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Is Afrocentrism dead?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Firewall: [QB] Part 2 Afrocentrism Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas theories [QUOTE] In the 1970s, Ivan van Sertima advanced the theory that the complex civilizations of the Americas were the result of trans-oceanic influence from the Egyptians or other African civilizations. Such a claim is his primary thesis in They Came Before Columbus, published in 1978. The few hyper-diffusionist writers seek to establish that the Olmec people, who built the first highly complex civilization in Mesoamerica and are considered by some to be the mother civilization for all other civilizations of Mesoamerica, were deeply influenced by Africans. Van Sertima said that the Olmec civilization was a hybrid one of Africans and Native Americans. His theory of pre-Columbian American-African contact has since met with considerable and detailed opposition by scholars of Mesoamerica. Van Sertima has been accused of "doctoring" and twisting data to fit his conclusions, inventing evidence, and ignoring the work of respected Central and South American scholars in the advance of his own theory. [/QUOTE]Afrocentrism and Ancient Egypt [QUOTE] Several Afrocentrists have claimed that important cultural characteristics of ancient Egypt were indigenous to Africa and that these features were present in other early African civilizations such as the later Kerma and the Meroitic civilizations of Nubia. Scholars who have held this view include Marcus Garvey, George James, Cheikh Anta Diop, Martin Bernal, Ivan van Sertima, John Henrik Clarke, Chancellor Williams, and Molefi Kete Asante. The claim has also been made by many Afrocentric scholars that the Ancient Egyptians themselves were Black African (sub-saharan African) rather than North African/Maghrebi, and that the various invasions on Egypt resulted in the "Africanity" of Ancient Egypt becoming diluted, resulting in the modern diversity seen today. Examining this view, Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith, wrote that "Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus, by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterise the Egyptians as 'black', while acknowledging the scientific evidence for the physical diversity of Africans". Smith, however, expressed criticism of Egyptologists and Afrocentrists that defined ancient Egyptians "as members of an essentialist racial category" with perceived "Caucasoid" or "Negroid/Africoid" phenotypes". As historian Ronald H. Fritze argued, mainstream Egyptologists and other scholars strongly object to Afrocentric Egyptology, viewing it as "theurapetic mythology" for black people, since it fails to provide sufficient evidence or persuasive interpretations to back up its claims. Stephen Howe, professor in the history and cultures of colonialism at Bristol University, writes that contrary to "Afrocentric speculation, depending on undocumented assertions that the relatively light-skinned people of the lower Nile today descend from Arab conquerors rather than earlier residents". Howe also cited a 1995 publication which stated "the latest major synthetic work on African populations is firmly of the opinion that "It was not the Arabs physically displaced Egyptians. Instead the Egyptians were transformed by relatively small number of immigrants bringing in new ideas, which, when disseminated, created a wider ethnic identity". S.O.Y. Keita, a biological anthropologist and research affilitate at the Smithsonian Institution who has been described as sympathetic to Afrocentrism,but defined his position as that "it is not a question of “African” “influence”; Ancient Egypt was organically African. Studying early Egypt in its African context is not “Afrocentric,” but simply correct". Keita has argued that the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley were primarily a variety of indigenous Northeast Africans from the areas of the desiccating Sahara and more southerly areas. He reviewed studies on the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptian population and described the skeletal morphologies of early dynastic Egyptian remains as a "Saharo-tropical African variant". He also noted that over time gene flow from the Near East and Europe added more genetic variability to the region.In 2022, Keita argued that some genetic studies have a "default racialist or racist approach" and should be interpreted in a framework with other sources of evidence. Several other academics, including Christopher Ehret, Fekri Hassan, Bruce Williams, Frank Yurco, Molefi Kete Asante, Lanny Bell and A.J. Boyce across various disciplines have contended that Ancient Egypt was fundamentally an African civilization, with cultural and biological connections to Egypt's African neighbors. Scholars have challenged the various assertions of Afrocentrists on the cultural and biological characteristics of Ancient Egyptian civilization and its people. At a UNESCO Symposium in the 1970s, some of the participants, including Jean Vercoutter, Serge Sauneron, Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh and Jean Leclant expressed "profound" disagreement with the "Black", homogeneous hypothesis.Despite contestations, UNESCO decided to include his "Origin of the ancient Egyptians" in the General History of Africa, with an editorial comment mentioning the disagreement. However, Diop's chapter was credited as a "painstakingly researched contribution" in the general conclusion of the symposium report by the International Scientific Committee's Rapporteur, Professor Jean Devisse,which nevertheless lead to a "real lack of balance" in the discussion among participants.The ancient world did not employ racial categories such as "Black" or "White" as they had no conception of "race", but rather labeled groups according to their land of origin and cultural traits. However, Keita studying the controversy, finds simplistic political appellations (in the negative or affirmative) describing ancient populations as "black" or "white" to be inaccurate and instead focuses on the ancestry of ancient Egypt as being a part of the native and diverse biological variation of Africa, which includes a variety of phenotypes and skin gradients. Egyptian Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has gone on record as saying that the Ancient Egyptians were not black and “We believe that the origin of Ancient Egyptians was purely Egyptian based on the discovery made by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie at Naqada, and this is why the Ancient Egyptian civilisation did not occur in Africa, it occurred only here”. In 2022, Hawass reiterated his view that "Africans have nothing to do with the pyramids scientifically" and stated that Africans "ruled in Egypt in the late Era, at the time of the 25th dynasty". Hawass also accused some international figures of African descent that promoted Afrocentrism of racism and fabrication of Egyptian history. In 2008, Stuart Tyson Smith expressed criticism of a facial reconstruction of Tutankhamun as "very light-skinned" which reflected "bias" and "predictably and justifiably, it has provoked protests from Afrocentrists" as "Egyptologists have been strangely reluctant to admit that the ancient Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes". In 2011, Stephen Quirke, professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology argued that the UNESCO-sponsored conference on the General History of Africa in 1974 "did not change the Eurocentric climate of research" and of the need to incorporate both African-centred studies and White European, academic perspectives. He later outlined that "research conferences and publications on the history and language of Kemet [Egypt] remain dominated ... by those brought up and trained in European, not African societies and languages (which include Arabic)". [/QUOTE]African-American Afrocentric "hoteps" and the far-right [QUOTE] African-Americans who use the Black Egyptian hypothesis as a source of black pride have been called "the hoteps" (after the Egyptian word hotep). The term has often been used disparagingly by non-hotep African-Americans, some of whom have linked the ideology of the hotep community – which is anti-feminist, anti-gay and anti-Semitic – to the far-right. Hoteps have been described as promoting false histories and misinformation about black people and black history. Some have argued hotep beliefs are too narrow-minded (focusing only on Egypt as opposed to other aspects of African history), and black feminists argue that hoteps perpetuate rape culture by policing women's sexuality and not criticizing predatory black men. [/QUOTE]Others [QUOTE]Within Afrocentrism, claims have been forwarded involving the contention that African civilizations were founding influences on such distant civilizations as the American Olmec and the Chinese Xia cultures. [/QUOTE]Wikipedia [/QB][/QUOTE]
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