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Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern
Providing an overview of the lost sciences of Africa and of contributions that blacks have made to modern American science, "Blacks in Science" presents a range of new information from Africanists. The book also includes bibliographical guides that are crucial to further research and teaching.
The lineaments of a lost science are now emerging and we can glimpse some of the once buried reefs of this remarkable civilization. A lot more remains to be revealed. But enough has been found in the past few years to make it quite clear that the finest heart of the African world receded into the shadow while its broken bones were put on spectacular display. The image of the African, therefore, has been built up so far upon his lowest common denominator. In the new vision of the ancestor, we need to turn our eyes away from the periphery of the primitive to the more dynamic source of genius in the heartland of the African world. -- Ivan Van Sertima
The lineaments of a lost science are now emerging and we can glimpse some of the once buried reefs of this remarkable civilization. A lot more remains to be revealed. But enough has been found in the past few years to make it quite clear that the finest heart of the African world receded into the shadow while its broken bones were put on spectacular display. The image of the African, therefore, has been built up so far upon his lowest common denominator. In the new vision of the ancestor, we need to turn our eyes away from the periphery of the primitive to the more dynamic source of genius in the heartland of the African world. -- Ivan Van Sertima
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Ivan Van Sertima
22 books255 followersDr. Ivan Van Sertima was born in Guyana, South America. He was educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London University) and the Rutgers Graduate School and held degrees in African Studies and Anthropology. From 1957-1959 he served as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. During the decade of the 1960s he broadcast weekly from Britain to Africa and the Caribbean.
He was a literary critic, a linguist, and an anthropologist who made a name in all three fields.
As a literary critic, he is the author of Caribbean Writers, a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel. He is also the author of several major literary reviews published in Denmark, India, Britain and the United States. He was honored for his work in this field by being asked by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976-1980. He was honored as an historian of world repute by being asked to join UNESCO's International Commission for Rewriting the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind.
As a linguist, published essays on the dialect of the Sea Islands off the Georgia Coast. He also compiled the Swahili Dictionary of Legal Terms, based on his field work in Tanzania, East Africa, in 1967.
He is the author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, which was published by Random House in 1977 and is presently in its twenty-ninth printing. It was published in French in 1981 and in the same year, was awarded the Clarence L. Holte Prize, a prize awarded every two years “for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.”
He also authored Early America Revisited, a book that has enriched the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and has resulted in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy.
Professor of African Studies at Rutgers University, Dr. Van Sertima was also Visiting Professor at Princeton University. He was the Editor of the Journal of African Civilizations, which he founded in 1979 and has published several major anthologies which have influenced the development of multicultural curriculum in the United States. These anthologies include Blacks in Science: ancient and modern, Black Women in Antiquity, Egypt Revisited, Egypt: Child of Africa, Nile Valley Civilizations (out of print), African Presence in the Art of the Americas (due 2007), African Presence in Early Asia (co-edited with Runoko Rashidi), African Presence in Early Europe, African Presence in Early America, Great African Thinkers, Great Black Leaders: ancient and modern and Golden Age of the Moor.
As an acclaimed poet, his work graces the pages of River and the Wall, 1953 and has been published in English and German. As an essayist, his major pieces were published in Talk That Talk, 1989, Future Directions for African and African American Content in the School Curriculum, 1986, Enigma of Values, 1979, and in Black Life and Culture in the United States, 1971.
Dr. Van Sertima has lectured at more than 100 universities in the United States and has also lectured in Canada, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. In 1991 Dr. Van Sertima defended his highly controversial thesis on the African presence in pre-Columbian America before the Smithsonian. In 1994 they published his address in Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View of 1492.
He also appeared before a Congressional Committee on July 7, 1987 to challenge the Columbus myth. This landmark presentation before Congress was illuminating and brilliantly presented in the name of all peoples of color across the world.
He was a literary critic, a linguist, and an anthropologist who made a name in all three fields.
As a literary critic, he is the author of Caribbean Writers, a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel. He is also the author of several major literary reviews published in Denmark, India, Britain and the United States. He was honored for his work in this field by being asked by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976-1980. He was honored as an historian of world repute by being asked to join UNESCO's International Commission for Rewriting the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind.
As a linguist, published essays on the dialect of the Sea Islands off the Georgia Coast. He also compiled the Swahili Dictionary of Legal Terms, based on his field work in Tanzania, East Africa, in 1967.
He is the author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, which was published by Random House in 1977 and is presently in its twenty-ninth printing. It was published in French in 1981 and in the same year, was awarded the Clarence L. Holte Prize, a prize awarded every two years “for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.”
He also authored Early America Revisited, a book that has enriched the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and has resulted in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy.
Professor of African Studies at Rutgers University, Dr. Van Sertima was also Visiting Professor at Princeton University. He was the Editor of the Journal of African Civilizations, which he founded in 1979 and has published several major anthologies which have influenced the development of multicultural curriculum in the United States. These anthologies include Blacks in Science: ancient and modern, Black Women in Antiquity, Egypt Revisited, Egypt: Child of Africa, Nile Valley Civilizations (out of print), African Presence in the Art of the Americas (due 2007), African Presence in Early Asia (co-edited with Runoko Rashidi), African Presence in Early Europe, African Presence in Early America, Great African Thinkers, Great Black Leaders: ancient and modern and Golden Age of the Moor.
As an acclaimed poet, his work graces the pages of River and the Wall, 1953 and has been published in English and German. As an essayist, his major pieces were published in Talk That Talk, 1989, Future Directions for African and African American Content in the School Curriculum, 1986, Enigma of Values, 1979, and in Black Life and Culture in the United States, 1971.
Dr. Van Sertima has lectured at more than 100 universities in the United States and has also lectured in Canada, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. In 1991 Dr. Van Sertima defended his highly controversial thesis on the African presence in pre-Columbian America before the Smithsonian. In 1994 they published his address in Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View of 1492.
He also appeared before a Congressional Committee on July 7, 1987 to challenge the Columbus myth. This landmark presentation before Congress was illuminating and brilliantly presented in the name of all peoples of color across the world.
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June 6, 2026
A SERIES OF ESSAYS OUTLINING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ANCIENT AFRICA TO SCIENCE, ETC.
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (1935-2009) was a Guyanese-born associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1983 book, “This is the first book of its kind in the English-speaking world. While several books on African-American science and invention have been published, no work has yet attempted to give serious treatment to the technologies of early Africa. This is partly due to the fact that it is only within recent years that archaeology has revealed the lineaments of a lost African science, at least in areas outside Egypt. It is also only within recent years that the discovery of a seminal black kingdom in the Nile Valley, predating the Egyptian dynasties, has settled the question, once and for all, of the roots of Egyptian culture and technology… Within the last decade alone, evidence has been unearthed in the field of agricultural and pastoral science, architecture, aeronautics, engineering, mathematics, mining, metallurgy and medicine, navigation and physics, that has made the whole ground, upon which conventional studies of Africa have been built, rock violently with the shock of astonishing discoveries.” (Pg. 5)
He continues, “We have provided in our introduction an overview of the lost sciences of Africa in areas outside of Egypt. The most recent issue of the ‘Journal of African Civilizations’ establishes, beyond a doubt, the African claim to Egyptian civilization and science but for us to cover the ground of Egyptian science comprehensively would be a formidable task. We have contented ourselves in this volume to underlining the most significant aspects of Afro-Egyptian mathematics, physics, engineering, and astronomy, and to the great debt early European technology owes to the Egyptian.” (Pg. 6)
In his opening essay, he notes that “In 1978 anthropology professor Peter Schmidt, and professor of engineering, Donald Avery, both of Brown University, announced to the world that, between 1,500-2,000 years ago, Africans living on the western shores of Lake Victoria, in Tanzania, had produced carbon steel. ‘To be able to say that a technologically superior culture developed in Africa more than 1,500 years ago overturns popular and scholarly ideas that technological sophistication developed in Europe but not in Africa.’” (Pg. 9)
He explains, “Not all Africans had mathematics, it is true, but neither did all Europeans. Most Europeans got their mathematics from the Greeks who used cumbersome letters of their alphabet for numbers. It was not until 1202 that Hindu numerals were introduced into Western Europe. These are the numerals we use today.” (Pg. 14)
He adds, “African engineering skill may also be seen in the skillful construction of boats… Africans in West and Central Africa developed a variety of boats. They had a marine highway… and on that highway---the Niger---one could find reed boats with sails, like the reed-boats of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia.” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “African plant medicine was more developed than any in the world before the disruption of its cultures. In spite of the tremendous knowledge that was lost and the fact that African medicine today does not reflect the best of what the earlier doctors knew, the fragments that survive still tell us quite a lot… African herbal medicine is extremely impressive… African doctors have also pioneered in the treatment of psychosis through herbs.” (Pg. 22)
He asserts, “the assumption… that Africans did not develop writing systems---is a myth. There is evidence that probably half a dozen scripts were invented and used by Africans before the holocaust, although many of their manuscripts perished in the sack of Alexandria, the razing of Timbuctoo, and the burning of the Moorish documents in the squares of Granada on the order of Cardinal Ximinez.” (Pg. 24)
Beatrice Lumpkin states, “This seems to be the place to put to rest the unbased slanderous assumptions that the pyramids were built with slave labor cruelly driven by the overseer’s lash… the tremendous productivity of Egyptian agriculture … made possible the feeding of many thousands of people while they worked on construction. Most were farmers, working in the off season…” (Pg. 76)
She explains of the transport of stones from the quarry used for pyramids, “blocks have been detached by means of wedges… a trench was started around the desired block… Handling such huge blocks could have presented even more of a challenge than quarrying. There is no question that the Egyptians used levers… Only one drawing has come down to us showing the transport of a huge statue overland. The statue is tied to a sled being pulled by 172 men as other men pour a lubricating liquid in front of the sled.” (Pg. 78-79)
In another essay, she asserts, “the full scope and depth of ancient Egyptian mathematics have been largely overlooked because the first judgment of the European translators of the papyri dismissed this mathematics as ‘primitive.’… It is often not realized that African contributions did not end with the ancient Egyptians but continued through the Hellenistic and Muslim empires… it was through Africa that the science, mathematics and knowledge of the entire Eastern world reached Europe.” (Pg. 101)
She argues, “In the case of Euclid, best known of the Alexandrian mathematicians, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that he was anything other than Egyptian… In a similar manner, ‘The Almagest,’ written by another Egyptian, Claudius Ptolemy, dominated astronomy…” (Pg. 105)
Claudia Zaslavsky observes, “Western culture owes a great debt to Egypt and Mesopotamia. The ancient Greeks have been regarded as the fathers of Western civilization. But many centuries before their time the Egyptian priests had developed a complete curriculum for the training of their members. This included philosophy, writing, astronomy, geometry, engineering, and architecture. Indeed, the upper-class Greeks completed their education by studying with Mesopotamian and Egyptian teachers. The Hellenic astronomers adopted the Egyptian civil calendar, the first of its kind in human history. The year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each plus five additional days.” (Pg. 115)
Frederick Newsome reports, “Some details are known about the life of Pythagoras. He went to Egypt seeking knowledge and wisdom on the advice of the then-aging Thales, who admitted that the source of his own wisdom was the Egyptians… He was a diligent student who was admired by his African teachers… Although he may have taught some of his own ideas, this is not supported as he returned to Greece to teach ‘in a way perfectly similar to the documents by which he had been instructed in Egypt.’ Most of the precepts which he taught he copied from Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. After returning to Greece … he established a Brotherhood which was an imitation of the Egyptian priesthood in dress, practice, and philosophy. His teachings included medicine and ‘dominated’ instruction at the Greek medical school at Croton.” (Pg. 136)
John Pappademos summarizes, “It is small wonder that the achievements of the Egyptians would excite the admiration of the ancients. They still do today… The Egyptians were centuries ahead of Europeans in mining, metallurgy… metals fabrication… glass-making, medical science… development of complex irrigation systems, carpentry, etc. Although they apparently did not use iron or steel extensively until much later, there is evidence that Egyptians were smelting iron and steel and even welding these metals as early as 1500-1200 B.C. The Egyptians were highly advanced in ship building as well. The walls of the Temple of Mut in Asher depict an expedition … in which ships up to 45 cubits (23.6 meters) were employed… With the plundering of the great library of Alexandria … and the plundering of Egyptian archaeological sites over the centuries, much has been lost of the history of Egyptian science, and few names of ancient Egyptian scholars and scientists survive today.” (Pg. 183)
Clyde-Ahmad Winters points out, “It is usually assumed that writing was introduced into West Africa by the Arabs. But this view is unfounded because, due to the demands of trade, scripts were invented by African trader-groups in ancient times. This was especially true of the Mande or Manding-speaking peoples who are recognized as the inventors of several scripts.” (Pg. 208)
The final section of the book contains profiles of a number of contemporary Black scientists.
This book will be of great interest to those studying ancient Africa, and related topics.
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (1935-2009) was a Guyanese-born associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1983 book, “This is the first book of its kind in the English-speaking world. While several books on African-American science and invention have been published, no work has yet attempted to give serious treatment to the technologies of early Africa. This is partly due to the fact that it is only within recent years that archaeology has revealed the lineaments of a lost African science, at least in areas outside Egypt. It is also only within recent years that the discovery of a seminal black kingdom in the Nile Valley, predating the Egyptian dynasties, has settled the question, once and for all, of the roots of Egyptian culture and technology… Within the last decade alone, evidence has been unearthed in the field of agricultural and pastoral science, architecture, aeronautics, engineering, mathematics, mining, metallurgy and medicine, navigation and physics, that has made the whole ground, upon which conventional studies of Africa have been built, rock violently with the shock of astonishing discoveries.” (Pg. 5)
He continues, “We have provided in our introduction an overview of the lost sciences of Africa in areas outside of Egypt. The most recent issue of the ‘Journal of African Civilizations’ establishes, beyond a doubt, the African claim to Egyptian civilization and science but for us to cover the ground of Egyptian science comprehensively would be a formidable task. We have contented ourselves in this volume to underlining the most significant aspects of Afro-Egyptian mathematics, physics, engineering, and astronomy, and to the great debt early European technology owes to the Egyptian.” (Pg. 6)
In his opening essay, he notes that “In 1978 anthropology professor Peter Schmidt, and professor of engineering, Donald Avery, both of Brown University, announced to the world that, between 1,500-2,000 years ago, Africans living on the western shores of Lake Victoria, in Tanzania, had produced carbon steel. ‘To be able to say that a technologically superior culture developed in Africa more than 1,500 years ago overturns popular and scholarly ideas that technological sophistication developed in Europe but not in Africa.’” (Pg. 9)
He explains, “Not all Africans had mathematics, it is true, but neither did all Europeans. Most Europeans got their mathematics from the Greeks who used cumbersome letters of their alphabet for numbers. It was not until 1202 that Hindu numerals were introduced into Western Europe. These are the numerals we use today.” (Pg. 14)
He adds, “African engineering skill may also be seen in the skillful construction of boats… Africans in West and Central Africa developed a variety of boats. They had a marine highway… and on that highway---the Niger---one could find reed boats with sails, like the reed-boats of ancient Egypt and Ethiopia.” (Pg. 17)
He observes, “African plant medicine was more developed than any in the world before the disruption of its cultures. In spite of the tremendous knowledge that was lost and the fact that African medicine today does not reflect the best of what the earlier doctors knew, the fragments that survive still tell us quite a lot… African herbal medicine is extremely impressive… African doctors have also pioneered in the treatment of psychosis through herbs.” (Pg. 22)
He asserts, “the assumption… that Africans did not develop writing systems---is a myth. There is evidence that probably half a dozen scripts were invented and used by Africans before the holocaust, although many of their manuscripts perished in the sack of Alexandria, the razing of Timbuctoo, and the burning of the Moorish documents in the squares of Granada on the order of Cardinal Ximinez.” (Pg. 24)
Beatrice Lumpkin states, “This seems to be the place to put to rest the unbased slanderous assumptions that the pyramids were built with slave labor cruelly driven by the overseer’s lash… the tremendous productivity of Egyptian agriculture … made possible the feeding of many thousands of people while they worked on construction. Most were farmers, working in the off season…” (Pg. 76)
She explains of the transport of stones from the quarry used for pyramids, “blocks have been detached by means of wedges… a trench was started around the desired block… Handling such huge blocks could have presented even more of a challenge than quarrying. There is no question that the Egyptians used levers… Only one drawing has come down to us showing the transport of a huge statue overland. The statue is tied to a sled being pulled by 172 men as other men pour a lubricating liquid in front of the sled.” (Pg. 78-79)
In another essay, she asserts, “the full scope and depth of ancient Egyptian mathematics have been largely overlooked because the first judgment of the European translators of the papyri dismissed this mathematics as ‘primitive.’… It is often not realized that African contributions did not end with the ancient Egyptians but continued through the Hellenistic and Muslim empires… it was through Africa that the science, mathematics and knowledge of the entire Eastern world reached Europe.” (Pg. 101)
She argues, “In the case of Euclid, best known of the Alexandrian mathematicians, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that he was anything other than Egyptian… In a similar manner, ‘The Almagest,’ written by another Egyptian, Claudius Ptolemy, dominated astronomy…” (Pg. 105)
Claudia Zaslavsky observes, “Western culture owes a great debt to Egypt and Mesopotamia. The ancient Greeks have been regarded as the fathers of Western civilization. But many centuries before their time the Egyptian priests had developed a complete curriculum for the training of their members. This included philosophy, writing, astronomy, geometry, engineering, and architecture. Indeed, the upper-class Greeks completed their education by studying with Mesopotamian and Egyptian teachers. The Hellenic astronomers adopted the Egyptian civil calendar, the first of its kind in human history. The year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each plus five additional days.” (Pg. 115)
Frederick Newsome reports, “Some details are known about the life of Pythagoras. He went to Egypt seeking knowledge and wisdom on the advice of the then-aging Thales, who admitted that the source of his own wisdom was the Egyptians… He was a diligent student who was admired by his African teachers… Although he may have taught some of his own ideas, this is not supported as he returned to Greece to teach ‘in a way perfectly similar to the documents by which he had been instructed in Egypt.’ Most of the precepts which he taught he copied from Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. After returning to Greece … he established a Brotherhood which was an imitation of the Egyptian priesthood in dress, practice, and philosophy. His teachings included medicine and ‘dominated’ instruction at the Greek medical school at Croton.” (Pg. 136)
John Pappademos summarizes, “It is small wonder that the achievements of the Egyptians would excite the admiration of the ancients. They still do today… The Egyptians were centuries ahead of Europeans in mining, metallurgy… metals fabrication… glass-making, medical science… development of complex irrigation systems, carpentry, etc. Although they apparently did not use iron or steel extensively until much later, there is evidence that Egyptians were smelting iron and steel and even welding these metals as early as 1500-1200 B.C. The Egyptians were highly advanced in ship building as well. The walls of the Temple of Mut in Asher depict an expedition … in which ships up to 45 cubits (23.6 meters) were employed… With the plundering of the great library of Alexandria … and the plundering of Egyptian archaeological sites over the centuries, much has been lost of the history of Egyptian science, and few names of ancient Egyptian scholars and scientists survive today.” (Pg. 183)
Clyde-Ahmad Winters points out, “It is usually assumed that writing was introduced into West Africa by the Arabs. But this view is unfounded because, due to the demands of trade, scripts were invented by African trader-groups in ancient times. This was especially true of the Mande or Manding-speaking peoples who are recognized as the inventors of several scripts.” (Pg. 208)
The final section of the book contains profiles of a number of contemporary Black scientists.
This book will be of great interest to those studying ancient Africa, and related topics.
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