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Some of you may remember that the author Runoko Rashidi passed away a couple of years ago. He was a contributor to "Afrocentric" historiography who advocated for an African presence in the pre-Columbian Americas as well as ancient Asia. Today I want to call attention to his works focusing on Asia:
I must admit that I haven't read either of these books, both of which appear to be available only in paperback at prohibitively high prices. Has anyone posting in this forum checked them out?
One concern I have is that Rashidi might be confusing the Negrito peoples of Asia with recent African immigrants. I note that the cover to the first book has a picture of a Khmer* relief where the subjects appear to have curly hair and so-called "Negroid" facial features, but we know those are common to Negrito groups who are nonetheless genetically closer to so-called "Mongoloid" Asians than to extant Africans.
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^ Yes, such racialism was a common problem among some Africanist scholars where black = African. Even Cheikh Anta Diop author of African Origins of Civilization who was correct about Egyptians being African was mistaken about Dravidians also being African.
Note what I pointed our here.
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some quotes from Godfrey Higgins and Gerald Massey, also. Text at far left can be copy and pasted also
If you don't sign up you can still flip through the table of contents Rashidi has some essays in it (a lot) but there are various authors doing chapters. Van Sertima is co-editor along with Rashidi
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ishnu Anantasayana panel from Dasavatara Vishnu temple, Deogarh, Bihar, India, ca. 6th century A.D.This celebrated panel from the south wall of the temple has Vishnu reclining on the serpent Ananta and floating on the waters of oblivion. Above him, seated on a lotus leaf, is the Hindu creator god Brahma. Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, massages his feet.
Same piece, enlargement, lower figures For some reason image is flipped but anyway figures correspond to previous in this Left to Right order : 6,5,4,3
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The Gommateshwara statue is a 57-foot (17 m) high monolithic statue on Vindhyagiri Hill in the town of Shravanbelagola in the Indian state of Karnataka. Carved of a single block of granite, it is one of the tallest monolithic statues in the ancient world.
The Gommateshwara statue is dedicated to the Jain figure Bahubali and symbolises the Jain precepts of peace, non-violence, sacrifice of worldly affairs, and simple living. Carved out of a single piece of granite. It was built around 983 AD during the Western Ganga dynasty and is one of the largest free-standing statues in the world.
Gommateshwara statue 683 AD
The Buddha Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism (623 or 563 BCE – 543 or 483 BCE)
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posted
I've looked through the essay on the "Ethiopian" presence in the Indus Valley after checking out lioness's link. Like I suspected, it has a tendency to conflate the Negrito peoples of Asia (whom it claims as the builders of the Harappan civilization) with the "Ethiopian" peoples of Africa. That's an aspect of the work that hasn't aged well.
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you should make some image clips from the book text or copy and paste the text that shows at the left
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posted
The essay is literally titled "The Jewel in the Lotus: The Ethiopian Presence in the Indus Valley Civilization". And the essay's author repeatedly labels Asian Negritos as "Ethiopian". I suppose they could be using it in the ancient Greek sense of those populations being "burnt faces", but given the book's title, I have a hard time thinking the author's not trying to connect them to African Ethiopia as well. Of course, the author is technically right that those people would have arrived to Asia from Africa, but that's because they were part of the initial Out-of-Africa migrations that peopled the world. They're no more African (or "Ethiopian") than other Eurasians.
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