Cheikh Anta Diop > Quotes

“The generation that followed did not have the same concerns; none of its members attempted to follow the example of the past generation. There was no longer anyone with the noble determination to get to know the great men of the world, or if there were some individuals consumed with this curiosity, they were few in number. From then on, there remained only vulgar minds given over to hatred, envy and discord, who took an interest only in things which did not concern them, gossip, slander, calumny of one's neighbors, all those things which are the source of the worst of our troubles.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Precolonial Black Africa

“When we say that the ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; that they were the first to erect buildings out of 6 million tons of stone (the Great Pyramid) as architects and engineers—not simply as unskilled laborers; that they built the immense temple of Karnak, that forest of columns with its famed hypostyle hall large enough to hold Notre-Dame and its towers; that they sculpted the first colossal statues (Colossi of Memnon, etc.)—when we say all that we are merely expressing the plain unvarnished truth that no one today can refute by arguments worthy of the name.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“....the line of ill-intentional Egyptologist, equipped with a ferocious erudition , have commited their well known crime against science, by becoming guilty of a deliberate falsification of the history of humanity.
Supported by the governing powers of all the Western countries , this ideology, based on a moral and intellectual swindle, easily won out over the true scientific current developed by a parallel group of Egyptologist of good will, whose intellectual uprightness and even courage cannot be stressed stronly enough.
The new Egyptological ideology , born at the opportune monment, reinforced the theorectical bases of imperialist ideology. That is why it easily drowned out the voice of science, by throwing the veil of fasificacation over historical truth. This ideology was spread with the help of considerable publicity and taught the world over, because it alone had the material and financial means for its own propagation.
Thus imperialism, like the prehistoric hunter, first killed the being spiritually and culturally, before trying to eliminate it physically. The negation of the history and intellectual accomplishments of Black Africans was cultural, mental murder,which preceded and paved the way for their genocide here and there in the world.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology

“Only a loyal, determined struggle to destroy cultural aggression and bring out the truth, whatever it may be, is revolutionary and consonant with real progress; it is the only approach which opens on to the universal. Humanitarian declarations are not called for and add nothing to real progress.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Anthropologists have invented the ingenious, convenient, fictional notion of the “true Negro,” which allows them to consider, if need be, all the real Negroes on earth as fake Negroes, more or less approaching a kind of Platonic archetype, without ever attaining it. Thus, African history is full of “Negroids,” Hamites, semi-Hamites, Nilo-Hamitics, Ethiopoids, Sabaeans, even Caucasoids! Yet, if one stuck strictly to scientific data and archeological facts, the prototype of the White race would be sought in vain throughout the earliest years of present-day humanity.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“In the Nile Valley, civilization resulted from man’s adaptation to that particular milieu. As declared by the Ancients and by the Egyptians themselves, it originated in Nubia. This is confirmed by our knowledge that the basic elements of Egyptian civilization are neither in Lower Egypt, nor in Asia, nor in Europe, but in Nubia and the heart of Africa; moreover, that is where we find the animals and plants represented in hieroglyphic writing....”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“If modern civilization should disappear today, but leave libraries untouched, survivors could open almost any book and perceive immediately that persons living south of the Sahara are called “Blacks.” The term “Black Africa” would suffice to indicate the habitat of the Black race. Nothing similar is found in Egyptian texts. Whenever the Egyptians use the word “Black” (khem), it is to designate themselves or their country: Kemit, land of the Blacks.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“If the African anthropologist made a point of examining European races “under the magnifying glass,” he would be able to multiply them ad infinitum by grouping physiognomies into races and subraces as artificially as his European counterpart does with regard to Africa. He would, in turn, succeed in dissolving collective European reality into a fog of insignificant facts.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“By the Middle Ages… the introduction of the Trivium was well-known: SÂDI, an educated black from Tombouctou, author of the well-known work entitled, ‘Tarikh es-Soudan’ cites amongst the subjects that he mastered, logic, dialection, grammar, rhetoric, not to mention law and other disciplines...the long lists of subjects studied and the lettered African intellectuals who taught them at the University of Tombouctou…”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, CIVILISATION OU BARBARIE

“In the Lake Debo region (in Mali, on the Niger), pyramids are also found, and these were dubbed “mounds,” as might be expected. This is the usual procedure in the attempt to disparage African values. In contrast, there is the reverse procedure consisting of describing a clay tumulus—a real mound—in Mesopotamia, as the most perfect temple that the human mind can imagine. It goes without saying that such reconstructions are generally mere wishful thinking.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Humanity's moral conscience progresses, slowly yet surely...”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, CIVILISATION OU BARBARIE

“To overcome the tremendous obstacles in the way of the economic unification of Africa, decisive political actions are required in the first place. Political unification is a prerequisite. The rational organization of African economies cannot precede the political organization of Africa. The elaboration of a rational formula of economic organization must come after the creation of a federal political entity. It is only within the framework of such a geo-political entity that a rational economic development and cooperation can be inserted. The inverse leads to the type of results we have witnessed over the years.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Thus it can be said that, until the fifteenth century, Black Africa never lost its civilization. Frobenius reports: Not that the first European navigators at the end of the Middle Ages failed to make some very remarkable observations. When they reached the Bay of Guinea and alighted at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find well-planned streets bordered for several leagues by two rows of trees; for days they traversed a countryside covered by magnificent fields, inhabited by men in colorful attire that they had woven themselves! More to the south, in the Kingdom of the Congo, a teeming crowd clad in silk and velvet, large States, well ordered down to the smallest detail, powerful rulers, prosperous industries. Civilized to the marrow of their bones! Entirely similar was the condition of the lands on the east coast, Mozambique, for example. The revelations of the navigators from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries provide positive proof that Black Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara, was still in full bloom, in all the splendor of harmonious, well-organized civilizations. This flowering the European conquistadors destroyed as they advanced.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“there are no fruitful speculations outside of reality.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the “Peoples of the North” was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners. This enabled him to increase appreciably the slave labor force on royal construction sites and in the army. Such was invariably the procedure for acclimating white-skinned persons in Egypt, a process that became especially widespread during the low period. By bearing this in mind, we may avoid attributing a purely imaginary role to people who contributed absolutely nothing to Egyptian civilization.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Until now (1960, date of the first edition), the history of Black Africa has always been written with dates as dry as laundry lists, and no one has almost ever tried to find the key that unlocks the door to the intelligence, the understanding of African society.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop

“Yet the documents at our disposal allow us to do that practically without any break in continuity for a period of two thousand years, at least insofar as West Africa is concerned. Therefore, it had become indispensable to unfreeze, in a manner of speaking to defossilize that African history which was there at hand, lifeless, imprisoned in the documents.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Precolonial Black Africa

“Pharaoh Chephren (circa 2600 B.C., Fourth Dynasty), who built the second Giza pyramid.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Au moyen âge… L’introduction du trivium est attestée: SÂDI, un noir lettré de Tombouctou, auteur du célèbre ouvrage intitulé le ‘Tarikh es-Soudan’ cite parmi les matières qu’il avait maitrisées, la logique, la dialectique, la grammaire, la rhétorique, sans parler du droit et autres disciplines…les longues listes des matières étudiées et des savants ou lettrés africains qui les enseignent a l’Université de Tombouctou…”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, CIVILISATION OU BARBARIE

“In prehistoric times, it was they who created the Nilotic Sudanese civilization and what we know as Egypt. These first Black civilizations were the first civilizations in the world, the development of Europe having been held back by the last Ice Age, a matter of a hundred thousand years. Beginning in the sixth century BC (525,”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“From the appearance of homo sapiens—from earliest prehistory until our time—we are able to trace our origins as a people without significant breaks in continuity. In early prehistory, a great South-North movement brought the African peoples of the Great Lakes region into the Nile Basin. They lived there in clusters for millennia. In prehistoric times, it was they who created the Nilotic Sudanese civilization and what we know as Egypt. These first Black civilizations were the first civilizations in the world, the development of Europe having been held back by the last Ice Age, a matter of a hundred thousand years. Beginning in the sixth century BC (525, when Cambyses occupied Egypt) with the end of the independence of the great Black power base, the African peoples, until then drawn to the Nile Valley as by a magnet, fanned out over the continent. Perhaps they then came upon small pockets of populations descended from paleolithic or neolithic infiltrations. A few centures later, around the first century, they founded the first of the continental civilizations in the West and South: Ghana, Nok-Ifé, Zimbabwe and others.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Black Africa had its specific bicameralism, determined by sex. Far from interfering with national life by pitting men against women, it guaranteed the free flowering of both. It is to the honor of our ancestors that they were able to develop such a type of democracy. Wherever we find this as late as the Aegean period, the southern Black influence is undeniable. In reestablishing it in modern form, we remain faithful to the democratic and profoundly human past of our forebears; once and for all, we relax the society of mankind by freeing it from a latent millennial contradiction.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Our notion of optimum populations must be revised. It does not mean the same thing it did before automation. However that may be, the problem of repopulating Africa, of reconstituting its population decimated by slavery far beyond the toll of what has often been attributed to illness, remains an acute problem for all Africans. Zaire and the Congo, with a large part of Equatorial Africa, form a unified natural zone with the same economic characteristics. That is why I made no effort artificially to differentiate between the two banks of the Zaire in an overview such as this.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“One might say that it makes no difference to a Wolofspeaking African whether he adopts Zulu or English or Portuguese. This is just not so. An African educated in any African language other than his own is less alienated, culturally speaking, than he is when educated in a European language which takes the place of his mother tongue. Likewise, a Frenchman who got an Italian education would be much less alienated than if inculcated with Zulu or Arabic in place of French. Such is the disparity in cultural interest which exists between European and African languages—something we must never lose sight of.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Belgian-American interests, preparing for the political instability that would prevail in the colonies following World War II, working at maximum rates and beyond, mined all the uranium of the then Belgian Congo in less than ten years and stockpiled it at Oolen in Belgium. The Shinrolowbe mines in Zaïre today are emptied, having supplied the major part of the uranium that went into the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. Until 1952, Zaïre was the world’s leading uranium producer; now it ranks sixteenth in reserves and has ceased to be counted among the producers. This one example shows how fast our continent can have its nonrenewable treasures sucked away while we nap. The upshot is that only a continentwide”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“We must remain circumspect about subtle efforts to Anglo-Americanize Black Africa, considering how many of the colonies were formerly British. The joint efforts of Great Britain and of the United States especially run counter to established “intellectual” habits and suggest to former French, Portuguese, Spanish, or other colonies that they ought to opt for English, so as to make that tongue the lingua franca of the whole continent. Linguistic unity based on a foreign language, however one may look at it, is cultural abortion. It would irremediably eventuate in the death of the authentic national culture, the end of our deeper intellectual and spiritual life and reduce us to perpetual copycats, having missed out on our historical mission in this world. Anglo-Saxon cultural, economic, social and even political hegemony would thereby be permanently guaranteed throughout Black Africa. We must remain radically opposed to any attempts at cultural assimilation coming from the outside: none is possible without opening the way to the others.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“More importantly, he has applied this encyclopedic knowledge to his researches on African history. “While pursuing this research,” he told the First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists in September 1956, “we have come to discover that the ancient Pharaonic Egyptian civilization was undoubtedly a Negro civilization. To defend this thesis, anthropological, ethnological, linguistic, historical, and cultural arguments have been provided. To judge their validity, it suffices to refer to Nations nègres et culture …”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“We now know, thanks to radiocarbon methods, that the earliest sites in Zimbabwe do date back at least as far as the first century of the Christian Era. On the east coast of Africa Roman coins have been discovered at the port of Dunford as well as in Zanzibar, indicating a flourishing sea trade. The first Nigerian civilization, which Bernard and William Fagg named the Nok civilization, has been traced back to the first millennium BC, the ceramics found there being radiocarbon-dated over a range from 900 BC to 200 AD. The Tarikh es-Sudan tells us that the city of Kukia, on the Niger, former capital of Songhay before Gao, was contemporaneous with the time of the pharaohs. However that may be, we do know with certainty that in the eighth century AD the Empire of Ghana was already in existence, extending over all of West Africa, right to the Atlantic.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the “Peoples of the North” was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

“Egypt’s prestige abroad was so intact that the “King” of Tyre declared: “All industries came from Egypt and all sciences first shone forth there” (cf. Pirenne, II, 505).”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality