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.