In this enlightening episode of For the People, renowned scholar in anthropology and Egyptology, Cheik Anta Diop, presents his expertise on ancient Egypt’s roots and culture. This is the first of two parts following the insights of Diop. He is accompanied by a translator throughout the program.
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Part 1
Diop opens by discussing the evolution of mankind. We are able to say scientifically, with certainty, that mankind was born in Africa on the latitude of Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania, and going on a north-south axis to South Africa. It's clear that any humanity that had its birth in that region could not have survived in an equatorial region without pigmentation. For this reason, it is clear that first man had to be a Black man.
Nature created six specimens of man before we got to man as we know him today. The first three species never had the potential of leaving Africa. The fourth and fifth of these disappeared. The fifth species did not have a forehead and it has been determined that he did not have an anterior lobe. This is the major difference between homosapien and sapien. An image of three skulls is shown. The one in the middle is the man that we are, and was a Black man, called Grimaldi man. To the left is a skull of a modern African man. Forty thousand years ago, the man in the middle left Africa and went to Europe. The skull at the right is Cro-Magnon man. The climate in Europe was much colder then, and during this period of some twenty thousand years, he underwent the adaptation to become what we know as white man. It is clear that the man that we know conventionally to be a white man evolved from a Black man over a period of some twenty thousand years of adaptation to a different climate. Resting totally on scientific data, that is the conclusion that we must come to.
When human anthropology had not quite evolved to the extent that is has now, there were two theories, the monogenetic theory, which states that there was one source for mankind, and the polygenetic theory, which contends that man was born in Africa and Europe and Asia and it is that which explains their differences. The accumulation of the best information now makes it clear that man had his origins in Africa. Additional details are included in the interview.
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Part 2
In the second part, Dr. Diop discusses the lengths to which some geologists have gone to establish the pre-sapiens theory, using a fake fossil, fabricated to establish that man had his origins in Europe and especially in England. There are American anthropologists who took this theory as their own and defended it, and we know today that it is false.
In 1955, Professor Oakley of the British Museum analyzed this fossil and discovered it to be false. This was the theory that created the clash between the polycentric and monocentric theories. You can see that the ancient Egyptians looked like the man pictured. He has features associated with the Black race. It was this man who unified the Nile Valley from upper to lower Egypt, and this was 3,300 years before Jesus Christ. You can see that they were not a people that started as white and became progressively more Black. They were instead a Black people, an authentic Black people, which never ceased to be Black. The Egyptians were Black men, like Black men that you see in Africa now.
In the reproduction in the tomb of Ramses III, the person on the left is the general type, represented by the Egyptian artist himself, and the second personage is the general type of the Europeans, represented by the artist. The third personage is the general type representing all the other groups found in the interior of the continent of Africa. The fourth personage is the general type of all of the Semites living in that area of Asia. This is the different races represented by the artist, and these are the races that existed in his time, 1,200 years before Jesus Christ. This was discovered by a German scientist named Lepsis. All of the writers of Ancient Greek and Ancient Rome agreed that Egyptians of their time were, in fact, Black. But these were the Egyptians of the end of the Egyptian civilization. For a period of some 900 years, beginning the 4th century before Jesus Christ, and going to the 5th century, after the Greeks were constantly witnessing to the fact that the Egyptians were Black. They would be considered Black from their origins all the way to the end of their civilization.
This is the third dynasty of the Egyptian civilization, 2,800 BC. All of the things that we admire the Egyptians for were already in place. The great Egyptian architecture evolved under his reign, 2,300 years before the birth of architecture in Greece. Egyptian civilization, as we know it, was born under the reign of these pharaohs. A representation of the Sphinx from the end of the 19th century is shown. The profile at that time was more authentically African than it is now. The wind and sand have eroded it considerably. The nose of the Sphinx is in the British Museum, and the Egyptians are not able to have it back again to compare. It is perhaps because the features are so typically African that no one wants to see that comparison being made.
A representation of Amenhotep I is shown. This was his natural skin color, he is not painted, and his hair is kinky. It is this dynasty that conquers all of the Western world, all of Western Asia, and all of the Aegean Sea. This is the period of African imperialism. It is at this point that Africans had the imperial initiative, and they dominated all of the people from the Mediterranean all the way into the Far East. It was this dynasty, Thutmose III, who conquered 111 states in all, and made them part of the Egyptian empire.
Here you have Ramses II and a Tutsi Warrior. It is remarkable, the similarity between the Tutsi hairdo and the helmet worn by the pharaoh. A representation of the founder of the 11th dynasty is shown. A representation of the inventor of monotheism is shown. He was the first pharaoh to say that there was one god and that he must not be represented by images. This was before Moses.There was no Bible. And so, it is Africa that was the origin of monotheistic religion.
This pharaoh had six daughters with his queen, Nefertari. This representation compares her with one of the African tribes that is known for the forming of the skull. The journals of Dr. Van Sertima and Dr. Finch are credited for the images. A representation of a woman who had a pre-eminent role in diplomacy in Egypt is shown.
Dr. Diop states that the history of Egypt is crucial because it played the same role for Africa as the Greco-Roman civilizations played for Western civilization. It's the only way to reconcile African civilizations with history.
In regard to teaching only European history to our children, Dr. Diop states that it is fine to learn the history of others, but you must know your own self first. If a people forgets its historical memory, it becomes a very fragile people. They regress, and it is that historical memory which permits them to be a strong people. Even in the diaspora, these ties must remain. The fullness of our culture will help us in finding the fraternity among races that we must have in this world.
Translator: Elizabeth Clements
