evidence africans discovered america 170 years before columbus

evidence africans discovered america 170 years before columbus The lone navigator Spencer Platt Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit Google Plus October 8, 2012 The argument that Amerigo Vespucci, not Christopher Columbus discovered America is not a new or uncommon one. Planning to land in Asia, Columbus unknowingly sailed to the West Indies (Caribbean) all along believing he had traveled to Asia, he died contending he'd reached Asia, unwittingly oblivious to the fact he'd found new land. More keen in his navigational adventures, Vespucci was aware he'd encountered new land, thus America is named in his honor. However, the fact that evidence exists that Africans sailed to the Americas and settled there, almost 200 years before Columbus is widely unheard. The recitation of the Americas discovery often begins in the late 1400's. Yet historians are well aware of the knowledge, sophistication, and wealth of the Malian Empire from 1300's. This information is key since Pathe Diagne and historians before him recognized that Africans were skilled navigators long before Europeans contrary to popular belief. Pathe Diagne is a Political Scientist, linguist, historian of civilizations, and Professor for Cornell University, Diagne ensures he has proof through maps and documents that a West African mariner prince led an expedition of 2,000 boats to the New World and settled there. In 1992 the excitement around the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first trip, Diagne determined to write a book "Africa Challenge of History: Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, Semitocentrisme,"about this Pre-Columbian African navigator, Mansa Bakari II. Some of Diagne's proof is derived from archaeological findings in the 1950's. According to "Repeating Islands: News and commentary on Caribbean literature and the arts," original findings on the land of La Isabella, founded in 1494 and currently known as the Dominican Republic, revealed approximately 1,200 skeletons apparently members of Columbus' crew during his second deployment to the New World. Through innovative DNA testing a confirmation that these skeletons were the remains of free Africans was founded and further, that free Africans where the navigators and assistants in directing Columbus to the New World: The most recent study of the La Isabela skeletons grew out of a 2000 project in a mid-16th-century church cemetery in Campeche, in the Yucatán peninsula (Mexico), which revealed with near certainty "that a number of people found in the Campeche cemetery were Africans." T. Douglas Price, director of the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who did the isotropic analysis of the Campeche remains, has also been working with the Dominican bones. Further, dental DNA testing from even earlier findings, show that Africans had settled in the new land prior to Columbus' adventures, not to mention the Pilgrims. Further testing revealed a distinct difference between enslaved Africans and these Pre-Columbian Africans. In the book, "They came before Columbus," Ivan Van Sertima" tells his story of visiting a site on La Isabella in 1976 that had been excavated by the Smithsonian just a year before. At that time, he was greeted by secrecy and/or silence in regards to the Smithsonian's find of two African male skeletons dating back to 1250 A.D. From Eden to Africa, from Africa to Europe, then from Europe to slave ships heading for America, it is clear that Africans have always pioneered and led the growth of Europeans. Charlzetta Driver