Friday, October 30, 2009

Proof: Nubia Came Before Egypt

"Ancient Egypt is the first major civilisation in Africa for which records are abundant. It was not, however, Africa's first kingdom. On 1 March 1979, The New York Times carried an article on its front page, written by Boyce Rensberger, with the headline: Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In the article, Rensberger told the world that: 'Evidence of the oldest recognisable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia... The discovery is expected to stimulate a new appraisal of the origins of civilisations in Africa, raising the question of 'to what extent later Egyptian culture derived its advanced political structure from the Nubians?'.

"This ancient kingdom, generally called Ta-Seti, encompassed the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of Egypt. It has sometimes been referred to as Ancient Ethiopia in some of the literature, and as Cush (or Kush) in other literature. The first kings of Ta-Seti may well have ruled about 5900 BC. During the time of the fifth generation of their rulers, Upper (ie, southern) Egypt may have united and became a greater threat to Ta-Seti."

Source: New African, Oct 2006: Ta-Seti the oldest

Was Nubia the influence for Egypt? Was Nubia before Egypt?

Now we're on the search for Egypt Revisited by Ivan Van Sentina, the full article from the New York Times by Boyce Rensberger, and, of course, more information on Ta-Seti.

SO WERE THERE AFRICANS IN NORTH AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS--THE WASHITAW NATION, FOR EXAMPLE

According To the book, Black Indians by William Loren Katz, 1986--

No.

In his history of Black Indians, he does not report any African presence in the New World until after Columbus. He does place Africans in a Spanish colony in 1526. This is before a number of Spanish explorers went into the New World.

But this is not a blog about the history of the New World. This is a blog about Nubia and its influence.

So I go back to an earlier statement:

Until someone can offer conclusive proof of an African presence in the New World, I will have to believe contact may have been made by Africans, Africans may have even set up settlements in the New World, but for the most part they were trading partners--nothing more.

The blogs above say it the best--if there is no genetic link found, for example, it's hard to believe they stayed around to develop great empires. Empires like the The Washitaw Nation. This nation may exist, but I doubt very strongly that it existed before Columbus arrived.

BACK TO WERE AFRICANS HERE FIRST

Polymorphic Alu insertions among Mayan populations. Herrera, R. J. 1 herrerar@fiu.edu, Rojas, D. P. 1, Terreros, M. C. 1
Journal of Human Genetics; Feb 2007, Vol. 52 Issue 2, p129-142:

A chart displays specific genetic insertions across the world--and the Mayans (who many believe came from the Olmecs--see below) do not contain any.

Unfortunately, I cannot display the chart, but the two West African populations are at the extreme left and the Mayan and other Native Indian populations are clustered close together on the extreme right.

If contact was made, why is there no genetic proof?

And then I came across the following article:

HLA Genes in Mexican Mazatecans, the Peopling of the America and the Uniqueness of Amerindians. Arnaiz-Viiena, A., et. al., Tissue Antigens 2000, Vol. 56, pgs. 405-416.

"An indirect evidence of Olmec and Mayan relatedness is further suggested, further supporting the notion that Olmecs may have been the precursors of the Mayans...

"Peopling of the Americas was probably more complex than postulated...Specific genetic input from outside is not noticed in Meso and South America Amerindians..." (from the abstract.)

The article does state that the Spaniard explorers did observe large populations of dark skinned people. In it's brief history segment, the authors list archeological evidence to the idea that other races came to assist the Olmecs. One of the strongest cases for this, according to the authors, is the observations of the Spaniards. They report Negroids in the Caribbean, parts of Mexico and in South America.

Nonetheless, if this is true--and the archeological record seems to state it is (but does not give any dates--at least not in this article--so it is possible Africans came after Columbus), then why is the genetic input so pure? Humans explore and conquer, humans mate and have off spring, humans rape and leave genetic evidence behind.

And where are the observations of Africans living in North America?

And why are the pyramids of the Olmecs dated earlier than those of Nubia, Egypt, and Western Africa?

So the mystery continues.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Back on the trail--Were Africans in the New World before Columbus

"Some historians propound that there was a pre-Columbian African presence in Mexico under the Olmec civilization. These scholars cite African features in the art of the Olmecs and linguistic similarities between indigenous and West African languages as their evidence. However, most traditional historians are skeptical of this school of thought. "I think the whole issue is still wide open, and the best we can do right now is to have an open mind on it," says Palmer."

--African legacy. By: Fleming, Mali Michelle, Gleaton, Tony, Hispanic, 08983097, Jan/Feb1994, Vol. 7, Issue 1

And who is Palmer?

Colin A. Palmer is a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Nubia, Ethiopia, and India

Did Africa influence other places beside Egypt? India, perhaps?

Greek writers referred to India as a part of Ethiopia.

Source: A History of Ethiopia by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, pgs. 1-2.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Who Came First? Still Searching

Found an interesting book--Introduction to African Civilization by John G. Jackson, Citadel Press Book, 1990. Went to the index and found two pages on Nubia:

Check this out:

"...{W}hile the achievements of Egypt are the best known among African nations, these are not the only achievements that African nations can claim. The nations to the south called Kush, Nubia, and Ethiopia developed many aspects of civilization independent of Egyptian influence. These nations gave as much to Egypt as Egypt gave them.

"Trade was the basis for the earliest contact in Egypt with the rest of Africa. Gold was obtained from Nubia...{T}rading expeditions...spread Egyptian ideas. Egypt, in turn, observed and took ideas from other nations within Africa (14-15)."

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Benin and Other Western African Cultures in the New World

Your Nubian Detective has discovered an article in a peer reviewed journal that actually connects Africa to the Mayans of the New World. Genetic indicators seem to be in both cultures.

So is it possible that Nubian technology traded to the Western Africans helped them to land in the New World?

Your Nubian Detective is on the search for the article.

Can there be a basis for the Washitaw after all? Is it possible they landed, created babies and left?

Stay tuned...

Sunday, October 18, 2009

OK--Africans did not come to America first and there probably is no Washitaw Tribe

"In 1976, Ivan Van Sertima proposed that New World civilizations those of ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, India, were strongly influenced by diffusion from Africa. The first and China, Europe, and the Americas,4 were created or inmost important contact, he argued, was between Nubians and spired by racially ‘‘black’’ peoples. Olmecs in 700 b.c., and it was followed by other contacts from Mali in a.d. 1300. This theory has spread widely in the African- In articulating their claims, the Afrocentrists relied American community, both lay and scholarly, but it has never very heavily on the ideas of Cheikh Anta Diop (1974, been evaluated at length by Mesoamericanists. This article shows the proposal to be devoid of any foundation. First, no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological
excavation in the New World. The presence of African origin plants such as the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) or African genes in New World cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) shows that there was contact between the Old World and the New, but this contact occurred too long ago to have involved any human agency and is irrelevant to Egyptian-Olmec contact. The colossal Olmec heads, which resemble a stereotypical ‘‘Negroid,’’ were and is still being sold in bookstores as the latest word on the subcarved
hundreds of years before the arrival of the presumed models. Additionally, Nubians, who come from a desert environment, have long, high noses, do not resemble their supposed ‘‘por- cators, scholars, political activists, and other interested persons.
traits.’’ Claims for the diffusion of pyramid building and mummification are also fallacious."

--Current Anthropology: Forum on Anthropology in Public, Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs
Gabriel Haslip‐Viera, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, and Warren Barbour

Additionally, here is another thought on the subject (one of the comments further discussing the writing above in the same journal):

On another level, however, I think it is appropriate to point out the inherent ‘‘racism’’ of some of the assumptions that are involved in the arguments investigated. If one reports that there are pyramids in Egypt and pyramids in Mexico, or mummies in Egypt and mummies in Chile, the automatic response seems to be, ‘‘When did the Egyptians bring these ideas to the New World?’’ No one ever asks, ‘‘Did the Chileans or Mexicans bring these ideas to Egypt?’’ (a fair question, in light of the fact that the world’s oldest prepared mummies in Chile Van Sertima and his associates pre-date Egyptian examples by two millennia)."

--Comments, David L. Browman, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. 63130, U.S.A.

I started this blog as the Nubian Detective and obviously I took a wrong turn and became the Nubian Defective.

With that statement, I will wait for real evidence that Africans came to the Americas. In the mean time, though, I will go back to my original thesis: Nubia--Did it come before Egypt? Who are the Nubians? What influences did they have on the world?

Back on the trail.

The Washitaw Nation

"Rev. RaDine Amen-ra, author of "The Forgotten Truth Behind Racism in America: The Hidden Ancestral Identity of the Black American, Vol. I," agreed. She said the new fertile homeland (the Americas) was given to the "Black American Moundbuilders" as promised land, before floods separated the East from the West."

And another quote from the same article:

"One man who organizes around a similar argument is Dr. Malachi Z. York (a.k.a. Amunnubi Raa), leader of the United Nuwaubian Nation of the Moors. He leads a community that is based in Eatonton, Ga. He is building a replica of Ancient Egypt there that sits on close to 500 acres, according to Brother Howard Jones (a.k.a. Meduty Khefe-Re). They teach that Nuwaubian is derived from the word Nuwba (Nuba), in Southern Sudan, which would include Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya. The root word for Nuwaubians, Nubians and Nabi is Nub, or Nuwb, meaning "color inclining to Black ... kinky or woolly-haired people," York wrote in his book, "Let's Set the Record Straight!"

"York described the Olmec civilization, the oldest high culture in the Americas, as "the original woolly-haired, dark olive-toned people who originally came from Nuwba of South and Central Africa They arrived in the Americas long before the Christian era, but that would have been long after the arrival of those given the promise before the floods."

--Were original Americans Black Muurs?.
Authors:Muhammad, Lamont.
Source:New York Amsterdam News; 01/04/2001, Vol. 92 Issue 1, p36, 1/2p

My take:

If you can believe in Noah's Ark and the splitting of the Red Sea by Moses, why not this?

Unfortunately, a great flood did not break apart the continents so I have to believe the claims are not viable because they are not open to enough evidence--evidence by anyone.

Were Africans here before Columbus? Sure, there is evidence for that, but is there any real evidence the Mound Builders were Africans who settled here? I do not know, but I'm willing to listen and read and view the evidence.

As for the Olmecs? I am still waiting for more evidence--so bring it on.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Amun or Amen--Nubian God in Egypt

"CAIRO (Reuters) – Archaeologists have unearthed the site of a pharaonic-era sacred lake in a temple to the Egyptian goddess Mut in the ruins of ancient Tanis, the Culture Ministry said on Thursday.

"It was the second sacred lake found at Tanis, which became the northern capital of ancient Egypt in the 21st pharaonic dynasty, over 3,000 years ago.

"The goddess Mut, sometimes depicted as a vulture, was the wife of Amun, god of wind and the breath of life. She was also mother of the moon god Khonsu."

(Writing by Cynthia Johnston; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Amun or Amen. Here it is. One of the gods of Nubia is found to be one of the Gods of Egypt. Keep in mind the Amun (or Amen) of Nubia was also a God of life.

Stay tuned...

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Oldest City in the World

"...{I}n 1906, the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works asked the eminent American Egyptologist George A. Reisner to organize an archaeological survey in order to record all of the antiquities in the region. This he did, in the process identifying for the first time several previously unknown cultures, strikingly different from Egyptian culture.

"Reisner returned to Nubia for further explorations in 1913 as the director of the Harvard University Boston Museum of Fine Arts expedition. First, he explored at Kerma, south of the Third Cataract in Upper Nubia. Here he uncovered Nubia's earliest imperial history--though he did not realize it. Despite his brilliance as an archaeologist, Reisner's convictions (or possibly, prejudices) got the better of his judgment, and he concluded that the massive brick structure known as the Deffufa and other monuments of Kerma were built by and for the Egyptian governors ruling the native population.

"In fact, the opposite was true: the Kerma people (2500-1550 B.C.) were so powerful that the Egyptians had to build a series of fortresses to protect Egypt's southern border, and the many Egyptian statues and other objects found at Kerma were not the representations of Egyptian "governors," but rather Nubian war trophies.

"In recent years a Swiss team returned to Reisner's old site and carried out systematic excavations at Kerma, revealing the remains of one of the largest and earliest urban centers in Africa--indeed, in the world--dating back to about 2000 B.C.)"

----Grzymski, Krzystztof.
Source:American Visions; Oct/Nov93, Vol. 8 Issue 5, p20, 6p, 2 charts, 5 color, 1 bw

And so once again The Nubian Detective finds something new. One of the world's first urban center ("one of the largest and earliest urban centers in Africa--indeed, in the world")--in Africa, in Nubia, and a powerful people they were.

And for the nonbelievers among you who think Africa held nothing for us--still holds nothing--the citation is above for you to investigate on your own.

THE DAY AFTER COLUMBUS DAY

As I get more and more into Nubia, I discover things I only thought:

Get this one--

Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to trade with the new world as earlly as 7000 BC. In fact, some of the earliest inhabitants of the new world may have been West Africans who, it seems to me, were an offshoot of the Nubian Empire.

7000 BC--9000 years ago.

Check out the Washitaw people.

Check out the ancient cave drawings.

Africans may have even landed in California 10,000 years ago.

You can find out more from Paul Barton in the October 2004 issue of New Africa.

Now The Nubian Detective is in search of the very same journal cited above. Stay tuned...

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Back to becoming the Nubian Detective

And still I'm on the trail of the Nubian empire--digging through contradictions, the rewriting of history, the way racists cannot believe white people were not always the best, smartest and strongest.

It's too bad.

Still I'm in need of more information and it's hard untangling what I have--books coming to me through two library systems, a lack of individuals returning phone calls, and even the Internet--interesting as it may be--contradicting itself.

So I'm back on the trail: Did Nubia come before Egypt? How old is the Nubian writing system? How can anyone with even an ounce of brains not realize people of color are all over the pyramids in art, hieroglyphics and ornamentation?

Stay tuned...

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE THE THREE MODERN RELIGIONS

In 701BC, the Assyrian army attacked the Jewish settlements destroying everything in their path, but when they arrived--over twenty thousand strong--at one of the last outposts of Judaism, victory at hand, already surrounding the walls of the city and asking the government to surrender, suddenly they gathered all of their things and went into a great retreat.

Why?

The Nubians (then known as the Kush--African rulers who now controlled Egypt) attacked and the Assyrians could not run fast enough.

Thus an alliance between the Nubians and the Jews stopped the extermination of one religion which, as time went by, was instrumental in developing the other two modern day religions: Christianity and Islam.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

AMEN--Where does this word really come from

Amen comes from the Nubian God, Amun or Amen. Two spellings--a great God who looked after the people.

Amen is a Nubian God.

Interesting how we end all of our prayers with a salute to one of the Gods of Africa.

Nubia--and how we change history: Cowardly or Brave?

In 1850, a famous historian (I'm trying to find his name) claimed Egyptians and Nubians were white. This after the Greeks named the Nubians, Ethiopians which actually means burnt faced people or black.

Other historians reading Egyptian writings told of how Nubians were a cowardly and weak people. Yet Nubia with a very small population due to the geography of where they lived was able to keep invaders out of their nation for over a thousand years before Egypt with a very large army attacked. Perhaps when the Egyptians took on Nubia, the Nubians were very smart--why fight when the odds against you are so great?

Don't forget that Nubia under the name of Kush took over Egypt and ran it as the 25th Dynasty.

Don't forget when the Greeks defeated Egypt, they were not able to defeat the Nubians.

Strange how historians continue to change history to fit the needs of the class in power.

OK--they may not have been the first and oldest civilization if you base civilization on the ability to write, but they were there before the Egyptians, they survived in a very harsh environment, they were able to mine gold, metals and other minerals to create amazing works, and they had an incredible army that kept the nation safe for centuries.

Even the mythology of their religion predates Egypt.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Who Came First: Nubia or Egypt?

"From earliest times Egypt looked with covetous eyes at its neighbour Nubia, particularly on account of the raw materials to be round there. There was ivory and ebony, there were leopard skins and incense that the Nubian tradesfolk acquired from more southern countries. But above all there were the natural minerals: and there was gold, most coveted of all. incidentally, the word for gold in ancient Egyptian was 'nub'. Probably Nubia meant the Land of Gold (jacobins.mairie-toulouse.fr)."

The above comes from an article by the above author entitled: EGYPT IN NUBIA.

I have only one question: If Egypt was jealous of Nubia from its earliest times, then Nubia must have already been there to begin with. You cannot be jealous of something that is not already there and you probably would not be jealous of something that was not already prominent, rich and powerful.

OK--so the above was not a question, but it seems to me Nubia was first, not Egypt.