you could find if you look at the history of the Bible’s
compilation (like all the books that were left out and why), or the way that
scribes and translators purposely altered its words.
Despite all this, you certainly can read the Bible and find some history in there,
but it’ll be tough to distinguish the actual historical records from the mythical
traditions, allegories, contradicting claims, translator’s alterations, and so on. The
question then is, why do you want to?
 BLACK PEOPLE CAME BEFORE ADAM?
In the 1800s, a theological argument known as Pre-Adamism regained
prominence. Pre-Adamism is the theological view that there were humans on
Earth before Adam. Typically the descendants of Adam, known as Adamites,
are understood to be white people, while the Original People of the Earth (the
“Black, brown, and yellow races”) are considered Pre-Adamites.
Pre-Adamism emerged because it was difficult for European theologians to
reconcile the genealogy of Adam (which only goes back 6,000 years) with the
evidence that other people – typically dark-skinned people outside of Europe –
had been around, evolving and building civilizations, long before this time.
Many of these theologians were attempting to find a logical way to address the
findings of scientists and historians. This is how the idea of Pre-Adamism came
to be.
One of the most popular advocates for Pre-Adamism was Alexander Winchell.
Although he denied civilization and humanity to the “inferior Negro,”
Alexander Winchell could not deny that the Black man was the Original Man.
Over 40 years before Louis Leakey began digging up human remains in Africa,
Winchell knew such a day was coming. In his 1878 tract, Adamites and Pre-
Adamites, he wrote:
The search for the antiquity of the human species is, therefore, a search for the antiquity of the
Black races. That search must be instituted in the regions which the Black races have occupied –
Africa, Australia and obliterated continental lands. These races have left no records, no
monuments; and hence the search must become a purely geological one. This task is one which
has never been undertaken; but it is one from which science will not shrink; and I anticipate that
somewhere in the caverns of Abyssinia [Ethiopia], or south Africa, or Australia, or in some of the
stratified formations of those countries, we shall discover evidences of the existence of man at a
date prior to the general glaciation of Europe and the United States.
Without the archaeological evidence that would be discovered in the 1920s,
Winchell was still able to confidently conclude that the Black race came first.
Pre-Adamism went hand in hand with the idea that Adam’s creation goes back
to only 6,000 years ago, and that Pre-Adamites built all of the world’s cultures
and civilizations before this time. Often, it was assumed that the Adamic race, or
white race, must have somehow come from the Black race. Winchell wrote:
The first white man may have descended from a remote progenitor of black color; but the first
black man could not have descended from a white progenitor…Preadamitism means simply that
Adam is descended from a Black race, not the Black races from Adam.
Later, Winchell added, “It is said to have been a dark race which fell, but if the
white race sprang from the dark, it would inherit the moral taint, which entered
the blood of the original offender.” In Volume Four, we’ll explore Pre-
Adamism, its history, and the significance of this quote.
 GOING BACK TO AFRICA – 50,000 YEARS AGO
About 130,000 years ago, the ancestral African population expanded from
Africa into southern Arabia. There, the Nubian Complex ran the world (at least
as much of the world as humans knew then) until the migrations into Asia and
Europe. The earliest outpost of this human expansion appears to have been
India.
How do we know? Through genetics, we can track the people who left Arabia
and see where they went. One of our ancestral groups carried the mtDNA
haplogroup M1 (and the Y-DNA haplogroup DE) into India, where they
established one of the earliest Black colonies outside Africa and Arabia. Then,
offshoots of that M1 lineage, ventured furthered into Asia, and eventually
beyond.
Around 74,000 years ago the Toba supervolcano blew, killing most of the M1
population in India. After Toba, the M1 people who survived in East Asia began
a westward migration, eventually resettling India. They considered west into
Arabia, and then back into Africa, around 50,000 years ago. Some of the people
who came back to Africa may have been Australoid survivors of Toba. Grafton
Elliot Smith said a prehistoric colony of Australoid people could be found in
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North Africa. Albert Churchward Later studies involving some of the oldest
human skulls in Africa have indicated proto-Australoid features.
This was when M1 and DE made their way back into Africa, effectively
renewing the human history of Africa, and giving birth to a new population.
Later, M, D, and E lineages again migrated out of Africa.
Basically, it appears that the same people who left Africa 130,000 years ago later
came BACK to Africa about 50,000 years ago and mixed it up with the
descendants of their ancestors. And there are no “pure” lineages in Africa that
are without these elements. In a 2008 genetic study of Khoisan DNA, Behar and
colleagues found that even the Khoisan, one of oldest genetic lineages in Africa,
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received an influx of “additional lineages” 40,000 years ago. The BBC
reported on the study:
“Once this population reached southern Africa, it was cut off from the eastern African
population by these drought events which were on the route between them.” Modern humans
are often presumed to have originated in East Africa and then spread out to populate other areas.
But the data could equally support an origin in southern Africa followed by a migration to East
and West Africa. The genetic data show that populations came back together as a single, pan-
African population about 40,000 years ago. This renewed contact appears to coincide with the
development of more advanced stone tool technology and may have been helped by more
favourable environmental conditions. “[The mixing] was two-way to a certain extent, but the
 majority of mitochondrial lineages seem to have come from north-eastern Africa down to the
558
south,” said Spencer Wells.
If you find the idea of a “back migration” strange, why should it be? If Africa is
the lush, tropical, resource-rich environment we know it is, why wouldn’t the
people who left when it desertified want to come back when things looked
greener?
Actually, prehistoric back migrations into Africa were almost as common as
559
migrations out of Africa. So the back-migration 50,000 years ago was just one
of many, but it was especially important because it may have set off a significant
chain of events within Africa.
We know that these people spread as deep as southern Africa, and contributed
genetically to every living population in Africa today. We also know that at least
one branch of these people, those carrying Y-DNA lineage E, contributed
heavily to the migration that settled West Africa and became the ancestors of
most Black Americans today.
 AFRICAN PHYSICAL DIVERSITY
In Africa, everyone doesn’t look alike. In fact, Africa is the most diverse place
on Earth. Considering that NO ONE on the planet looks the same as their
ancestors did two billion years ago (unless you’re still a squiggly little single-
celled organism), you can imagine that we’ve also changed considerably from the
appearance of our ancestors two million years ago, two hundred thousand years
ago, and even two thousand years ago. Seriously, we’ve all changed. It’s not just
you. That’s just kind of the way nature works.
Understanding that there is not a single African “look” can help you understand
how all the world’s people came from Black people. And when they say the
Egyptians weren’t Black, it’s because they’re saying there’s only one way to look
Black.
THE WEST AFRICAN LOOK
As we noted in “Who and What is Black?” (See Part One) there’s a lot of
confusion that arises from the misconception that only those fitting the West
African profile are “true Africans.” Effectively, this de-Africanizes many of the
native populations of Africa itself, not to mention the billions of Black people
who inhabit regions outside of continental Africa.
As noted earlier, this works well for Eurocentrists, who want to isolate a “true
Negroid” type and then use these criteria to say that the people who founded
the world’s ancient civilizations might have painted pictures of themselves with
Black skin, but they weren’t really Black nor African. Notice that they never set
such standards for what constitutes a “true” Caucasian, and will include just
about anyone they want!
This is why African anthropologist S.O.Y. Keita has gone to great pains to
scientifically establish the profound diversity of African physical types. In History
in Africa, he explains, “The extreme Negroid variant is just that, a variant, and
560
not a “founding” or the “original” type.” Yet, because West African Bantu
people expanded across so much of Africa in the past 5,000 years, you would
think that all Africans look like this. But the Bantu look is not the only look
indigenous to Africa. In fact, the earliest African remains possessing “Bantu-
type” features are found in Sudan at Tushka and Jebel Sahaba. Tushka dates
back to about 14,500 years ago and Sahaba dates back to about 13,700 years ago.
The oldest remains of this type in West Africa are the 11,000 year old Iwo Eleru
skullcap from Nigeria and the 6,400 year old skeleton from Asselar, eastern
 561
Mali. Before that time, Africans were certainly Black people, but they didn’t
562
look as much like modern Bantu people in West Africa. Some of the earliest
African skulls, the 36,000 year old Hofmeyr skull from South Africa, clustered
563
with the Aurignacian people of Paleolithic Europe, who were Australoid. In
other words, these are ALL Black people, but they didn’t have this “one”
African look. In fact, if you’ve every traveled throughout Africa, you know there
is still an incredible amount of diversity in its in indigenous people. Nowhere is
this more so the case than in the place where humanity began: East Africa.
THE EAST AFRICAN LOOK
Despite any controversy from the Eurocentrists, the evidence clearly shows us
that the ancient Badarians, Somalians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians were ALL
Black, African people, but they didn’t all look like West Africans. They looked
like East Africans. East Africans are very diverse, but many of them, like the
Samburu of Kenya, have straight, narrow noses and sharp cheekbones, but jet
Black skin. Why do they look so different from West Africans? Was it
Europeans or Arabs who got into the mix?
Let’s look at the DNA. As we noted early, Y-DNA Haplogroup DE began its
back-migration into Africa around 50,000 years ago, after recovering from the
wake of Toba in East Asia. This is why the only two documented samples of
DE are found in Tibet and Nigeria. By the time DE made it back to Nigeria,
new branches had diverged from the DE lineage. D separated from DE
somewhere in Asia, while E was African-born. E gave birth to many new
lineages as it also traveled west towards Nigeria. The most common of these
lineages is E1b1b, the primary genotype of most East and West Africans today.
East Africans who carry E1b1b, such as the Oromo and Borana, don’t show
signs of genetic mixture with Europeans or Middle Easterners. E1b1b originated
564
in Africa, is largely confined there and is rare outside Africa. In other words,
that “East African” look doesn’t come from whites or Arabs. It’s a product of
the motherland, and a testament to the diversity of the Original People.
Jean Hiernaux agreed, suggesting that the East African ancestors of the ancient
Egyptians had the features we find in many of the modern indigenous people of
East Africa, who are “very dark-skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a
number of body proportions…” In other words, they’re not the descendants of
Arabs or Caucasians. Describing the oldest remains of East Africa, Hiernaux
continues:
There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living ‘Elongated East Africans’…
Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the
 565
populations of Europe and western Asia...

FROM EAST TO WEST

So what brought out the features that distinguish West Africans from East
Africans? Simple: people change! To be specific as to how and why, several
factors have played a role. Primary factors include: A change in environment,
the advent of agriculture, an increase in polygamy, and mixing with the
indigenous people they encountered along their migrations.
As Jean Hiernaux explains regarding the features of East Africans:
[I]t is clear that where the size and body shape of the human body are concerned, climate has
played an important role in the genetic differentiation of the populations of sub-Saharan Africa.
In light of this knowledge, we are now in a position to explain, in terms of genetic adaptation, the
external characteristics of the populations… such as the Masai of Kenya, the Tutsi of Rwanda
and Burundi, and the Ful (or Fulani) of West Africa…It has been stated that they owe much of
their constitution to a peculiar evolution in the semi-arid or arid crescent which caps sub-Saharan
Africa to the north and northeast. We may now say that their most conspicuous features – the
elongated body, the especially long legs (which are very efficient cooling radiators owing to their
diameter), the narrow shoulders and thorax, the leanness, the narrow head and face, and the high
and narrow nose – are all represent genetic adaptations to dry heat. There is no need to
postulate an extra-African ‘Caucasoid’ element in their genepool for explaining such a
566
characteristic as the narrow nose.
Dr. Keita has added that the humid regions of West Africa demanded a
different set of features:
An important function of the nose is to warm and moisten inspired air. When air is exhaled,
some heat and moisture are lost to the surroundings. The longer the nasal passage, the more
efficient the nose is for warming and moistening incoming air and also the less heat and moisture
are lost on exhalation. A narrow, high nose gives a longer nasal passage than a low, broad nose.
Therefore, in cold or dry conditions, a high, narrow nose is preferable for warming and
moistening air before it reaches the lings, and for reducing loss of heat and moisture in expired
air. In hot, humid conditions a low, broad nose serves to dissipate heat. (Wolpoff 1968;
Franciscis and Long 1991)
Seems like they covered every physical difference between Australoid people
567
and Negroid people, with the exception of hair texture. Hiernaux continues,
describing the Fulani of West Africa (one of the few populations studied in this
regard):
From the Sahelian arid zone to the rain forest, stature gradually decreases, the nose and face
becomes gradually broader in proportions, and the head becomes slightly rounder. As pointed
out repeatedly, the factors of these morphological clines lay in the environment, not in gene
568
flow from North Africa or Arabia.
Dr. Keita traces the “extreme Negroid” variant to an ancestral African
population that started off in East Africa, possibly in the Sudan, then settled in
the Sahara, and then migrated further west, as evidenced by genetic as well as
linguistic evidence. About 5,000 years ago, these people began the Bantu
expansion that spread far and wide across Africa, replacing many of the oldest
569
“Paleo-African” populations. The editors of the UNESCO General History of
Africa agree, noting the ancestors of the Bantu must have started out in East
570
Africa, near the Central Sudan.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
What other factors affected the emergence and eventual dominance of West
African, or Bantu, people? Anthropologist Peter Frost says that the westward
expansion of the Niger-Congo people, who brought with them the science of
agriculture, “triggered a cascade of changes that would have profound
behavioral and morphological consequences.” What were these changes, and
how did they occur? Frost notes:
Agriculture, especially year-round agriculture, enables women to become more self-reliant in
571
feeding themselves and their children, thus making it less costly for men to take second wives.
572
As a result, the polygyny rate is 20-50% of all marriages in sub-Saharan agricultural societies.
If some men have more wives, others will have to do without. In general, men will have to
compete more keenly with each other for access to women. When such rivalry intensifies in non-
human species, the result is an intensification of sexual selection for larger, stronger, and more
muscular males. This may explain why the highly polygynous, agricultural peoples of sub-Saharan
Africa are so physically robust. They and their African American descendants outclass European-
descended subjects for weight, chest size, arm girth, leg girth, muscle fiber properties, and bone
573
density.
This masculinization of body build may be hormonally mediated. When Winkler and
574
Christiansen studied two Namibian peoples, the weakly polygynous hunter-gatherer !Kung
and the highly polygynous agricultural Kavango, the latter were found to have markedly higher
levels of both total testosterone and DHT. The authors suggest that lower levels of these
hormones may account for the !Kung’s neotenous appearance, i.e., sparse body hair, small
stature, pedomorphic morphology, and light yellowish skin.
In other words, the males with the “go get it” disposition were more likely to
have multiple wives, and thus multiple children. This results in how the next
generation looked, as well as their hormone levels. Several generations down the
line, African agriculturalists and their descendents are noticeably different from
their hunter-gatherer neighbors who aren’t big on polygamy. This much seems
clear.
As a result, throughout the Diaspora, young Black men have more circulating
testosterone than young East Asian men, and young white men have less than
575
pretty much everyone. In Africa, Bantu men have higher levels than the
Khoisan people they displaced in West and East Africa. However, the “go get
it” disposition associated with high testosterone has its downside. High
testosterone/DHT is associated with prostate cancer and the highest incidences
576
in the world are among Black men. Black men in America are worst off,
577
probably due to poorer environmental and dietary factors.
But was it just the advent of agriculture (and increases in polygamy) that made
Bantu people more “robust”? There’s significant evidence that the ancestors of
the Bantu married into African populations that were older than humanity itself.
That is, just as the Out-Of-Africa migration saw humans in Europe and Asia
“mixing” with Neanderthals in Europe and with Denisovans in Oceania,
578
Africans also mixed with archaic pre-human populations. The rate is as high
as 13% in some West African populations.
It shouldn’t sound too strange. After all, these “archaic” people weren’t very
different from modern humans; they just descended from much older
populations that predated modern humans. But what was the outcome of this
admixture? Just as Neanderthal DNA made Paleolithic Eurasians more
“robust,” and Denisovan DNA made Australians and Melanesians more robust,
did the archaic hominids in southwest Africa make the ancestors of the Bantu
more robust? Did this process, in fact, give all of these human populations a
serious survival advantage over their “purebred” peers? Every dog breeder
knows that mutts are tougher, with stronger immune systems. We have better
documentation on the results of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA, but it’s the
same effect. By breeding with populations who have been around for a million
years or more, your descendants adopt genetic resistance to a lot of dangerous
579
pathogens.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Does this have anything to do with the rise of the Bantu, who rapidly “re-
colonized” Africa, dominating or displacing native Khoisan-speaking people and
other older populations across Africa?
Is this what it took for these “mixed” populations to become the second wave
of colonizers to dominate the prehistoric world, quickly displacing their
unmixed predecessors? We know the DBP/Negritos of Asia (like the Andaman
Islanders) lack the archaic genes found among their neighbors. Same thing with
many DBP people in Central Africa. Is that why DBP people typically avoid
serious conflict, or is it because the key to survival for such populations is living
unobtrusively?
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
You may want to know a little more about who I am and why I wrote this book.
If you’ve read How to Hustle and Win, then you already know a lot of my story.
My parents are immigrants from Bangladesh, who moved to the U.S. in the 70s.
I was born and raised in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood in
Jersey City, New Jersey during the height of the crack epidemic. English isn’t my
first language, but I learn new things pretty quickly.
As much as my mother wanted to keep me out of trouble, my innate desire to
“know” pulled me into the streets. I was always a rebellious kid, and never gelled
too well with other Indians, who saw me as the “ghetto Indian.” But the streets
seemed like a better fit. By the time I was 14, I had been kicked out of high
school and was fully immersed in the kind of lifestyle that doesn’t typically have
a happy ending. I didn’t plan on going to college, nor did I plan on living to see
25.
I don’t want to say hip-hop saved my life, but it did play a role in my
redemption. I’d always been attracted to knowledge, so when Nas and Wu-Tang
came out spitting Five Percent language, I immediately wanted to know more.
I’d seen little bits and pieces of this information when I’d catch the train to New
York, just to get away from the city (or because I’d run away from home!). I
remember having deep conversations with the Black book vendors who once
lined the streets, yet I never had the money to buy any books (though I always
seemed to have enough for weed and alcohol).
My mother had once told me that Indian people used to be Black, but I didn’t
think there was anything ‘deep’ to the sense of solidarity I felt with other Black
and brown people. I always assumed that experiencing racism from white
people (which I enjoyed plenty of) was all that did it.
Things finally clicked when an older brother named Pure Sun introduced me to
the culture of the Five Percent. He was immersed in the hood as well, and I
can’t say he was living righteously, but it’s clear that he was there for a reason.
Had he not been entrenched in the same streets as me, I would have never
come into the knowledge of self. That’s how I learned about books like African
Presence in Early Asia, where I saw exactly “how” Indians were Black.
To be clear, Sun didn’t introduce me to Five Percent literature or any Black
books. He simply introduced me to the culture. As in real people, like Jersey
City elders Cee Born and Earth Asia, who were more upright examples of the
teachings than he was. Through them, I met dozens of Five Percenters. They,
like Sun, told me I was Black, and that I was Original. It would take some study,
however, before I would really understand what that meant. At first, I assumed
it was kind of like when my friends in the streets would say, “You a n*gga too.”
Yet it was much deeper than that.
Until this point, I had believed that the streets were my home. When I found
this culture, I found my real home. I ended up graduating from high school, and
– with the help of my “crisis intervention counselor” Mr. James Johnson – I
went to college in Atlanta. I couldn’t decide what to study, so I majored in
Sociology and then Philosophy before I found my passion: History. I did most
of my research papers on ancient Black history. Even got inducted into the
International Honors Society.
When I graduated from college, I took a teaching job with the public school
system. For eleven years since that day, I’ve only worked in Black and brown
communities like the one I grew up in. During this time, I cofounded a
nonprofit that would address youth in a way I couldn’t do in the classroom.
After I earned my masters, specialist, and doctorate degrees in education,
specifically focusing on curriculum designed to meet the needs of at-risk Black
and brown youth, I developed a curriculum that could do what school teachers
and nonprofits couldn’t. This is how my first book, How to Hustle and Win, was
born. For those who have read it, you can revisit it and see how it’s designed like
a true curriculum.
And that book led to an entire line of educational books, dealing with all the
issues not being addressed by people in positions of power. We’ve covered self-
empowerment, social change, physical health, mental health, the prison system,
and even knowledge of self. With every book we’ve published, I’ve asked
myself, what’s not being said? What problems are not being addressed?
“The future emerges from the past.” – Senegalese Proverb
Thus, I realized just how important it is that we cover history. In this volume of
the Science of Self series, we’re exploring not simply what it means to be Black, but
how everything came to be the way that it is now. We’re offering our readers a
lens into the past that allows them to peer into the future. And – above all –
we’re destroying the myth that Black people have contributed little to world
history.
In fact, there would be no such thing as history without Black people. Black
people are the authors of world civilization, and the Original People of the
planet. Sometimes, it seems unimaginable how we grow up thinking the exact
opposite. As my elder brother Runoko Rashidi often says:
Strong people constantly talk about their history, while weak people do not. Weak people seek to
 downplay the past and act as if it is unimportant. Strong people do no such thing.
Rashidi asks, “What if we all grew up knowing our true history? Before slavery?
What if we knew about the royalty in our blood, and how we came to be where
we are today?”
In asking myself these questions while looking at the state of the world today, it
is clear that the majority of Original People, not just here in America but
everywhere, are out of touch with who they are and how they came to be. They
don’t know why they’re in the conditions they’re in, so they’re unable to fix
them. After all, you can’t treat a disease if you don’t know its cause. This is why
this book exists.
I want to show Original People – all Original People – our common history and
our shared heritage. I want to give people a reference to consult when there’s
confusion about who we were and what we really did. I want to give us a lens
into the past so we can calculate the future. And that’s what this is all about. I’m
just striving to do my part in fixing this screwed-up world.
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 INSPIRATION FOR THIS WORK
There are a few sources I’d like to identify as providing some of the needed
inspiration for this work. I’ve already mentioned Ivan Van Sertima and Runoko
Rashidi’s African Presence series, and quoted those works throughout this volume.
I later picked up The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams. In
this monumental work, Williams makes a statement that further inspired me:
I only made passing reference in the work to Blacks scattered outside of Africa over the world,
not from the slave trade, but from dispersions that began in prehistory. This fact alone indicates
the great tasks of future scholarship on the real history of the race. We are actually just on the
threshold, gathering up some important missing fragments. The biggest jobs are still ahead.
Ancient China and the Far East, for example, must be a special area of African research. How do
we explain such a large population of Blacks in southern China, powerful enough to form a
kingdom of their own? Or the Black people of Formosa, Australia, the Malay Peninsula, Indo-
China, the Andaman, and numerous other islands?
The heavy concentration of Africans in India, and the evidence that the earliest Aryan chiefs were
Black (which will make Hitler rise from his grave) opens still another interesting field for
investigation.
Even the “Negroid” finds in early Europe appear not to be as challenging as the Black
population centers in Asia. For, again, reference is not made to small groups which may have
wandered anywhere over the Earth; rather, our concern is with great and dominant populations.
These are the Blacks who have so puzzled Western scholars that some theorize that Asia or
Europe may be the homeland of Africans after all.
The African populations in Palestine, Arabia, and Mesopotamia are better known, although the
many centuries of Black rule over Palestine, South Arabia, and in Mesopotamia should be studied
and elaborated in more detail.
All of this will call for a new kind of scholarship, a scholarship without any mission other than
the discovery of truth, and one that will not tremble with fear when that truth is contrary to what
580
one prefers to believe.
The reason why I’ve worked night after day on this book, entirely rewriting this
book six times, losing sleep, wearing myself ragged, even hospitalizing myself
once in the process, has been because I’d like to think that this book represents
at least part of the fulfillment of that vision. And it was worth it. This is a story
that deserved to be told. And it deserved to be told truthfully.
As Williams said prophetically, once Black people are afforded “a history of the
Blacks that is a history of Blacks,” change is on its way:
They will be coming back, centerstage, into their own history at last. But to what end? Will it be
just for the intellectual satisfaction of knowing our true history? Knowing it, but so what? The
answer is nothing, unless from history we learn what our strengths were and, especially, in what
aspect we are weak and vulnerable. Our history can then become at once the foundation and
581
guiding light for united efforts and serious planning of what we should be about now.
In recent years, I’ve dug up a two-volume text known as The African Abroad,
written by Black scholar William Henry Ferris in 1911. This massive series
covers so much ancient (and often unknown) Black history that it’s almost
unimaginable. W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1915 The Negro is comparable, but Ferris’ scope
and depth are unmatched.
Before I came across any of these books, however, I was a young Five
Percenter, learning mostly by oral tradition. At some point in my studies, I came
across a Five Percent publication titled “African or Asiatic?” by Shabazz Adew
Allah.
This was the first time I’d come across the idea that Black history extended
beyond the region known as Africa, and that “Africa” was in fact a relatively
recent name, applied to separate Black populations from each other, both
politically and subconsciously. Adew wrote:
The primary effect of this erroneous labeling by the Europeans and Arabs has been to
successfully isolate and detach the Blackman from a much larger world context and view, wherein
he has suffered in his ability to relate and identify with his extended family who are located on
other parts of the planet Earth besides so-called Africa.
He has been made blind to the fact that the Blackman who have lived and existed in so-called
Africa along with the advanced societies and civilizations that they produced only represent a
small fraction of the numerous other Black people who inhabit this planet and who also in other
geographical areas have made out-standing achievements of their own.
In short the Blackman’s mental vision and perspective has been kept confined and limited to
areas solely between the boundaries of so-called Africa, and as a result he has lived blindly with
the belief and misconception that his history exceeds no further than this location.
It is our intention through the manifestations of teachings to emphasize the universality of the
Blackman, by impressing upon all the full extent to which the Blackman has dispersed himself
to all corners of the Earth, dating back from time immemorial, from Mexico to China,
from Alaska to England, from India to Australia, the Blackman was existing and building
civilizations in these places thousand of years ago and many of these areas had already
been lived in and abandoned by him at the time that the Europeans first made their
appearance on the planet Earth.
The Blackman had even settled in regions as far North as Alaska and Greenland, which are areas
usefully associated with a much colder climate, a fact that tends to dispel the popular myth that
the Blackman lost his pigmentation and became white skinned only because he had lived in this
cold climate for a prolonged number of years…A noted author, Cheikh Anta Diop, in his book
The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality says in the l9th century Bory DeSaint Vincent
described the Eskimos, same of whom were almost as Black as the Blackest Africans, despite the
latitude….
It was partly because of the above stated circumstances why the Europeans found it necessary to
fabricate the myth of a land called Africa and people called Africans. He was eager to prevent the
Blacks from recognizing his true origin and roots in this world which he secretly knew extended
over the entire globe and dated back into far distant past.
By creating divisions within the family of the original people that were based upon such trivial
factors as geographical boundaries and locations he was triumphant in producing a mass state of
separation and alienation amongst them. Also by signaling out certain customs and life styles that
were common to Blacks who lived together in one area, and which were generally unknown to or
 not practiced by Blacks who lived in other areas, he was able to further increase the gaps and
divisions that he artificially created. Because the Black people called Sumerians used a form of
writing and other Black people like the Dravidians of India, or the Sabeans of South Arabia
didn’t, he used this as a criteria for proclaiming that they were a different people.
Before I’d read any books on the subject, this paper made me want to know
more. It’s been over 15 years since I began that journey, and those years have
been filled with countless hours of research and analysis. This book is one of the
fruits of that labor. In future Volumes, we’ll address all of the questions we’ve
left unanswered, including the problem of how and when everything changed
from the time when the world was Black.
 WHAT’S IN VOLUME 3, 4, AND 5?
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN VOLUME THREE
The third volume of the Science of Self series focuses on the common culture of
our ancestors, the Original People, the cultural ties that still bind many
indigenous people today, and their connection to Black and brown people in the
West today. Because the hood retains much of this culture, whether they know
it or not.
Tentative release date? We’re thinking Summer of 2013, accompanied by the
release of Black God and Black People Invented Everything.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN VOLUME FOUR
The fourth volume of the series focuses on the origins of white people (for real),
their early history (including their conquests of the world’s Black civilizations),
their cultural pathologies, the way they developed these pathologies, and the
persistent nature of white supremacy then and now.
Tentative release date? Most likely Early Winter 2014.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN VOLUME FIVE
The fifth volume of the series focuses on the “secret” history of the world
within the past 2,000 years. We’ll explore the origins and history of the world’s
secret societies, the Crusades, the Moorish Conquest of Spain, the Black Plague,
the Maafa (slave trade), and everything else that was left out of our history
books.
Tentative release date? Between Summer and Fall of 2014.
WHAT ARE THESE BOOKS TITLED?
We don’t know yet! But you can help us choose a title by placing your vote at
www.thescienceofself.com
There you’ll find excerpts, videos, and other content related to these books.
You’ll also be able to find out exactly when they’ll release and order them before
anyone else.
 ENDNOTES
[←1]
Cheikh Anta Diop. (1974). African Origin of Civilization. Lawrence Hill Books.
[←2]
It should, of course, be noted that Malcolm X also consulted heavily with others, including Dr. John
Henrik Clarke and Queen Mother Moore.
[←3]
Elijah Muhammad. (1965). Message to the Blackman. Elijah Muhammad Books.
[←4]
Elijah Muhammad. (1965).
[←5]
They say “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but Rome was copied off nearby Black civilizations that took
thousands of years to establish. So what took Rome so long?
[←6]
John W. Burgess, (1902). Reconstruction and the Constitution: 1866-1876, p. 133, cited in
Novick, That Noble Dream, p. 75.
[←7]
Hugh Trevor-Roper. (1965). The Rise of Christian Europe.
[←8]
Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale. (1910). The conflict of colour: the threatened upheaval
throughout the world. p. 232-233.
[←9]
Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen. “Modern Mud Huts: Green Housing From the Ground”. Alive.
www.alive.com/articles/view/21745/modern_mud_huts
[←10]
The word primitive derives from the same root as prime, primal, and primary.
[←11]
For an explanation of what exactly we mean by “indigenous,” see the FAQ in the Appendix of this
book.
[←12]
That phrase actually doesn’t appear in the Bible, as many believe. It was said by British preacher
John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, in 1791. Wesley studied the Native Americans in
Georgia, became a vegetarian, worked against the enslavement of Africans, and came to believe in
the doctrine of Theosis (man becoming God).
[←13]
Visit www.blackhistorystudies.com for an article on this.
[←14]
Charles Q. Choi. (2009). “Ancient Mayans likely had fountains and toilets.” NBC News.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34575056
[←15]
Joseph Ki-Zerbo. (Aug-Sep 1979). “A Continent Viewed From Within.” The UNESCO Courier.
UNESCO.
[←16]
For example, the gaps between the classes in ancient Egypt weren’t nearly as pronounced as the
divides between the rich, middle-class, and poor in Western civilization. It should also be noted that
the Egyptians gave all praise to the Black nations that came before, which were much more
egalitarian. We’re not saying Egypt was a “bad” place of course. We’ll discuss the history of the Nile
Valley in Part Two.
[←17]
See “The Origin of Language” in Part Two for more.
[←18]
Debra A. Brock, Tracy E. Douglas, David C. Queller & Joan E. Strassmann, (Jan 20 2011).
“Primitive agriculture in a social amoeba,” Nature 469, p. 393–396.
[←19]
Solheim, W.G. (1972) An earlier agricultural revolution. Scientific American 226: 34-41
[←20]
Seriously though, social scientists have actually compared children diagnosed with ADHD and
hunter-gatherer populations, even suggesting some sort of “genetic link.” But that’s another issue,
and we’ll have to get back to that later.
[←21]
Alasdiar Wilkins. (May 25 2011) “The story behind the world’s oldest museum, built by a
Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago,” i09, http://io9.com/5805358/the-story-behind-the-
worlds-oldest-museum-built-by-a-babylonian-princess-2500-years-ago
[←22]
Marshall Mathers. (2012). Unknown History: Unknown for a Reason. iUnicorn Press.
[←23]
Memnon77. (1999). “Stuff I Rant About on YouTube.” www.youtube.com/xgbu
[←24]
Joe Remus (2012). Uncle Joe’s Compendium of Mystic Web Wisdom.
www.unclejoesgibberish.com
[←25]
Piankhy Netertari. (2001). “Stuff I Say on my personal Website without Proof.”
www.ancientafricanastronautsandmixtapes.com
[←26]
Doan Bilivmy. (1870). The Mountaineth Refluvieth: Doth it Harken Yonder? And other
Anomalous Contingencies. Williams and Harkinson and Boyd.
[←27]
Dan Rather. (2007). “Radar detects granite deposit, not pyramid.” USA Today.
[←28]
Dan Rather. (2008). “Not if you actually read the original source.” BBC News.
[←29]
All books and documentaries aren’t ripoffs, of course. But any time you’re being scammed,
there’s always some money or power involved. Sometimes, misinformation is purposely fed to
our communities to keep us distracted and impotent. Other times, someone’s just trying to
make an easy buck.
[←30]
J. Douglas Kenyon. (2005). Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial
Intervention, And The Suppressed Origins Of Civilization. Inner Traditions. p. 1
[←31]
Jeanna Bryner. (Jul 2010). “Ancient Hunting Weapon Discovered in Melting Ice.” Live Science.
http://www.livescience.com/history/ancient-weapon-found-in-ice-100705.html
[←32]
McPherron, S. et al. (2010). Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues
before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia Nature, 466 (7308), 857-860.
[←33]
Cameron M. Smith, Evan T. Davies. (2009). Anthropology for Dummies. Wiley & Sons.
[←34]
“Anthropology.” (1968). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Available
at www.encyclopedia.com
[←35]
For an explanation of what exactly we mean by “ancestors,” see the FAQ in the Appendix of this
book.
[←36]
A zoological rule that states that many insects, plants, and mammals that evolve in humid climates
will be darkly pigmented.
[←37]
Even then, there was dissent. In 1863, Paschal Beverly Randolph wrote Pre-Adamite Man:
Demonstrating the Existence of the Human Race upon the Earth 100,000 Years Ago! Unlike other Pre-
Adamite works, it wasn’t strictly based on the Bible, but on hundreds of sources from around the
world. Paschal argued that not only were there people before Adam, but these pre-Adamite men
were civilized and settled across the world 35,000 to 100,000 years ago. Other authors described pre-
Adamite men (meaning Black and brown people) as savages and beasts, but Randolph said these
people were civilized. This was no coincidence, as Randolph was a high-ranking member of several
esoteric fraternities (which we’ll see as a recurring theme among early historians who respected Black
people)…and Randolph himself was a Black man. This, too, he kept a secret.
[←38]
Charles Seignobos. (1906). History of Ancient Civilization. C. Scriber and Sons.
[←39]
Charles Seignobos. (1906).
[←40]
John G. Jackson. (1985). Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization. Black Classic Press.
[←41]
John G. Jackson. (1985).
[←42]
John G. Jackson. (1985).
[←43]
We’ll use “Negroid” occasionally, especially in the context of discussing other scholars who used
this term in their works, but we prefer the use of “Africoid.”
[←44]
Particularly by biological anthropologists, while cultural anthropologists still tend to see race as a
useful identifier. This is because our genes tend to be more mixed up and muted than our traditions.
We’ll explore why in Volume Three.
[←45]
Franz Boas. (May 31 1906). “Commencement Address at Atlanta University.” Atlanta
University Leaflet, No. 19. www.webdubois.org/BoasAtlantaCommencement.html
[←46]
Originally posted at www.egyptsearch.com (no longer available)
[←47]
According to James W. Loewen in Lies my Teacher Told Me: “When Columbus reached Haiti,
he found the Arawaks in possession of some spear points made of guanine. The Indians told
members of Columbus’ party that they got the guanine from Black traders who had come from
the South and East. Guanine proved to be an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, identical to the
gold alloy preferred by West Africans, who called it “guanine.” Islamic historians have
recorded stories of Black sailors going into the West. Genetic studies found that traces of
diseases common in Africa were also found in pre-Columbians corpses in Brazil. Columbus’
son, Ferdinand, who accompanied the admiral on his third voyage, reported that people he met
or heard about in eastern Honduras, were “…almost black in color…” and probably African.
The first Europeans to reach Panama, Balboa and company, reported seeing Black slaves in an
Indian town. The Indians reported they had captured them from a nearby Black community.”
James W. Loewen. (1995). Lies my Teacher Told Me. Touchstone Books. p. 138.
[←48]
See “A Quick Note on Those Damn Foreigners.”
[←49]
Wesley Muhammad. (Jul 2011). “The Aryanization of Islam.”
http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/07/aryanization-of-islam.html
[←50]
Sujan Dass. (Ed.) (2009). Black Rebellion: Eyewitness Accounts of Major Slave Revolts. Two
Horizons Press.
[←51]
And 30 million is a conservative number. 20th century scholarly estimates range from a low of
8.4 million to a high of 112 million. William M. Denevan. (1992.) The Native Population of
the Americas in 1492. University of Wisconsin Press.
[←52]
Cheikh Anta Diop. (1974).
[←53]
Gonder, M, et al. (2007). Whole mtDNA Genome Sequence Analysis of Ancient African
Lineages. Mol Biol Evol. 24(3):757-68.
[←54]
Tishkoff et al. (2000). Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the
PLAT Locus. American Journal of Human Genetics; 67:901-925
[←55]
For more on this, see “Inspiration for this Work” in the Appendix of Part Two.
[←56]
Chancellor Williams, (1987). The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from
4500 B.C to 2000 A.D. Third World Press. p. 31-32
[←57]
For more on names and identity, see “What do we Call Them?” in the Appendix.
[←58]
Richard Klein. (1999). The Human Career. Cambridge University Press. p. 502.
[←59]
Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., (Aug 2002). Genetic analysis of African populations: human
evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics, (8):611-21.
[←60]
Generalized means “not highly differentiated biologically nor strictly adapted to a particular
environment.” In other words, it’s an ancestral form that hasn’t become specialized yet. The idea of
a “generalized” form for early modern humans has been applied to Paleoindians, the Upper Cave
crania from Zhoukoudian, China, and Paleolithic Europeans. Generalized forms were followed by
specialization, resulting in different features for different populations, or “races.”
[←61]
Rightmire GP. New studies of post-Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the Rift Valley,
Kenya. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1975 May; 42(3): 351-69.
[←62]
Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (Encore Editions: 1975), pp. 17-204
[←63]
S.O.Y. Keita. (1990). Studies of Ancient Crania from Northern Africa. Am J Phys Anthropol.
83(1):35-48. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2221029
[←64]
S.O.Y. Keita. (1993). “Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships,”
History in Africa 20, 129-54; J Hum Evol. (Jul 1997), 33(1):33-82.
[←65]
Relethford, J.H. (2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African
populations. Hum Biol. 72(5):773-80.
[←66]
Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., (Aug 2002). Genetic analysis of African populations: human
evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews, Genetics, (8):611-21.
[←67]
Jean Hiernaux, (1975). The People of Africa. Encore Editions. p. 53, 54
[←68]
S. Keita, (1996). “The Diversity of Indigenous Africans,” in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko,
Editor, p. 104-105.
[←69]
The idea of “Sub-Saharan Africa” is based on the false notion that the Sahara Desert is some
impassible barrier to human migration, and only people south of the Sahara are indigenous Black
Africans. History and genetics tell us this is untrue.
[←70]
“Plus lessons” are a form of peer-reviewed literature in the Five Percent community. They are
distributed, reviewed, and shared with peers as a means of disseminating theories or information
that warrants further study or consideration. The peer-review process increases the distribution of
accepted papers, while those that are considered erroneous are discarded, and – in some cases –
burned!
[←71]
Betty Shabazz and Merit Publishers. (1970). Malcolm X: All Afro-American History, Pathfinder
Press, Inc., p . 26.
[←72]
See Chancellor Williams. (1987); Cheikh Anta Diop. (1988). Pre-Colonial Black Africa.
Chicago Review Press.
[←73]
We’ll explain this fully in the Appendix (See “Going Back to Africa”), but here’s the simple version:
Some of the Black people who left Africa 130,000 years ago eventually came back to Africa around
50,000 years ago. They spread far and wide, mixing with all the indigenous “Paleo-Africans” who
had remained in Africa. Today, there are no “pure” Paleo-African lineages. All of us, even the
Khoisan of South Africa, are related to the Black men and women who left Africa and settled the
entire globe.
[←74]
Joseph Ki-Zerbo. (1979).
[←75]
Throughout the world, many hominids (who came before the evolution of modern Homo sapiens
sapiens) were still around when we crossed their territory. Over the course of about 100,000 years,
our human ancestors had children with these “archaic” branches of the family tree. Obviously, these
people weren’t that different from us. In the end, it was our human ancestors who outlasted all other
lineages.
[←76]
Which is why – despite what some historians say – urbanization doesn’t always lead to agriculture
(sometimes it follows), and, at some sites, ceramics comes after agriculture, while at other sites it’s
the other way around.
[←77]
Occasionally this is “sparked” by an outside influence introducing a technology (which we may or
may not adopt, based on our analysis of the need). This is a lot like today, when we consider how
the market runs off supply and demand, with marketers constantly working to introduce new
products that meet our ever-changing demands.
[←78]
McPherron, S., et al. (2010). Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues
before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia Nature, 466 (7308), 857-860.
[←79]
Darren Schuettler, “Ancient Tools Suggest Termite Foraging”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/hominid_termites.html
[←80]
JoAnn Gutin, (Nov 17 1995). “Do Kenya Tools Root Birth of Modern Thought in Africa?”
Science 270, p. 1118.
[←81]
Robert G. Bednarik, (1993). “Stone Age Stone Walls,” The Artefact, 16, p. 60
[←82]
Robert G. Bednarik, (1994). “Art Origins”, Anthropos, 89: 169-180, p. 170.
[←83]
D. Mania and U. Mania and E. Vlcek, (1994). “Latest Finds of Skull Remains of from
Bilzingsleben (Thruingia)”, Naturwissenschaften, 81, p. 123-127; Alexander Marshack,
(1972). The Roots of Civilization, McGraw-Hill Book Co., p. 139; Robert G. Bednarik,
(1990). “On Lower Paleolithic Cognitive Development,” 23rd Chacmool Conference Calgary,
p. 427-435, p. 432; Rick Gore, (Jul 1997). “The First Europeans,” National Geographic, p. 110
[←84]
Robin Dennell, (Feb 27 1997). “The World’s Oldest Spears,” and Hartmut Thieme, “Lower
Palaeolithic Hunting Spears form Germany,” Nature, 385, p. 767; 810.
[←85]
“Lower Paleolithic people were not scavengers, say anthropologists.” (Aug 2009). Science
Codex. www.sciencecodex.com/lower_paleolithic_people_were_not_
scavengers_say_anthropologists
[←86]
W.C. Pei, (1930). “Notice of the Discovery of Quartz and Other Stone artifacts in the Lower
Pleistocene Hominid-Bearing Sediments of the Choukoutien Cave Deposit,” Bulletin of the
Geological Society of China, 11:2, 109-146.
[←87]
Victor Barnouw, (1982). An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and
Archaeology, Vol. 1, The Dorsey Press, p. 141
[←88]
Juliet Clutton-Brock, (1995). “Origins of the Dog: Domestication and Early History,” in James
Serpell, ed. The Domestic Dog, Cambridge University Press, p. 8-10
[←89]
P.Y. Sondaar, et al., “Middle Pleistocene faunal turnover and Colonization of Flores
(Indonesia),” Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences. Paris 319: 1255-1262.
[←90]
Bruce Bower, (Feb 23 2002). “Almond Joy, Stone Age Style,” Science News, p. 117.
[←91]
Robert G. Bednarik, (1993). “Wonders of Wonderwork Cave,” The Artefact, 16, p. 61
[←92]
Thomas Wynn, (1995). “Handaxe Enigmas,” World Archaeology, 27:1, p. 10-24.
[←93]
J. A. J. Gowlett, J. W. K. Harris, D. Walton and B. A. Wood, (Nov 12 1981). “Early
archaeological sites, Hominid Remains and Traces of Fire from Chesowanja, Kenya,” Nature,
294, p. 128; C. K. Brain and A. Sillen, (Dec 1 1988). “Evidence from the Swartkrans cave for
the earliest use of fire,” Nature, 336, p. 464-465
[←94]
Brian Ludwig, “New Evidence for the Possible Use of Controlled Fire from ESA Sites in the
Olduvai and Turkana Basins,” Abstracts for the Paleoanthropology Society Meeting, The
University of Pennsylvania Museum.
[←95]
K.D. Schick, N. Toth. (1993). Making Silent Stones Speak, Simon and Schuster, p.160
[←96]
M.D. Leakey, (1971). Olduvai Gorge 3 Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960-1693, Cambridge
University Press, p. 269
[←97]
D.C. Johanson, L. Johanson, B. Edgar, (1994). Ancestors, Villard Books, p. 163-165
[←98]
Victor Barnouw, (1982). An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and
Archaeology, Vol. 1, The Dorsey Press, p. 126
[←99]
Juan Luis A. Ferreras, (May/Jun 1997). “Faces from the Past,” Archaeology, p. 31-33.
[←100]
For details on how this happened, refer back to Volume One.
[←101]
After all, many of us get impatient simply waiting for the microwave to cook minute rice, so it’s hard
for us to envision a time when oppression and institutionalized racism will end (“It’s hopeless,” we
say). Yet our ancestors were here long before white rice or “white is right” were on the planet.
We’ve always had struggles and challenges, but the struggles of the past 15,000 years are nothing like
the struggles of the 25,000 years that preceded it. So let’s never forget how timeless we really are.
That’s why Volume Three of this series focuses on the cultural unity of the “eternal” Black
Diaspora.
[←102]
Of course, we also used wood, bone, fiber, and a wide variety of chemical compounds, but what
archaeologists have to go on is mostly stones. That’s what has best survived the two million years of
weathering and decay.
[←103]
There are other ways to describe the periods of the past, such as geological epochs. The Pleistocene
epoch lasted from 2.6 million years ago to 12,000 years ago. The Holocene epoch followed and
includes our present time. You will see these terms used elsewhere.
[←104]
The dates you see aren’t set in stone. Historical developments occurred at different times in different
places. In some places, a Mesolithic, or middle phase (sometimes called “Epipaleolithic”) marks the
transitional period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic. The Neolithic is often followed by a
Copper Age, Bronze Age, and/or Iron Age, once metallurgy is developed and metal tools replace
stone tools.
[←105]
See Cheikh Anta Diop. (1959).Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Third World Press.
[←106]
Olivia Vlahos. (1967). African Beginnings. Fawcett Premier. p. 19-20.
[←107]
We’re not saying that there are no common cultural threads between the indigenous communities of
Africa. In fact, we explore the “cultural unity” of the entire Global Black Diaspora in Volume Three.
We’re simply deconstructing the racist myth of a monolithic Africa, where everyone looks the same,
thinks the same, and lives the same.
[←108]
The indigenous people of Southern Africa are variously referred to by many names, including San,
Sho, Basarwa, Kung, Khwe, Khoi. “Khoi” are pastoralists and the “San” are hunter-gatherers.
Europeans once called them Hottentots and Bushmen. Together they are known by their common
language and genetics as the Khoisan. Their territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, but used to include much more
of Africa, spanning all the way into Northeast.
[←109]
Maya Metni Pilkington (2008). An apportionment of African genetic diversity based on
mitochondrial, Y chromosomal, and X chromosomal data. PH.d Dissertation (published).
University of Arizona, p. 1-9.
[←110]
For details on how we can trace back all modern languages, including English, to ancient African
languages, see “The Origins of Spoken Language” in Black People Invented Everything.
[←111]
Ochre is a mineral pigment made from iron ore. It has been used by Original people for hundreds
of thousands of years, and can be found in artwork, burials, and body painting throughout the world
– wherever Black people have been.
[←112]
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. (Dec 2011). “Plant bedding, medicinal plant use,
and settlement patterns at Sibudu.” www.wits.ac.za/sibudu
[←113]
“Stone Age Engraving Traditions Appear on Ostrich Shells,” (Mar 2010). Science News.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/56807/title/Stone_Age_engraving_traditions_appear_on_ostrich_e
[←114]
Wadley, L; Hodgskiss, T; Grant, M (Jun 2009). “From the Cover: Implications for complex
cognition from the hafting of tools with compound adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South
Africa.”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
106 (24): 9590–4. doi:10.1073/pnas.0900957106.
[←115]
Wadley L, Hodgkiss T, Grant M. (2009). Supporting Information for Implications for complex
cognition from the hafting of tools with compound adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South
Africa Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 106:9590–9594.
[←116]
Wurz, S. (1999). “The Howiesons Poort Backed Artefacts from Klasies River: An Argument for
Symbolic Behaviour Author(s)”. South African Archaeological Bulletin 54 (169): 38–50.
doi:10.2307/3889138.
[←117]
Lucinda Backwell, Francesco d’Ericco and Lyn Wadley, (2008). “Middle Stone Age Bone Tools
from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibidu Cave, South Africa, Journal of Archaeological
Science 35, no. 6: 1566-1580.
[←118]
Article originally available at www.wits.ac.za, site of the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg.
[←119]
If the idea of haplogroups is confusing, we’ll explain it in depth when we explain genetics and DNA
later in this book. Feel free to skip ahead and come back.
[←120]
Zenobia Roberts, Richard G. Roberts. (Mar-Apr 2009). “Catalysts for Stone Age Innovations.”
Commun Integr Biol. 2(2): 191–193.
[←121]
Zenobia Roberts, Richard G. Roberts. (2009).
[←122]
Jacobs, Z; et al. (2008). “Ages for the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa: implications for
human behavior and dispersal”. Science 322 (5902): 733–5.
[←123]
“African Bone Tools Dispute Key Ideas About Human Evolution.” (Nov 2001). National
Geographic News. news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1108_bonetool.html
[←124]
“African Bone Tools Dispute Key Ideas About Human Evolution.” (Nov 2001).
[←125]
Brown KS, et al. (2009). Fire As an Engineering Tool of Early Modern Humans. Science, 325:
859-862. doi:10.1126/science.1175028
[←126]
“Deep African Roots for Toolmaking Method,” (Nov 2010). Science News.
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64807/
[←127]
In fact, this prejudice is part of the reason why the pastoralist Bantu-speakers of Sub-Saharan Africa
historically have been at odds with the hunter-gatherer Khoisan (Bushmen) populations that have
lived for much longer in the regions they occupy. That’s another story we’ll revisit later as well.
[←128]
Richard A. Lovett. (Jul 2006). “Bigger Cities Causing Stronger Summer Storms, Experts Say,
National Geographic.” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060726-rain-
cities.html
[←129]
One place they couldn’t do as much damage was towards Western Africa. West Africans already
knew about smallpox, and had even invented the inoculation for it (the earliest form of a vaccine),
which they later taught the Europeans. And after so many years of exposure to the deadly disease,
they were more resistant to it than many other Original people. This was one of the reasons why
West Africans survived slavery in the Americas, while Native Americans could not survive.
European historians like to make it sound as if the Native Americans were simply weak, but the
truth is they were significantly weakened by exposure to Europeans and their diseases.
[←130]
Bücher, Karl. (1901). Industrial Evolution. H. Holt and Company. p. 47.
[←131]
The World Atlas of Archaeology. (1988). Portland House. Original published in French as Le
Grand Atlas de l’archeologie by Encyclopedia Universalis.
[←132]
Günter Berghaus. (2004). New Perspectives on Prehistoric Art. Praeger.
[←133]
Julio Mercader, (2002). “Forest People: The Role of African Rainforests in Human Evolution
and Dispersal,” Evolutionary Anthropology 11, no.3: 117-124,
http://ucalgary.academia.edu/juliomercader/Papers/365119/Forest_People_the_Role_of_African_Rainforests_In
[←134]
Els Cornelissen, (Sep 2002). Human Responses to Changing Environments in Central Africa
Between 40,000 and 12,000 BC, Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 16, Iss. 3.
[←135]
Els Cornelissen. (2002).
[←136]
Shaw, T. (1980). Hunters, gatherers and first farmers in West Africa. In J.V.S. Megaw (Ed.)
Hunters, Gatherers and First Farmers beyond Europe (p. 69-125). Leicester University Press.
[←137]
Shaw, T. (1980). p. 111-114; Davies, O. (1968). The origins of agriculture in West Africa.
Current Anthropology, 9, 479-487.
[←138]
Posnansky, M. (1984). Early agricultural societies in Ghana. In J.D. Clark & S.A. Brandt (Eds.)
From Hunters to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food Production in Africa (p.
147-151). University of California Press; Stahl, A.B. (1995). Intensification in the west
African Late Stone Age: a view from central Ghana. In T. Shaw, P. Sinclair, B. Andah, & A.
Okpoko (Eds.) The Archaeology of Africa (p. 261-273). Routledge.
[←139]
Cornelissen, Els (Mar 2003), “On Microlithic Quartz Industries at the End of the Pleistocene in
Central Africa: The Evidence from Shum Laka (NW Cameroon).” African Archaeological
Review, Vol. 20, No. 1.
[←140]
Stone tools about a foot or more long. Microlithic tools are smaller stone tools.
[←141]
Lavachery, P. (2001). The Holocene Archaeological Sequence of Shum Laka Rock Shelter
(Grassfields, Western Cameroon). African Archaeological Review. Vol. 18, No. 4
[←142]
Yellen, JE, et al. (28 April 1995). “A middle stone age worked bone industry from Katanda,
Upper Semliki Valley, Zaire”. Science 268 (5210): 553-556.
[←143]
Shadreck Chirikure; Innocent Pikirayi (2008). “Inside and outside the dry stone walls: revisiting
the material culture of Great Zimbabwe”. Antiquity 82: 976–993.
[←144]
Rincon, Paul (May 23 2003). “Oldest sculpture found in Morocco”. BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3047383.stm
[←145]
The world’s largest desert, Antarctica, is a cold one, classified as such because of a lack of rainfall
and useful land (also known as “arable land” or land that can be used for growing crops).
[←146]
The emergence of a competing lineage, Homo ergaster, could have also been a factor.
[←147]
As we’ll discuss in Part Two, this desertification period is when Saharans migrated to the Nile Valley
and West Africa, helping build new civilizations there.
[←148]
Drusillla Dunjee Houston. (1926).
[←149]
The Maghreb covers northwest Africa from Libya to Morocco. This region is home to several
prehistorica cultures, including the Iberomarusian, Oranian, Capsian, and Libyco-Capsian cultures.
[←150]
Larry O'Hanlon. (Feb 2010). “Steak Dinners Go Back 2.5 Million Years”. Discovery News.
http://news.discovery.com/animals/earliest-bull-beef-fossil.html
[←151]
Julius Caesar. (14 AD). The Gallic Wars. (Trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn). Available
at http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html
[←152]
Then again, Europeans weren’t actually “exploring” either; they were looking for new opportunities
to exploit…but that’s another story.
[←153]
Nicholas Wade. (2006). Before the Dawn. Penguin. p. 94
[←154]
Certainly, there could have been even more serious conflicts behind many of these separations, but
– unless there was a serious body count involved (and there rarely was) – we don’t have much
evidence to go on. Yet when genetics reveals that a population migrated from a “good” area to a
much more inhospitable, resource-poor area, it suggests these people may have been “exiled” from
their old homeland. Within the past 2,000 years, this has been a common and well-documented
alternative to outright genocide or mass incarceration of undesirables.
[←155]
Nicholas Wade, (2006). p 69.
[←156]
Davies, G.I (1998). “Introduction to the Pentateuch”. In John Barton. Oxford Bible Commentary.
Oxford University Press.
[←157]
The Book of Genesis may have been a reasonable attempt when it was compiled from a variety of
sources around the 5th century BC, but it’s not exactly the best reference for modern historians! It’s
what we’d call an “antiquarian history,” an attempt to explain origins using the data available at the
time. There are examples from many other cultures, from the Hindu Vedas to the Mayan Popol Vuh.
Some of these ancient historians may have been onto something, but today we’ve got a much
stronger body of data. Describing folks as “descendants of Ham” is so 19th century.
[←158]
For more information on how all this works, as well as details on determining your ancestry, check
out www.familytreedna.com or www.dnaancestryproject.com
[←159]
Yosef Ben-Jochannan. (1996). We, the Black Jews. Black Classic Press.
[←160]
Rudolph Windsor. (1998). From Babylon to Timbuktu: A History of the Ancient Black Races
Including the Black Hebrews. Windsor Golden Series.
[←161]
Cruciani F., et al., (2011). “A revised root for the human y chromosomal phylogenetic tree: The
origin of patrilineal diversity in Africa,” American Journal of Human Genetics 88, no. 6: 814-
818. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929711001649
[←162]
Supreme Understanding. C’BS Alife Allah. (2012). The Science of Self, Volume One: Man,
God, and the Mathematical Language of Nature. Supreme Design Publishing.
[←163]
African historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo suggests that the topography of Africa itself may have
facilitated such reunions and migrations. Ki-Zerbo writes: “One example is the great meridian
groove of the Rift Valley, stretching from the very centre of Africa and across the Ethiopian
ridge as far as Iraq. The curve of the valleys of the Sangha, Ubangi and Zaire must have acted
as a corridor in an eastwest direction. It is not by chance that the first kingdoms of black Africa
developed in these more accessible regions, these Sahels at once permeable from within, to a
certain extent open towards the exterior, and in contact with neighbouring regions of Africa
with different and complementary resources.” Joseph Ki-Zerbo. (Aug-Sep 1979). “A
Continent Viewed From Within.” The UNESCO Courier. UNESCO.
[←164]
Verónica Fernandes et al, (2012). “The Arabia Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps
along the Southern Route out of Africa,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 90: 1-9.
[←165]
Andrew Lawler. (Jan 2011). Did Modern Humans Travel Out of Africa Via Arabia? Science 28,
Vol. 331 no. 6016 p. 387 DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6016.387
[←166]
Armitage, S., et al. (2011). The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early
Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia Science, 331 (6016), 453-456.
[←167]
Rose J.I., et al. (2011). The Nubian Complex of Dhofar, Oman: An African Middle Stone Age
Industry in Southern Arabia. PLoS ONE 6:e28239.
[←168]
For example, a study published by archaeologist Jeffrey Rose in the journal Current Anthropology
suggests the existence of 100,000-year-old human settlement at a Persian Gulf “Oasis” that is now
underwater.
[←169]
Harry Hamilton Johnston. (1910). The Negro in the New World. p. 27
[←170]
Some of you may be wondering, wait, what about Africans? Wouldn’t Africans still have an
uninterrupted genetic lineage going back before the migration out of Africa? We’ll get back to that.
For now, let’s follow the timeline of the journey out of Africa.
[←171]
Rose J.I., et al. (2011).
[←172]
Christopher Ehret has said: “We talk about “Islamic Civilization” or “Ancient Near Eastern
Civilization” or “Western Civilization.” But what are we talking about? We’re talking about a
bunch of different peoples who somehow have a something in common culturally, something
which allows us to think of them as part of a wider grouping. If we take this model of
civilization and apply it to Africa, we quickly discover that there are big groupings of people
across Africa which share in underlying historical commonalities. If we go really deep, we
have four traditions which diffused throughout large regions of Africa. What we can see that
each of them has its roots in some particular transition that gave that group some material or
economic advantage.”
[←173]
See “Inspiration for this Work” in the Appendix of Part Two.
[←174]
Indeed, Asia is one of the oldest placenames for the known world. The earliest recorded instance of
its use is found in the Akkadian “Asu” roughly meaning “the land of the Sun.” Much older (but
unrecorded) forms of the word are very likely.
[←175]
Verónica Fernandes et al, “The Arabia Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps along the
Southern Route out of Africa,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 90 (2012): 1-9.
[←176]
Katie Alcock, (2010). “Stone Tools ‘Change Migration Story’,” BBC News.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11327442
[←177]
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea,
and neighboring islands in the Pacific Ocean.
[←178]
Michael D. Petraglia, Jeffrey I. Rose. (2009). The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia:
Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics. Springer.
[←179]
It’s kinda like the modern stereotype that Black people can’t swim – despite the fact that Africans
were the first master swimmers. Perhaps a more modern “fear of the ocean” is well-justified,
considering how the Atlantic Ocean figures into the collective unconsciousness of most Black
Americans.
[←180]
Nicholas Wade. (2006).
[←181]
“Supervolcano Eruption -- In Sumatra -- Deforested India 73,000 Years Ago.” (Nov 2009).
Science Daily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091123142739.htm
[←182]
Steve Oppenheimer. (2004). The Real Eve, p. 82
[←183]
Hanihara T. (Mar 1996). Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, 99(3):389-412.
[←184]
Steve Oppenheimer. (2004). p. 188.
[←185]
Sacha Jones. (2007). “The Toba Supervolcanic Eruption,” In Petraglia and Allchin (Eds.). The
evolution and history of human populations in South Asia, p. 177.
[←186]
Victor Grauer. (2011).
[←187]
Elizabeth Culotta, (2005). “Snapshots from the Meeting,” Science 308, no. 5721: 491,
www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5721/491.2.full
[←188]
W.E.B. Du Bois. (1915). The Negro.
[←189]
This means there aren’t many, if any, people in Africa who aren’t descended from the people who
left Africa 130,000 years ago. This is why we can say “our” ancestors left Africa without being
inconsiderate of African people. After all, their ancestors ALSO left Africa before coming back.
[←190]
Especially by the time they gave birth to the Bantu people of West-Central Africa, around 5,000-
4,000 years ago.
[←191]
Rose J.I., et al. (2011). They write: “Although southern Arabia experienced successive periods of
extreme aridity after MIS 5, terrestrial archives document another increase in precipitation
across the interior of Arabia during early MIS 3, enabling north-south demographic exchange
between ~60–50 ka. South Arabian populations may have spread to the north at this time,
taking with them a Nubian-derived Levallois technology… which is notably the hallmark of
the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in the Levant.”
[←192]
Michael D. Petraglia, Jeffrey I. Rose. (2009). The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia:
Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics. Springer.
[←193]
Nicholas Wade. (2006).
[←194]
The Levant is a region in the Near East that faces the Mediterranean Sea on its west coast. This
where we now find Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
[←195]
Anna Revedin et al. (2010). Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing
PNAS:10.1073/pnas.1006993107
[←196]
Supreme Understanding. C’BS Alife Allah. (2012). The Science of Self, Volume One: Man,
God, and the Mathematical Language of Nature. Supreme Design Publishing.
[←197]
Richards MP, et al. (June 2000). “Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: the
evidence from stable isotopes.” PNAS 97 (13): 7663–6.
[←198]
Andrea Thompson. (2006) “Neanderthals were Cannibals, Study Confirms.” Live Science.
www.livescience.com/health/061204_neanderthal_lifestyle.html
[←199]
Anna Revedin, et al. (2010). Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing.
PNAS:10.1073/pnas.1006993107
[←200]
Gray, Richard (Dec 18 2011). “Neanderthals built homes with mammoth bones”. Telegraph.
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8963177/Neanderthals-built-homes-with-
mammoth-bones.html
[←201]
The fact that Neanderthals had bigger brains, yet still went extinct, is a reminder that we should not
always be intimidated by those who appear to be more intelligent. If intelligence were the only
prerequisite for survival, every living creature still on the planet would have to be highly intelligent,
solving algebra problems and stuff. Big-brained people aren’t necessarily BETTER people. Also, the
actual link between brain size and intelligence isn’t clear. For example, elephant brains are much
bigger than ours.
[←202]
Of course, small populations did “sneak” past between 130,000 and 70,000 years ago, but these
humans didn’t become us. That is, either they didn’t survive for long, or their descendants didn’t
contribute genetically to the lineage of modern humans.
[←203]
Nicholas Wade. (2006). p. 13
[←204]
Alasdair Wilkins, (2011). “There were just too many humans for Neanderthals to survive.”
http://io9.com/5826353
[←205]
There were certainly some survivors, but it’s more than likely their descendants didn’t make it this
far, as there are no known non-African DNA lineages more than 75,000 years old.
[←206]
Vega Toscano, L.G., Raposo, L., & M. Santonja. (1994). Environments and settlements in the
Middle Palaeolithic of the Iberian peninsula, in W. Roebroeks & C. Gamble (ed.), The Middle
Palaeolithic occupation of Europe: 23-48. Universtiy of Leiden.
[←207]
Karkanas, P.; et al. (Sep 2004). “The earliest evidence for clay hearths: Aurignacian features in
Klisoura Cave 1, southern Greece.” Antiquity.
[←208]
Christine Mellot. (2008). “Stalking the ancient dog.” Science News.
[←209]
Mietje Germonpré et al. (2008). Fossil dogs and wolves from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the
Ukraine and Russia: osteometry, ancient DNA and stable isotopes. Journal of Archaeological
Science doi:10.1016/j.jas.2008.09.033.
[←210]
Derr, Mark (2011). How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends. Penguin
Group USA.
[←211]
Pritchard, Hamish (Aug 3 2011). “Ancient dog skull unearthed in Siberia”. BBC News; Ovodov,
Nikolai D.; et al. (Jul 28 2011). “A 33,000-Year-Old Incipient Dog from the Altai Mountains
of Siberia: Evidence of the Earliest Domestication Disrupted by the Last Glacial Maximum.”
PLoS ONE.
[←212]
Viegas, Jennifer (Oct 7 2011). “Prehistoric dog found with mammoth bone in mouth”. Discovery
News.
[←213]
E.M. O’Brian. (Jul 1984). “What was the Acheulean Hand Ax?” Natural History, p. 18.
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Valet, Jean-Pierre, and Hélène Valladas. (2010). “The Laschamp-Mono lake geomagnetic events
and the extinction of Neanderthal: A causal link or a coincidence?” Quaternary Science
Reviews.
[←215]
The data is based on remains of Neanderthals occupying Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Russian
Caucasus.
[←216]
Golovanova, Liubov V., et al. (2010). “Significance of Ecological Factors in the Middle to
Upper Paleolithic Transition.” Current Anthropology. 51: 655-691.
[←217]
Andrew Froehle and Steven E. Churchill, (2009). “Energetic Competition Between Neandertals
and Anatomically Modern Humans” PaleoAnthropology: 96−116.
[←218]
Banks WE, et al. (2008) Neanderthal Extinction by Competitive Exclusion. PLoS ONE 3(12):
e3972. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003972
[←219]
Robin Mckie. (2009). “How Neanderthals Met a Grisly Fate: Devoured By Humans,” The
Observer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/17/neanderthals-cannibalism-
anthropological-sciences-journal
[←220]
Hillary Mayell. “When Did “Modern” Behavior Emerge in Humans?” National Geographic
News.
[←221]
Ker Thal, (2009). “Humans Likely Killed Neanderthal, Weapons Test Shows,” National
Geographic News. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090722-human-
neanderthal-murder.html
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Marlowe, F.W. (2005). “Hunter-gatherers and human evolution.” Evolutionary Anthropology 14
(2): 15294. doi:10.1002/evan.20046.
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J. Chavaillon, D. Lavallée, (1988). “Bola” in Dictionnaire de la Préhistoire, PUF.
[←224]
McClellan (2006). Science and Technology in World History. JHU Press. p. 6–12
[←225]
John Roach, (2006). Neanderthals’ Last Stand was Gibraltar, Study Suggests,” National
Geographic News. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060913-
neanderthals.html
[←226]
Green RE et al. (May 2010). “A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome.” Science 7;328
(5979):710-22.
[←227]
For details, see “The Origins of Language” in Black People Invented Everything.
[←228]
Charles Q. Choi, “Innovative Blades May Have Led to a Stone Age Population Boom,”
Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=innovative-blades-
may-hav
[←229]
There are also Asian names that may somehow be cognates of Aka. For example, the Aeta (or Agta)
of the Philippines. And all Greater Andaman tribal names contain the prefix Aka-, Akar-, A- or
Oko-. In the various tribal languages, these roughly mean “language.” A member of the Aka-Bea
tribe, therefore, was someone coming from the tribe speaking the Bea language.
[←230]
And yes, I know the use of “DBP People” is redundant (the “P” already stands for people!). But I
like this fact, as it is important to constantly keep in mind that we are talking about “people” and not
simply historical events. After all, many of the human communities we describe in this text still exist
today. You can actually meet them, should you be prepared to make those kinds of travels.
[←231]
You’ll find the full excerpt from Massey in Black God.
[←232]
Robert Halliburton. (1897). How a Race of Pygmies was Found in North Africa and Spain.
Arbuthnot Bros. Co. Ltd. Halliburton continues: “A young Jew now living in Manchester, but
a native of Mogador, said that the Moors worshipped these Barakers, and would not talk freely
about them to the Jews. He had tried to find out about them, but without success. He had
constantly, when a boy, seen an old Baraker who died at Mogador about eight or ten, years
ago, who was looked on as a great saint, and as such was kissed on the shoulders by the Moors
as they passed him in the street. These dwarfs are supposed to bring good luck to the towns
where they reside, and are guardians and protectors, resembling in this respect the Palladium
of the Trojans. If strangers were to succeed in carrying them out of the country, good luck
would depart with them. It is probable that some such superstitious belief was at the bottom of
the difficulty which puzzled and baffled Schweinfurth in his attempt to get a sight of the dwarf
Akkas of the Monbutto country, the king of which sent away by night his regiment of dwarfs,
so as to keep them out of the way of his visitor.”
[←233]
That is, DBP in Asia often (but not always) look somewhat Australoid, while DBP in Africa look
more Africoid than the DBP in Asia.
[←234]
Albert Churchward. (1921). The Original and Evolution of the Human Race.
[←235]
Examples include the Nilotic people of the Sudan and the Beta Israel of Ethiopia.
[←236]
J. T. Stock, A. B. Migliano. (Oct 2009). Stature, Mortality, and Life History among Indigenous
Populations of the Andaman Islands, 1871–1986. Current Anthropology Vol. 50, No. 5.
[←237]
John Illife. (1995). Africans: The History of a Continent. Cambridge University Press. p. 10.
[←238]
Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1986). African pygmies. Academic Press.
[←239]
Nicholas Wade. (2006). p. 90.
[←240]
For this chapter, we’ll include the entire region that was once known as India, before the British
came. This includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and several neighboring areas, all of which were
carved into pieces when the British took over. Until this time, the empire now known as India was
the richest nation in the world.
[←241]
Lynn Thorndike. (1936). Short History of Civilization, p. 227.
[←242]
Vidya Prakash Tyagi. (2009). Martial Races of Undivided India. Gyan Publishing, p. 2
[←243]
John Block Friedman. (1981). The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard
University Press. p. 18
[←244]
Ctesias, Ind. ii. pp. 250, 294; Philostr. Vit. Apollon. iii. 47; Plin. H. N. vi. 22
[←245]
Ctesias, Indica (summary from Photius, Myriobiblon 72) (trans. Freese)
[←246]
Harry Hamilton Johnston. (1910). p. 27
[←247]
Godfrey Higgins. (1833). Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis; Or,
An Inquiry into the Origins of Languages, Nations and Religions. To be republished by Two
Horizons Press in 2013.
[←248]
R. Thapar. (1966). A History of India.
[←249]
Majid Husan. (2008). Geography of India. Tata McGraw-Hill.
[←250]
Majid Husan. (2008).
[←251]
Supreme Understanding. C’BS Alife Allah. (2012). The Science of Self, Volume One: Man,
God, and the Mathematical Language of Nature. Supreme Design Publishing.
[←252]
Pedro Soares et al. (Jun 2009). “Correcting for Purifying Selection: An Improved Human
Mitochondrial Molecular Clock.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19500773
[←253]
Taylor, Thomas Griffith. (1937). Environment, race, and migration; fundamentals of human
distribution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 135
[←254]
G. Elliot Smith (1929). The Migrations of Early Culture, Manchester University Press.
[←255]
Victor Grauer. (2011).
[←256]
Michael Petraglia et.al. (Jul 2007). “Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian
Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption”. Science 317, no 5834:114-116.
[←257]
Taylor, Thomas Griffith. (1937), p. 248
[←258]
Vidya Prakash Tyagi. (2009). p. 2
[←259]
Cited in Majid Husan. (2008). See Guha, B. S. 1931. The racial affinities of the peoples of India.
Census of India, vol. 1, Simla.
[←260]
Taylor, Thomas Griffith. (1937).
[←261]
Quatrefages, Armand de. (Originally published 1887, to be republished 2013). The Pygmies,
Two Horizons Press. p. 184-7.
[←262]
Quoted in John G. Jackson (1939) Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization.
[←263]
M. R. Verneau. (Aug 18 1924). Les recentes decouvertes prehistoriques en Indochine. Comptes
Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de 1’Acadamie des Sciences, t. 179, no. 7, p. 416-418.
[←264]
Weber, George. (2009). “The Negrito Race.” Lonely Islands: The Andamanese.
http://andaman.org/book/chapter6/text6.htm
[←265]
Coedes, G.. (1969). The Making of South East Asia. trans. H. M. Wright. University of
California Press. p. 21. Earlier in the text Coedes mentions a skull found in Paleolithic Laos
combining characteristics of the Papuan Negroids, the Veddo-Austroloids, and the so-called
Europoids (of the same type as the Indonesians and Polynesians). J. Fromaget said of this
finding: “His ancestors must have had their habitat somewhere in the south of China on the
borders of Yunnan and Tibet, whence they must have spread towards the east and the south
throughout the whole of South East Asia, in all parts of which remains of their culture have
been found.”
[←266]
Weber, George. (2009).
[←267]
During French control, the area now known as South Vietnam was called Cochin China. North
Vietnam was known as Tonkin, where Rene Verneau also found “Negrito” and Australoid remains
across the Paleolithic and Neolithic strata.
[←268]
Allen, Francis A. (1879). “The Original Range of the Papuan and Negritto Races.” Journal of the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. 8. p. 41. Of these people,
Quatrefages observed in his 1885 work, The Pygmies: “As the Malay, so has the Annamite
peninsula its representatives of the Negrito type, known under the name of Mois or Moys.
Logan long since considered this fact as demonstrated. The doubts so often expressed in regard
to this seem scarcely tenable in view of the old proofs recalled by M. Giglioli himself, of those
which Earl obtained from the Annamites and Cochin-Chinese, and of the communications of
two French physicians of the navy to Hamy. These last two stated to my learned colleagues
that some Negro tribes live near the northern frontiers of the Cochin-Chinese province of Bien-
Hoa. The latest information furnished by Allen seems to me to remove the last doubts.” p. 35.
[←269]
Colquhoun, A.R. (1970). Amongst the Shans. Paragon Book Reprint, p. xliii.
[←270]
Allen, Francis A. (1879). p. 41-42. Allen also notes the interesting “coincidence” that the
“Negroid” Buddha himself is said to have been born to a woman named “Maia.”
[←271]
George Weber. (2009). “The Negrito of Malaysia.”
www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter35/text35.htm
[←272]
Peter Bellwood. (2005). Economic Patterns of Early Life. The Encyclopedia of Malaysia,
Volume Four: Early History. Didier Millet.
[←273]
Peter Bellwood. (2005).
[←274]
Comas, J. (1960). Manual of Physical Anthropology. Charles C Thomas.
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Hooton, E. A. (1950). Up from the Ape. The Macmillan Company.
[←276]
Von Eickstedt, E. F. Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit. Ferdinand Enke
Verlag, Stuttgart.
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Schoonheyt, L.J.A. (1937). Bijdrage tot de Anthropologie der Bevolking van Batavia en Naaste
Omstreken. Doctoral dissertation, Batavia-C.
[←278]
Teuku Jacob. (Sep 1964). A Human Mandible from Anjar Urn Field, Indonesia. Journal of the
National Medical Association, Vol. 56, No. 5, p. 421-426.
[←279]
De Quatrefages, Armand. (1887). The Pygmies, Two Horizons Press. p. 25-26.
[←280]
They are also known as Ati, Aeta, Agta, Arta, Atta, Alta and Ita, among other names. The word
appears to be not their own name for themselves but a name given by surrounding Filipinos. In
Austronesian languages, ita often means “black”.
[←281]
De Quatrefages, Armand. (1887). p. 25-26.
[←282]
David J. de Laubenfels. (Mar 1968). Australoids, Negroids, and Negroes: A Suggested
Explanation for Their Disjunct Distributions. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, Vol. 58, No. 1, p. 42-50.
[←283]
Scott, William Henry (1984), Prehispanic Source Materials for the study of Philippine History,
New Day Publishers.
[←284]
Michael Petraglia et.al. (Jul 2007). “Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian
Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption”. Science 317, no 5834:114-116.
[←285]
Nguyen Viet and Nguyen Thi Oan. Aug 2008. “Archaeology of Death in Vietnam”. Center for
SEA Prehistory. http://www.drnguyenviet.com/?id=5&cat=1&cid=22
[←286]
Matsumura, H. and Zuraina, M. (1999). Metric analyses of an early Holocene human skeleton
from Gua Gunung Runtuh, Malaysia. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 109: 327-340
[←287]
Bellwood, Peter. (1985). Pre-History of the Indo-malaysian Archipelago. Australian National
University.
[←288]
Mondal PR, et al. (2011). “The genomic similarities with linguistic difference: a study among
the Oraon and Munda tribes of the Ranchi district, Jharkhand, India.” Genet Test Mol
Biomarkers 15, no 6: 443-9.
[←289]
More recently, many anthropologists have abandoned these classifications altogether, for reasons we
discussed earlier. But these classifications aren’t useless. They can give us hints into who went
where, based on the remains we find.
[←290]
There are few words that are respectful to east Asian people as a specific population. “Oriental” is
meant to describe objects, such as art, not human beings. (Same with “Negro,” Spanish for a black
object) “Asiatic” has a checkered past, and even when the 5% reclaim its usage, it’s not specific to
east Asians. “Yellow people” gets a mixed reception because of the negative connotations of being
yellow, as in cowardly.
[←291]
Deniker, Joseph. (1900). The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography. C.
Scribner’s Sons.
[←292]
Takeru Akazawa and Emóke J.E. Sathmåry. (1996). Prehistoric Mongoloid dispersals. Oxford
University Press.
[←293]
Dixon, Roland B. (1923). The Racial History of Man. Charles Scribners & Sons, p. 222. Quoted
in Brunson, James E. (1985). p.15
[←294]
Sleeboom, Margaret. (2004). Academic Nations in China and Japan. Routledge, p.56
[←295]
Nicholas Wade. (2006).
[←296]
James Brunson. (1985).
[←297]
J. Lawrence Angel. (1966). Early skeletons from Tranquillity, California. Smithsonian
Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 1. Angel writes: “This eastern Asiatic proto-
Mongoloid norm does indeed show long-range resemblances to eastern Upper Paleolithics
[from the Near East] and to Australoids (or Amurians and Negritoids), as well as to
Palaeamericans.”
[←298]
This, of course, doesn’t include all of the features associated with Neo-Mongoloid people, who carry
a set of features that developed more recently. Cheikh Anta Diop proposed that the epicanthic
eyelid developed as a result of people migrating to Mongolia where the eyelid fold evolved to protect
against high winds. Light skin and especially straight hair (as opposed to the wavier texture of Paleo-
Mongoloid people) appear to be a more recent development, influenced in great part by an ancient
influx of whites.
[←299]
B. A. Malyarchuk, M. A. Perkova and M. V. Derenko. On the origin of Mongoloid component in
the mitochondrial gene pool of Slavs. Russian Journal of Genetics, 10.1007/s11177-008-3016-
9
[←300]
Scandinavia consists of Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
[←301]
Majid Husan. (2008). Husan adds: “Their representatives are found in the sub-Himalayan region,
particularly Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Indo-Myanmar (Burma) border districts. Their
representatives are Daflas, Garos, Kacharis, Khasis, Kuki-Nagas, Ladling, Machi, Miris, and
Tipperas.” If you look these people up, you will see that these are dark-skinned Mongoloid
people.
[←302]
Majid Husan. (2008).
[←303]
Li Chi. (1928). p. 7.
[←304]
Bo Wen et al. (Sept 2004). Genetic evidence supports demic diffusion of Han culture. Nature
431: 302. Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People’s Republic of
China (mainland China), 98% of the population of the Republic of China (Taiwan), 74% of the
population of Singapore, 24.5% of population of Malaysia, and about 20% of the entire global
human population, making it the largest ethnic group in the world. Yet there is still
considerable genetic, linguistic, cultural, and social diversity among the subgroups of the Han,
due to thousands of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnic groups
within China.
[←305]
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. (1962). The Chinese: Their History and Culture. 4th ed. Vol. 2. The
Macmillan Company. p. 438.
[←306]
Certainly the same stratification may be said to exist throughout the world today, where Europeans,
or fair-skinned peoples borne from miscegenation with Europeans invaders (or “colonizers”), rule
over darker, native populations. This is the case in nearly every non-white nation or society where
Europeans have had some kind of impact, the major exceptions primarily being those where
figureheads are selected from the native populace to act as tools for the Europeans interests
concerned.
[←307]
It is important to understand that the term “barbarian” was used by the ancient Chinese simply to
designate alien populations, native or foreign, not necessarily in the “savage” context the term
implies today. Marcel Granet called these designations “generic names without precise value.”
Granet, Marcel. (1930). p. 77. During the feudal period, the barbarian countries were
designated as follows: Man in the south, Yi in the east, Jung in the west and Ti in the north.
[←308]
Hsu, Cho-Yun. “The Spring and Autumn Period.” Cambridge History of Ancient China. (1999)
p. 549. Similarly, the Yi peoples were not solely isolated to the eastern shores, but there was a
Western Yi recorded in the Bamboo Annals as well. Creel, Herrlee G. (1970) p. 199.
[←309]
Quoted in Ivan Van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi. (Eds). African Presence in Early Asia.
Transaction Publishers.
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Schafer, Edward. (2008). The Vermillion Bird. University of California Press. p. 13.
[←311]
Chai Chen Kang. (1967). p. 29.
[←312]
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. (1962). p. 439. Again, remarks of “dark-coloured clothes,” like those
of the “black-haired commoners” attempt to obfuscate the racial identity of the people to
whom these cleverly crafted euphemisms refer. Dark-colored clothes have never, and will
never, cause any people to be regarded as “Black,” just as “black hair,” being a common
feature of all east Asian peoples, has never been a point of reference, or reason for singling
out, among observers, Chinese or otherwise. Being “black-haired” is almost certainly a
euphemism for being “black-headed.”
[←313]
Lin Yueh-hwa. (Jan 1941). “The Miao-Man Peoples of Kweichow.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic
Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3/4, p. 279.
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Gernet, Jacques. (1982). A History of Chinese Civilization. trans. J.R. Foster. Cambridge
University Press, p. 18.
[←315]
“Ethnologue: China.” North America-China Virtual Research Centre.
http://www.cic.sfu.ca/NACC/articles/minority.html The official name “Yi” has come to
replace Lo-lo, Man Chia and many other such derogatory names and groupings. Most of these
names originally referred to the eastern Yi people. Even the Lisu, at times, are included under
the Yi designation. Thus, groups such as the Hei Lo-lo are now know as the Hei Yi (or Hei-I).
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Peter Goullart. (1955). The Forgotten Kingdom. John Murray. p. 116.
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Frank M. LeBar. (1964). Ethnic groups of mainland Southeast Asia.
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Carter, George F. (2000) Earlier than you think. Texas A&M University Press. p. 300.
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Bishop, Carl Whiting. (1934). pp. 299-300.
[←320]
Coedes, G. (1969) The Making of South East Asia. p. 21.
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Stoddard, Lothrop. The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.
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Chang Hsing-lang. “The Importation of Negro slaves to China under the T’ang Dynasty A.D.
618-907.” Bulletin of the Catholic University of Peking, No. 7 (Dec. 1930). Quoted in Rogers,
J.A. Sex and Race, Vol. 1. 9th ed. (1967) p. 67.
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Imbert, H. Les Negritos de la Chine. (Hanoi, 1928). Quoted in Rogers, J.A. Sex and Race, Vol.
1. 9th ed. (1967) p. 67.
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Li Chi. (1928) p. 245. These “black dwarfs,” C.W. Bishop noted were said to have inhabited
what is now Anhui province during the third century A.D. Bishop, Carl Whiting. (1934) p. 300
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Liu, James J.Y. (1967). The Chinese Knight Errant. Routledge and Kegan Paul. According to
Taoist adept Ge Hong, some hunters in the Zhongnan Mountains saw a naked man whose body
appeared to be covered in black hair. Whenever they tried to capture him he “leapt over gullies
and valleys as if in flight, and so could not be overtaken.”
[←326]
Li Chi. (1928). p. 259.
[←327]
“Ethnologue: China.” North America-China Virtual Research Centre.
http://www.cic.sfu.ca/NACC/articles/minority.html
[←328]
Brunson, James E. (1985). Black Jade: African Presence in the Ancient East and Other Essays.
DeKalb. p. 32.
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Li Chi. (1973). p. 8-9.
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To be clear, what anthropologists call shamanism, we can call by other names that are more
illustrative of the science behind the symbolism used. We’ll get into that in Volume Three.
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Weber, George. (2009). “The Negrito Race.” Lonely Islands: The Andamanese.
http://andaman.org/book/chapter6/text6.htm. Weber notes that the Moi (the Anu-chu, Jarai, or
Montognards) are one of the few living DBP populations still settled within continental
southeast Asia. Of other living, or until recently living, peoples with “possible
Negritoid/Veddoid affiliations” in China, he listed the Porr (Jong), the Yumbri, and the
Takkui. A site located in the territory of the Yumbri and Takkui peoples held considerable
archaeological evidence for extinct Black populations there.
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George Weber. (2009).
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Hotz, Robert Lee. (Sep 29 1998). “Chinese Roots Lie in Africa, Research Says.” Los Angeles
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Kainer, Simon (Sep 2003). “The Oldest Pottery in the World.” Current World Archaeology
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Chris Scarre (Ed.) (2003). Past Worlds Atlas of Archaeology. Borders Press. p. 68.
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Chang, Kwang-Chih. (1986). The Archaeology of Ancient China. 4th ed. Yale University
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Weidenreich, Franz. (1939). On the earliest representatives of modern mankind recovered on the
soil of east Asia. Peking Nat. Hist. Bull., vol. 13, pt. 3, p. 163-174.
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Peter Brown. (2012). “Liujiang.” Paleohome. www-personal.une.edu.au/
~pbrown3/Liujiang.html For those who want to examine the evidence for themselves, Brown’s
“Paleohome” website provides users access to some of the raw data on many prehistoric skulls
from Australia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
[←339]
J. Lawrence Angel. (1966). Early skeletons from Tranquillity, California. Smithsonian
Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 1.
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Stewart, D.T. 1960. A physical anthropologist’s view of the peopling of the New World.
Southwestern Journ. Anthropol., vol. 16, pp. 259-273. Albuquerque
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Chai Chen Kang. (1967). Taiwan Aborigines: A Genetic Study of Tribal Variations. Harvard
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Chai Chen Kang. (1967) p. 210.
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What does Miao-li mean? Look back and think about it.
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Jules Quartly. (Nov 27 2004). “In honor of the Little Black People.” Taipei Times.
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Jules Quartly. (2004).
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For more on the Black gods of Japan, see Black God, a forthcoming work from Supreme Design
Publishing, due to release in Summer of 2013.
[←347]
According to Kawakami: “At the beginning of the eight century of the Christian era, a book entitled
Kojiki, or Book of Ancient Traditions, was compiled. It is the oldest record now extant, and contains
many mythological traditions concerning the primitive state of the aborigines. From this and
traditional records written subsequently, and from various articles lately excavated in different
districts, it is inferred that the Japanese race was the outgrowth of a mixing of various stocks.”
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Karl Kiyoshi Kawakami. (1903). “The Political Ideas of Modern Japan.” Studies in Sociology,
Economics, Politics and History, Vol. 2, No. 2. The University Press. Kawakami’s name
stands out to me because of its initials. It seems this name could have been a penname for a
white pro-Aryan author, especially considering the time in which it was written. In fact, the
author does promote an Aryan presence in Japan becoming its “master race.” However, the
author does not mute the history of the DBP or Australoid People in Japan, meriting this essay
worthy of our attention.
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De Quatrefages, Armand. (1887). p. 27-28. The American translator of the book, Frederick Starr,
writes: “ No man has done more than he to further anthropological study in France; no man
was more respected than he over the whole of Continental Europe; no European
anthropologist’s works have been more widely read in America.”)
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Taylor, Thomas Griffith. (1937). Environment, Race, and Migration; Fundamentals of Human
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Anthropol 97, no. 2:101-11. For example, some of the dental traits of ancient Jōmon people
resemble those of modern Mongoloid people, but when scientists looked for the most
important Mongoloid trait (sinodonty), they didn’t see what they expected. Instead, Jōmon
teeth looked more like the teeth of Australian aborigines than modern Asian people.
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Jared Diamond. “Japanese Roots.” www2.gol.com/users/hsmr/Content/East%20Asia/
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It seems that the longer the original settlers remained on the fringes, the shorter they became. The
Tasmanian “pygmies” were no more than 4 feet, 6 inches tall when anthropologists came to examine
them in the 1800s. And once the Europeans arrived, it wasn’t long before the Tasmanians – who
were virtually cornered – became extinct.
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For example, The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia were filmed in New Zealand.
Jurassic Park was filmed in Hawaii.
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Harry Hamilton Johnston. (1910). The Negro in the New World. p. 27
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A more complete list includes Amphlett Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, d’Entrecasteaux Islands,
Louisiade Archipelago, Maluku Islands, New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, Raja Ampat Islands,
Schouten Islands, Santa Cruz Islands, and Woodlark Island.
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Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), Volume 22, Page 679
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The so-called “Papuan” languages are actually a large group of unrelated language families – along
with several languages regarded as unaffiliated “isolates” – spoken by people living, for the most
part, in the interior highlands.
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A more complete list includes French Polynesia, Niue, Norfolk Island, Pitcairn Islands, Rotuma,
Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis, and Futuna.
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Quoted in John G. Jackson (1939) Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization: A Critical Review of
the Evidence of Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Comparative Religion: According to
the Most Reliable Sources and Authorities. Also see Willis N. Huggins. and John G. Jackson,
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Elsdon Best. (1923). Polynesian Voyagers. The Maori as a Deep-sea Navigator, Explorer, and
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An official process by which Maori can raise and investigate breaches of the promises made to the
Maori in the Treaty of Waitangi, which established British rule of New Zealand, by a coalition of
Maori chiefs under considerable pressure.
[←411]
A holiday celebrating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
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Steve Connor. (May 4 2009). “Revealed: The Face of the First European.” The Independent.
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“Steatopygia” technically means an accumulation of fat in the posterior (which juts out from the
lower back at a pronounced angle). In laymen’s terms, it simply means “big booty.” As it occurs
naturally, it is unique to Black women.
[←414]
Piette, Edouard. “L’art pendant l’age du renne.” Paris: Masson, 1907.
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White, Randall. (Dec 2006) “The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and
Interpretation.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 13(4), 276.
[←416]
White, Randall. (Dec 2006) “The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and
Interpretation.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 13(4), 277
[←417]
Piette, Edouard. (1895). “La station de Brassempouy et les statuettes humaines de la periode
glyptique.” L’Anthropologie. 6, p. 129-130
[←418]
However, the African-presence theory proposed by Piette quickly lost ground after the 1920s and
was replaced by new theories that maintained the idea of realistic body portrayal yet somehow
removed any mention of Black people. The new non-racial theories proposed that these figurines
had large hips and butts because they represented a “mother goddess” – even though these figurines
were often found accompanied by sculptures of males, and almost never with an actual child.
[←419]
Arthus Evans. (1901). Vignaud pamphlets: Crete. p. 436
[←420]
The two earliest examples are the Venus of Berekhat Ram, found in present-day Syria, and dated to
at least 230,000 years ago; and the Venus of Tan-Tan, found in Morocco, and dated to between
300,000 and 500,000 years ago. The use of red ochre on this figurine to simulate reddish-brown skin,
as is the case with many Venus figurines, suggest that the Tan-Tan statuette is the earliest Venus
figurine, and possibly the earliest representation of the human form.
[←421]
J. Pendlebury. (1939). Archaeology of Crete. p. 39.
[←422]
White, Randall. (Dec 2006) “The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and
Interpretation.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 13(4), 275.
[←423]
Arthur Evans. Palace of Minos. 45
[←424]
Angelo Mosso. (1911). The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization. p. 154
[←425]
Angelo Mosso. (1911). p. 155
[←426]
Angelo Mosso. (1911). p. 156
[←427]
Thomas Griffith Taylor notes “small statues and rock paintings (found in Spain and France
chiefly) which certainly point to a race akin to the Bushmen” alongside skeletons bearing
matching traits. He continues, “At Willendorf (near Vienna) a statuette of a nude woman is
steatopygic and has hair apparently of the peppercorn type. Similar negritoid figures come
from Brassempouy and Lespugues in the south of France, and perhaps indicate a former
widespread negrito stratum.”
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Don Hitchcock. (2011). “The Gravettian toolmaking and venus carving culture.”
http://donsmaps.com/lagravette.html According to Hitchcock, the 50-year moratorium was
expected to end in 2011, but nothing was announced.
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Nicholas Wade. (2006) p. 95. Wade begins, “For much of the period during which the exodus
from Africa unfolded, from 50,000 to 30,000 years ago, people everywhere may have looked
pretty much the same. Everyone outside Africa was descended from the 150 emigrants, who in
turn were drawn from the host population in Africa. The first modern humans were an African
species that had suddenly expanded its range. For many millennia people would presumably
all have had dark skin, just as do the relict populations of Australia, New Guinea and the
Andaman Islands.”
[←430]
Yes, many historians taught that Black and brown people had white origins! So the Grimaldi finds
gave them what they were looking for. Grimaldi man was made out to be the ancestor of all Black
people, and a skull from Chancelade – with it’s more “Asiatic” features – was made out to be the
ancestor of the “yellow” races of Asia. And of course, it was assumed that these European
“ancestors” of ours sprang from a white ancestor themselves. After all, they WERE in Europe,
right?
[←431]
There is some genetic evidence that a group of people carrying the X haplogroup, could have left
northern Europe after building the Solutrean culture, then sailed to Greenland (where they were
found and called “Skraelings” by later writers), and then settled in northeastern Canada, where
Solutrean artifacts are found again. The only other explanation for this connection is that the
builders of the Solutrean culture left Europe and traveled east across Siberia into the Americas.
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Felix Riede, (2011). “Adaptation and Niche Construction in Human Prehistory: A Case Study
From the Southern Scandanavian Late Glacial,” Phil Trans R Soc B 366, no. 1566. 793-808.
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between Portugal and Lake Baykal is almost 6000 miles.
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As suggested by the straight hair found among many Australoid people and the hair shown on small
ivory bust of a man found at Dolní Věstonice and dated to 26,000 years ago, though the later Venus
of Brassempouy suggests curly hair or braids and dozens of others figurines show woolly-textured
or peppercorn hair.
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positions and were treated as peers, not property.
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the western extremities exposed. That glacial cover receded as one moves southwards into Central
America, thus leaving groups of migrants free to move eastward.
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Ironically enough, Keith originally became famous for promoting the fake skull known as Piltdown
Man, which made whites appear to have an older, more widespread presence. But he became
infamous for suggesting the same idea – truthfully this time – for Black people!
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Dixon, Roland B. (1923). The Racial History of Man. Scribner’s Sons. p. 401-402
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Taylor, Thomas Griffith. (1937). Environment, Race and Migration. The University of Chicago
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crania. Texas Archeol. Paleont. Soc. Bull., vol. 5, p. 25-39. Abilene; Hrdlicka, Ales (1906).
Contribution to the physical anthropology of California. Univ. California Publ. Amer. Archeol.
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earliest known American. Genet. Mol. Biol. vol.22, n.4, p. 461-469.
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Center for the Study of the First Americans. (2005). “A New Wind From the South Shakes
Clovis.” Mammoth Trumpet 20, no 3,
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Veronique Greenwood. (Apr 2012). “Early Skeleton Stolen From Underwater Cave in Mexico”.
Discover Magazine. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/tag/young-man-of-chan-hol-ii/
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Walter A. Neves, Mark Hubbe, (Dec 2005). “Cranial morphology of early Americans from
Lagoa Santa, Brazil: Implications for the settlement of the New World” PNAS, vol. 102 no. 51
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Eliza Barclay. (2008). “Oldest Skeleton in Americas Found in Underwater Cave?” National
Geographic News. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080903-oldest-
skeletons_2.html
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For example, stone tools and charcoal from Serra Da Capivara, a site in remote northeast Brazil,
show evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/430944.stm
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Muello, Peter. (June 16 1987). “Find Puts Man in America at Least 300,000 Years Ago,” Dallas
Times Herald.
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For more on the Black gods of the Americas, see Black God, a forthcoming work from Supreme
Design Publishing, to be released in the Summer of 2013.
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E. Farias, (2010). “Drought Record of the Negro River, Amazonas, Raises Archaeological
Rarities,”Acritica, http://acritica.uol.com.br/amazonia/Seca-traz-raridades_0_368963103.html
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For example, in a 2012 study, the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society wrote to
all the federally recognized tribes in the U.S. asking for DNA samples, but only two agreed to give
them. In their defense, there are old samples from many indigenous nations that can be consulted.
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Merritt Ruhlen. (1998). “The origin of the Na-Dene”. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 95, no 23:
13994–13996. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC25007/
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Transcontinental Contacts in Prehistoric America”. Journal of Scientific Exploration 17, no. 1:
19-36. http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_17_1_kehoe.pdf The paper includes an
extensive list of transoceanic crossings made on small boats, including one made entirely from
empty beer kegs and plastic bottles.
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Yet Africans and Muslims were a different story. In 1452, when the Portuguese sought confirmation
that they could enslave infidels seized in the Crusade, the Pope issued Dum Diversus, which allowed
them to conquer and reduce to “perpetual slavery” all “Saracens and pagans and other infidels and
enemies of Christ.” Two years later, the Pope issued Romanus Pontifex, which granted the Portuguese
a perpetual monopoly over Africa. For more, see Black Rebellion: Eyewitness Accounts of Major Slave
Revolts, published by Two Horizons Press.
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It’s true that some historians called Black people “Pre-Adamites,” but this was typically used to say
they were subhuman, while many others simply considered Blacks a cursed race descended from
Noah’s son Ham.
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Są'a Naghái Bik'e Hózhó, Bik'e H0zh. (Last accessed Nov 2012). “Origins”. Dykeman Roebuck
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American Antiquity 44(1):55-69.; Fladmark, K. R. (1983). Times and Places: Environmental
Correlates of Mid-to-Late Wisconsin Human Population Expansion in North America. In Early
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Paul Rivet. (1925). Les Australiens an Amerique, Bull. Soc. Linguistique de Paris, 26:23-63;
Morris Swadesh, (1964). “Afinidades de las lenguas amerindias,” Akten des 34.
Internationalen Amerikanisten Kongress, pp. 729–738; Loukotka, Cestmír (1935):
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Australian traits in the languages of the Alakaluf, Puelche, and other Fuegians, but not the
Yahgans, who are the most Mongoloid of the Fuegian people.
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Erich M. Von Hornbostel. (Jul-Sep 1936). “Fuegian Songs.” American Anthropologist. Vol. 38,
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Neves W.A., Powell J.F., Ozolins E.G. (1999). “Extra-Continental Morphological Affinities of
Palli Aike, Southern Chile”, Intersciencia, 24/4: 258- 263. Regarding the findings, Neves and
colleagues write: “First, it shows that people similar to those that inhabited the Lagoa Santa
area, in central Brazil, and the area of Sabana de Bogota, in Colombia, once had a wide
distribution across South America, reaching even the southernmost region of the sub-
continent. Second, but intrinsically related to the first fact, that the non-Mongoloid
morphology already demonstrated to occur in tropical and subtropical areas of South America
can also be found in regions characterized by very cold weather. This supports the idea that the
relationship of the first known Americans with Africans and Australians cannot be explained
in terms of convergent evolution due to similar climatic factors alone.”
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McCabe, Joseph. (1930). “The Story of Religious Controversy.” www.infidels.org/
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Dark-skinned? After 13,000-20,000 years of cold? How did they survive in this environment, for
thousands of years, without their skin turning white? Simple. Cold climates don’t produce white
skin. What does? We’ll explain the “secret” to the origins of whiteness in Volume Four.
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Fuegians practice the same kind of Shamanism found among the oldest people of Asia, Africa,
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Nicholas Wade. (2006).
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George Weber. (2009). www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter8/text8.htm Meanwhile Bantu, which
simply means “people” comes from from ba-, the plural prefix, and ntu, which means “a man
or a person.”
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Many people think they call themselves San, but San is a Khoi word for “original settlers”
popularized by the Dutch. Even !Kung (as in !Kung San) is a name popularized by German
missionaries, which simply means “they” in the Angola !Kung dialect.
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Nicholas Wade. (2006). They also use !ohm to describe some Bantu people, to whom they’d lost
a great deal of their ancestral territory before Europeans came.
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Supreme Understanding and Alife Allah (2012). p. 121.
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Supreme Understanding and Alife Allah (2012). p. 171.
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Nilotic people are the Black-skinned people who speak Nilotic languages (a large subgroup of the
Nilo-Saharan language family) along the Nile Valley, near the East African Great Lakes, and in
southwestern Ethiopia. These include the Kalenjin, Luo, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Ateker and the Maa-
speaking peoples.
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E began a rapid expansion westward around 50,000 years ago. E is found almost exclusively in
Africa, with traces in Europe and the Near East, wherever these Africans settled in ancient times. In
Africa, DBP people only belong to the oldest E lineages, and are more often descendants of
Haplogroups A and B. In other words, DBP are simply representatives of the oldest Y-DNA
lineages everywhere.
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Paola Spinozzi, Alessandro Zironi. (2010). Origins as a Paradigm in the Sciences and in the
Humanities. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 48-50
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The T in CT comes from the fact this haplogroup was ancestral to all haplogroups from C up to T.
The only haplogroups to come before it were A and B.
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Haplogroup C is found at high frequency among the Australian aborigines, Polynesians, Vietnamese,
Kazakhs, Mongolians, Ainu, Koreans, and indigenous inhabitants of the Russian Far East, and at
moderate frequencies elsewhere throughout Asia and Oceania, including India and Southeast Asia.
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The Lani and Dani people of New Guinea are almost exclusively C, showing us what the original
people of the C Haplogroup looked like. These people are also diminutive, another piece of
evidence to suggest the DBP were not always small.
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Haplogroup C traveled with the Australoid migration into the Americas where it now occurs from
the Athabaskan peoples of Alaska and western Canada all the way down to the Wayuu people of
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Hair texture, too, has been studied as an adaptive response to environment. Tightly coiled hair is
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Jean Hiernaux, (1975), p. 156-157.
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